Best Television Limited Series, Anthology Series or Motion Picture Made for Television – Nominee
Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, the first season of the American true crime anthology series, Monster, is about the life of Jeffrey Dahmer, one of the most notorious serial killers in America.
Created by Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan for Netflix, the show received four Golden Globe nominations including Best Television Limited Series, Anthology Series or Motion Picture Made for Television. Murphy also serves as the showrunner and is an executive producer along with Brennan.
In a press conference held in Los Angeles, the prolific writer-creator Murphy said that they weren’t really interested in Jeffrey Dahmer the monster. “We were interested in what made the monster. Who is complicit in the making of the monster? There were many different things involved in that, and it was always going to be a very complicated, human story.
“But one of the things that we always wanted, [that] we tried in the making of it, was, we tackled systemic racism, we tackled homophobia. We were always thinking of the victims.”
In an interview with Variety, Murphy admitted that he never attempted to contact Lionel Dahmer, the father of the cannibalistic murderer because “Lionel has already told that story from his point of view with the 1994 book “A Father’s Story.””
He continued, “I’ve done many biopics. It’s almost like you’re being a reporter; I always try and keep a place of neutrality. I think that we were telling a very specific story. I think Lionel’s told his story. This was not that story.”
Brennan, for his part, said to HuffPost about Dahmer and the mini-series: “I think we show a human being. He’s monstrously human and he’s monstrously monstrous and that’s what we wanted to sort of unpack. We tried to show an objective portrait as possible. We did our homework.”
Starring Evan Peters as Dahmer, the series, which reached No. 1 on the Nielsen Top 10 streaming chart in the first week of its release, also features Richard Jenkins as Dahmer’s father, Lionel; Molly Ringwald as Dahmer’s stepmother Shari; Niecy Nash-Betts as Dahmer’s suspicious neighbor, Glenda Cleveland; and Michael Learned as Dahmer’s grandmother, Catherine.
In the same press conference, the 57-year-old showrunner from Indianapolis revealed the physical preparation that Peters underwent for the role, included wearing lead weights around his arms, lifts in his shoes, practicing the way Dahmer walked, and “basically staying in this character, as difficult as it was, for months.”
The show, which was released on September 21, 2022, became Netflix’s second most-watched English language series of all time within 28 days and the third Netflix series to pass one billion views in 60 days.