For the most chilling portrayal in years, look no further than Michael Chernus‘ revelatory depiction of infamous serial killer John Wayne Gacy in Peacock’s new miniseries Devil in Disguise: John Wayne Gacy.
The dramatization of one of the darkest chapters in American crime history has drawn plaudits for sidestepping easy sensationalism about the Chicago contractor and amateur clown who murdered 33 boys in the 1970s, burying them in a crawl space beneath his house.
“Instead of the orgiastic madhouse that fans of Monster and American Horror Story have grown accustomed to, Devil in Disguise is a somber affair, as aesthetically chilly as a December in Des Plaines, Illinois,” The Hollywood Reporter noted in its review.
A prolific character actor, Chernus, 48, is stepping out from the wings for his first major leading role to play Gacy — a double-edged achievement, he explains to THR in a new interview, but one he’s ultimately proud of because of the sensitive take on the material that honors the many victims and their families.
***
Michael, you’re a Juilliard trained actor, are you not?
I am. I was there from 1995 to 1999, and they do a thing at Juilliard where each year is numbered since the very first class. So I was group 28. Anthony Mackie and Lee Pace were a couple years behind me.
What kind of preparation do they give you in this school for the idea that you might one day play John Wayne Gacy?
I figured that was maybe where you were going. No one can prepare you for that, is the short answer. No one can prepare you to play someone like John Gacy. That said, they did prepare me to value the craft of research and character, background building and text analysis, and building the physical life of the character. I felt like I had this whole bag of skills, like a real tradesman’s chip of tools to use when I entered into this project.
I leaned on my training heavily for this role. Even something as simple as the Chicago dialect and John Gacy’s individual odd, idiosyncratic way of speaking. He has such a strange vocal pattern and placement of his voice. At Juilliard, we had extensive vocal and speech training, and so all those things I learned back in the late ’90s, 30 years ago, were still so useful.
Another Juilliard grad, Michael Stuhlbarg, helped me think about different ways to approach a character like this and not be afraid to make large choices — really try stuff physically and vocally; and with your hair and mustache and with your walk. With a person who has been studied as much as John Gacy has, and there are already so many different films and documentaries and books and podcasts about him, I felt like I needed to take a big swing at it.
I’m sure as a young actor setting out in the world, it never even occurs to you that this will be something that will be offered to you. What happens when it finally does? Is it like, “Yes! I got the lead in a big series!” or is it, “Oh my God, do I even want to be associated with this person?”
A little bit of both. I’ve been playing supporting characters on the screen for most of my career. I’ve been the lead in a few indies, but the majority of my work is playing supporting characters. It was thrilling to be the lead of a show for the first time. But then it was also like, “Oh God, it’s playing this despicable human being.” So it was certainly daunting, and I was hesitant to take it on at first. But once I spoke with Patrick Macmanus, our showrunner, and knew that specific lens through which the story was going to be told, there’s a great amount of relief in that. He said to me, “You’re not going to be in every scene and the show’s not really going to be focused on you.” Of course, Gacy is going to be in it a ton, but it’s not going to be about you. In a weird way, I was like, “I know how to do that.”
What was happening regarding your character when the cameras were off?
I took the responsibility of being a leader on set very seriously. I cared about the way we were telling the story so much, and I cared about our crew and what they were going through. I felt like I needed to check in with everybody all the time to make sure we were all okay, and that everyone’s mental health was doing all right. I really wanted to set a tone of inclusivity and care around the set. I didn’t want to be John Gacy every moment. I didn’t want to stay in character after we called “cut.” I didn’t want anyone to have to deal with John Gacy any longer than they had to.
You mentioned he’s been covered so many times. He’s been played by Brian Dennehy. It’s well-tread territory. So how do you find something new in the role? And you did a wonderful job, let me just say.
