Evan Peters almost quit acting after filming drunk bar scene in Mare of Easttown

18 May 2021, 15:14

Watch the trailer for HBO's Mare of Easttown with Kate Winslet and Evan Peters

By Katie Louise Smith

Peters told director Craig Zobel: "I can’t do this. I’m terrible. I’m going to shadow you and be a director, because I can’t do it anymore."

Ahead of his grand return to the world of American Horror Story in the forthcoming Double Feature season, Evan Peters has been killing it with his recent roles in WandaVision and in HBO's newest twisty little crime drama miniseries, Mare of Easttown.

Starring opposite Kate Winslet, Evan plays Detective Colin Zabel in the series. He's a standout in an already brilliant and stacked cast but one particular scene in the show made him question his own acting skills. In fact, the thought that he absolutely flopped left him considering quitting acting there and then.

In a new interview with Vanity Fair's Still Watching: Mare of Easttown podcast, Evan opened up about the filming one of the final scenes in episode 3, and how he thought he was "terrible".

Mild spoilers ahead for Mare of Easttown episode 3.

The scene in question takes place at the end of episode 3, where Colin and Mare (played by Winslet) are drinking at a bar, and a drunken Colin opens up to Mare in a moment of deep vulnerability.

Critics and viewers alike praised Evan's performance in that particular scene, with some even calling it the best drunk acting they've seen on-screen in a long time. He was also completely sober while filming it, and only drank "lil Dixie cups of apple cider vinegar every half hour" to "trigger sense memories," according to director Craig Zobel.

His own experience of filming it, however, was completely different.

“The reason Craig and I were emotional and hugging,” Peters explained, “was because I was hysterically sobbing. I thought we didn’t get the scene. I was like, ‘We didn’t get, we didn’t get it. I can’t do this. I’m terrible. I’m going to shadow you, Craig, and be a director, because I can’t do it anymore.’ And he was like, ‘It’s okay. It’s cool, man. I think we got it.’… What’s going on with my internal judgment? Where I don’t even know if it’s good.”

It's not the first time Evan Peters has opened up and been honest about his own career. Back in 2018, he told GQ that some of the characters he'd played in the past had taken a toll on him. He later took a short break from acting to "regroup, decompress, get back in touch with what [he] feel like [he] want[s] to do."

READ MORE: Evan Peters took 2 years to recover after filming AHS: Cult says Ryan Murphy