From Netflix’s Monster to Hulu’s The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox, scripted true crime shows are all the craze — so it may be a surprise to viewers that Peacock’s Devil in Disguise: John Wayne Gacy chose not to show any murders on screen.
Gacy was a serial killer and sex offender who raped, tortured and murdered dozens of young men and boys. After he was convicted of 32 murders, he was sentenced to death and died by lethal injection in 1994.
The limited series, which premiered on Thursday, October 16, made an effort to focus on Gacy’s victims — something other shows centered around notorious murderers have been chastised for allegedly ignoring. Devil In Disguise: John Wayne Gacy addressed the trauma inflicted on the victims’ families, named each episode after a victim of Gacy’s and questioned investigative missteps and systemic failures that led to Gacy evading the law for so long.
“I was hesitant to even throw my hat in the ring for this job, initially. Because I didn’t want to do anything that — in any way — glorified John Wayne Gacy,” Michael Chernus, who played John Wayne Gacy, exclusively told Us Weekly of the efforts behind the scenes to respect those affected by the crimes. “[Showrunner] Patrick Macmanus told me this idea of focusing on the victims and telling their stories and shedding light.”
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Chernus, 48, was glad that the show “wouldn’t be showing any graphic violence or murder on camera.”
“John Wayne Gacy is a part of the story because he has to be, he explained. “But I only want people to learn about him in so much as it maybe helps us understand psychopathy and maybe in some small way a TV show could prevent something like this from happening in the future.”
For Devil in Disguise, the priority is to not have viewers “walk away with empathy or sympathy” for the subject.
“But there’s often a thing where actors talk about how to play a character, you have to find a way to love them. You have to have empathy for them,” Chernus noted. “You have to walk 1000 miles in their shoes and I really have believed that up until now. I don’t — at least with this character — believe that. I never got to a place where I had real empathy for him.”
Chernus went on to praise the scripted series for the way it addressed some “misinformation” about Gacy. Macmanus offered more insight into how the writers’ room approached the show with care and consideration.
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“We knew that we wanted to focus it on the victims but we didn’t exactly know what that meant until we figured out the short stories and the idea that we were talking about these victims’ lives, their hopes and their dreams and their struggles. All of the tragedies that were in their lives that had no connection to their murder at the hands of John Wayne Gacy,” he told Us. “We were showing stories that showed people struggling with their identity, people struggling with their socioeconomic conditions, people struggling with parent issues. There are millions and millions and millions of people who have all of that in their lives and they don’t kill 33 people. This allows us to talk about John Wayne Gacy without actually making it feel like we are focusing on him or that we’re excusing him. Because the last thing that we do in that show is excuse him.”
Macmanus continued: “The decision on when to show [violence] or when not to show was very simple. We were not showing it and so we knew that there were going to be moments that we would tiptoe up to the line. We weren’t going to disgrace the memory of the victims by doing a reimagining of their violent final moments in this world. So I hope that at the end of the day — as disturbing as it may be — that people also recognize that we’re ultimately honoring the victims by not showing their final moments.”
Devil in Disguise: John Wayne Gacy is now streaming on Peacock.