I really appreciate that. I didn’t watch much of the other narrative fictional accounts. I watched a lot of documentaries, but I didn’t watch other actors portray him for this very reason that I didn’t want to tread ground that had already been tread. The main thing I knew going in was the idea that he was the killer clown. When I started to do research, I realized very quickly that was something that had been blown out of proportion in the ’70s by the press because it sold newspapers. As far as we know, he didn’t kill anyone dressed as a clown. He didn’t use the clown persona to lure boys back to his house. It was a mask. It was one of many masks he wore to try to blend into society. He had joined this Jolly Joker club in Chicago that would go to children’s hospitals twice a month and sometimes do parades. It was a way for him to seem harmless.
He has that line in the first episode, which is a direct quote from John Gacy, which is “Pounds the Clown can get away with anything. Clowns could murder someone and get away with it because nobody suspects a clown.” We don’t show the clown in the show. Every other actor who’s portrayed Gacy has had to don the clown suit and makeup for a number of scenes. We just don’t show that. We felt like that was a misrepresentation of what actually happened.
You also don’t really show any single murder and you don’t show his execution, which would be two things you would think most movies or dramatizations would lean into for obvious reasons. Was it a relief that stuff was not on film?
Not just a relief, but that was something I really cared about. When Patrick and I first met, we had a Zoom meeting before I agreed to make an audition tape, because I wanted to know what his take was going to be on it. One of the first things he told me was that there wouldn’t be any graphic violence onscreen or any murder shown. That was not only a relief, but it aligned with my artistic impulses around telling this story. It felt like it would be wrong to show that and not be in alignment with the larger purpose of what we were trying to do.
In terms of being an actor, you often hear, “What’s my motivation?” Well, this is not a normal guy with normal motivations. So how do you make sense of the character?
I had to let go of that need for it to make sense, which kind of goes against everything I learned at Juliliard. I do think he had his own logic in his own crazy mind. There were reasons why he did things the way he did, and he had his own methodology. But at the end of the day, I think only a psychopath can understand a psychopath. And even then, I don’t think a lot of these serial killers know really why they’re doing what they’re doing. I don’t think that John Gacy was super in touch with his feelings.
In drama school, you always learn that you have to empathize with your character. No matter who you play, even if you’re playing the most horrific person in the world, you have to find a way to understand why they’re doing what they’re doing.
After playing this role, think that’s BS. I don’t agree. I don’t have to understand him to play him. The scripts were written so well, but eventually it’s going to get to a point where I can’t fill in that blank. An easy example is he had an abusive alcoholic father who would hit John Wayne Gacy and his sisters every day. He would tell John Wayne Gacy that if he ever found out he was gay, he would kill him. So I could say, “That kind of upbringing would lead to potentially him being violent; hurt people hurt people.”
And I believe that, but at the end of the day, there are unfortunately millions and millions of people who have grown up with an alcoholic, abusive father, and they didn’t kill 33 boys and bury them under their house. So there’s that last step I can’t understand and certainly can’t justify. That’s where acting comes in. I’m not a psychotherapist; I’m an actor. I think it’s imagination and trusting the writing, but I never got to a place where I understood him completely. I certainly felt like I understood aspects of him, but there was that final piece of the puzzle I could never put together.
Probably a good sign.
Yeah.
How are people approaching you after the screenings? Do you feel an energy shift?
There’s been a real energy shift. The premiere was a big moment because there were so many other actors, writers, directors, producers in the audience. It was a packed house of peers who can often be the hardest critics. And everybody was really excited about the show and how different it felt from other serial killer and true-crime stories.
One of the things that almost everyone was reflecting back to me was, “Oh God, he was charming. Sometimes he was likable. I caught myself laughing, and then I’d remember who he was.” That’s exactly it. It’s the thing I struggled with early on as an actor. I would say to Patrick, “I feel like Gacy is coming across as too charming in this scene.” Patrick would say, “That’s exactly your job. We have to understand why these young men would go back to his house and have a beer with him because he just seemed harmless. He seemed fun, he seemed goofy, he seemed likable.” So in a weird way, the audience having that same experience of getting seduced by his folksy charm — and then the mask drops, and then us as an audience remembering who we’re watching.
***
Devil in Disguise: John Wayne Gacy is now streaming all episodes on Peacock.
First Appeared on
Source link
