Sophia Soto
After directing episode six of Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, Max Winkler returns to direct six episodes of Monster: The Ed Gein Story, the third season in Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan’s anthology series. For those who were unfamiliar with Ed Gein, the show presented how his gruesome legacy inspired Psycho, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Silence of the Lambs, and more.
“I knew nothing about Ed Gein when Ryan pitched the show to me, and this kind of very quiet, non-exceptional guy you would pass in the pharmacy in a small town having such a huge impact on culture is a really, really interesting story,” he shared. “That to me is a story worth telling. If he was super well-known and everybody knew about him, I wouldn’t be interested in telling that story, but unpeeling that particular onion is interesting to me, just based on the impact that he’s had.”
Gein was portrayed by Charlie Hunnam, whom Winkler previously worked with on Jungleland and will next collaborate with on season four of Monster, which will focus on Lizzie Borden. He spoke highly of the actor, expressing, “Charlie and I are already like brothers, and by that point [while filming episode seven], probably vacillating between wanting to kill each other and wanting to hug each other constantly. I love him. He’s one of my favorite people in the world. I think he’s one of the most stunning artists that I know.”
Each season of the anthology series focuses on a true crime story and its killers. It first premiered on Netflix in 2022 with Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, starring Evan Peters. “You get to spend time in these very different worlds with these very different people and see the kind of climates and cultures, and societal restraints that create these kinds of people in a pressure cooker. Menendez was all about the excess of the 80s and 90s of Los Angeles, the keeping up with the Joneses, then needing more, and the comparison. Gein was very much about isolation, being alone in the plains, in the Midwest, in America’s great dignified 1940s post-war, you know, Truman, Eisenhower. This was what happens if a Norman Rockwell painting, if you scratch at it with a quarter and see what’s underneath those happy faces. These people were shell-shocked. These people were afraid of the Russians. These people were aware that 6 million Jews had just been killed in the Holocaust. These people were aware that millions of Japanese people were just eradicated from a nuclear bomb. There was a lot of fear that was swept under the rug,” he explained.
“Behind that Norman Rockwell painting is, in some places, Ed Gein, and is Augusta Gein, his mother, who abused him probably because she was abused, though we don’t know any stories about it. And I love the timelessness of them.”
Tudum has revealed that Winkler will be directing the first episode of Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story, which he told me is “very, very different.” Ella Beatty will star as Borden, while the rest of the cast includes Hunnam, Vicky Krieps, Bridget Sullivan, Rebecca Hall, Billie Lourd, and Jessica Barden.
Watch Awards Radar’s full video interview with Winkler (below), where we discuss which episode intimidated him the most, his research process, showing how Gein influenced the horror genre, and what viewers can expect from season 4.
All episodes of Monster: The Ed Gein Story are streaming on Netflix.
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