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Evan Peters explains the one rule Ryan Murphy put in place on Netflix Dahmer series

28 September 2022, 16:28

Evan Peters stars as Jeffrey Dahmer in Netflix’s new Monster series

By Katie Louise Smith

"As an audience, you're not really sympathising with him. You're not really getting into his plight, you're more sort of watching it from the outside.

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With Evan Peters front and centre of Netflix's latest true crime limited series about Jeffrey Dahmer, viewers would expect the series to focus on the story of the infamous serial killer.

But the American Horror Story actor has now revealed the one rule that co-creator Ryan Murphy set and followed throughout production, writing and filming.

While it's called The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, the show aims to avoid focusing on him, and does not seek to humanise Dahmer or make the audience sympathise with him. The limited series focuses on the victims, telling their story as well as focusing on the police mishandlings, racism and homophobia that surrounded the case.

Discussing how all of that was handled in production, Evan Peters told Netflix that "everybody gets their side of the story told" in the show.

DAHMER - Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story tells the story of the victims. Picture: Netflix

"We had one rule going into this from Ryan [Murphy] that it would never be told from Dahmer’s point of view," Evan said. "As an audience, you're not really sympathising with him. You're not really getting into his plight, you're more sort of watching it from the outside."

He continued: "It’s called The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, but it’s not just him and his backstory. It’s the repercussions; it’s how society and our system failed to stop him multiple times, because of racism and homophobia."

"The Jeffrey Dahmer story is so much bigger than just him."

Evan Peters stars as Jeffrey Dahmer in Netflix's DAHMER. Picture: Netflix

DAHMER follows the serial killer from his high school years up to his death in prison at age 34. In that time-span, it also examines the murders of 17 men and boys – who were mostly men of colour. The series also seeks to bring the story of Dahmer's neighbour Glenda Cleveland (played by Niecy Nash) to light, as hers is one that's often never told.

Rashad Robinson, the president of Color of Change, was consulted "to ensure that the victim’s stories were front and centre in the writing and production of the project."

As the series evolves, DAHMER explores how the case was mishandled by the police, and how Dahmer's crimes were pretty much ignored and passed over by law enforcement for over a decade – one reason being because Dahmer was a white man.