Say goodbye to knowing Charlie Hunnam as his Sons of Anarchy character, Jax Teller, because the actor is taking on a horrifying new role.
Netflix released the first look of Hunnam, 45, as serial killer Ed Gein in promo images for the upcoming third season of Ryan Murphy’s anthology series Monster.
“You know the iconic horror films his twisted legacy inspired, but you may not know his name … yet,” Netflix’s Instagram caption read on Wednesday, August 27, with three new photos of Hunnam in character.
The social media post also revealed that the show, Monster: The Ed Gein Story, is set to premiere on Friday, October 3.
Each of the three photos was inspired by a different horror movie: Silence of the Lambs, Psycho and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Each image also alluded to the films’ villains.
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In one pic, Hunnam looked menacingly at the camera, pulling a mask — which appeared to be sewn together with human skin — over the bottom half of his face. The second picture showed Hunnam with his head resting on a woman’s lap, presumably Gein’s mother, Augusta (Laurie Metcalf). The final photo had Hunnam screaming with a chainsaw lifted in the air.
“In the frozen fields of 1950s rural Wisconsin, a friendly, mild-mannered recluse named Eddie Gein lived quietly on a decaying farm — hiding a house of horrors so gruesome it would redefine the American nightmare,” the show’s official logline reads. “Driven by isolation, psychosis, and an all-consuming obsession with his mother, Gein’s perverse crimes birthed a new kind of monster that would haunt Hollywood for decades.”
The show will tell the story of how Gein “became the blueprint for modern horror.”
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Netflix announced in October 2024 that Hunnam would be taking on the role of Gein for Monster season 3. (Murphy’s series previously found success with Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, released in 2022, and Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, released in 2024.)
Murphy teased Hunnam’s portrayal of the killer during an interview with Collider last month.
“This was a person who was mentally ill, who was an undiagnosed schizophrenic his entire life. And not until it was too late, until he was in prison — I believe in his 50s — was he diagnosed,” Murphy explained of Gein. “So it really is sort of a story about mental health and awareness.”
He added, “That’s what I love about telling those sorts of stories. I’m not in it for the blood. I’m not in it for the gore. I’m in it for like, ‘Well, was he made or was he born that way?’ I think that [the] story of Ed Gein is both — he was born that way and made that way.”
