Charlie Hunnam has defended the latest season of Monster: The Ed Gein Story, insisting that the Netflix series does not sensationalise or glorify the crimes of its subject. The 45-year-old actor, who is best known for his role in Sons of Anarchy, portrays the vile murderer and grave robber in the newest instalment of Ryan Murphy's Netflix true-crime anthology.
This dark reimagining delves into how Gein's traumatic past and fractured psyche led to a series of horrific crimes in 1950s rural America. Hunnam has now responded to criticism that the show glamourises or sensationalises its source material.
Speaking after the backlash from viewers and critics over the show's graphic depiction of Gein's life and murders, he said: "I never felt like we were sensationalizing it."
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He said to The Hollywood Reporter: "I never felt on set that we did anything gratuitous or for shock impact. It was all in order to try to tell this story as honestly as we could."
The series tells the tale of Wisconsin farmer Gein, who gained infamy in the 1950s for grave robbing and creating grotesque items from human remains.
Like the two previous instalments in Ryan Murphy's Monster franchise, the latest season has been accused of exploiting true crime stories for entertainment purposes.
Critics have highlighted what they perceive as the "glamorisation" of Gein's crimes and questioned whether the show respects the real-life victims and their families.
Hunnam also pondered the broader question of who the "monster" in the story truly is.
He posed the question: "Is it Ed Gein who was abused and left in isolation and suffering from undiagnosed mental illness and went and that manifested in some pretty horrendous ways?".
"Or was the monster the legion of filmmakers that took inspiration from his life and sensationalised it to make entertainment and darken the American psyche in the process?".
He further queried: "Is Ed Gein the monster of this show, or is Hitchcock the monster of the show? Or are we the monster of the show because we're watching it?".
Ryan Murphy is the creator and executive producer of the Monster series, which has previously delved into the lives of Jeffrey Dahmer and John Wayne Gacy.
The first chapter, Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, quickly became one of Netflix's most-watched shows of all time following its release in 2022.
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