Casting Director Eric Dawson has been working with Ryan Murphy for more than twenty years, dating all the way back to Popular in 1999. While their familiarity has made for a great working relationship over those two-plus decades, taking on the responsibility of casting for Netflix’s Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, was a unique challenge. It’s hard enough to take on the story at all, but then to cast someone who could play Jeffrey Dahmer and then surround him with just the right actors to make what could have been a ghoulish endeavor come off with grace and humanity…well, it’s a lot.
In our conversation, Eric and I discuss how he and Ryan got Evan Peters for the lead, how they filled in the cast around him, and the hard work it took to find just the right actors for the series breathtaking sixth episode, “Silence.”
Awards Daily: Even though you’ve worked with Ryan Murphy a great many times, did you feel any trepidation taking on a show about Jeffrey Dahmer? You had to know it would be very controversial.
Eric Dawson: Not really, but we always felt the pressure to do it right. I guess that’s true with any sort of true life crime drama that you’re always going to be dealing with family members of the victims that are still alive. So we were keenly aware, but I wasn’t scared, I was excited to do it right. The fact that Ryan wanted to show the victim’s point of view and not Dahmer’s was the key.
Awards Daily: The show’s perspective was a wonderful surprise. At the same time, the linchpin of the show, Dahmer himself, has to be played by somebody who can really transform himself in this role. Which I guess when you say it isn’t the first time that Evan Peters has done that. (Laughs). With that in mind, did you get that sense that we have our linchpin and now we can build off of that?
Eric Dawson: Well, what’s interesting is the first person that was cast in the show was actually Richard Jenkins. The truth is that Evan wasn’t available. He was doing American Horror Story Season 10 on the East Coast, and we were shooting on the West coast. So as much as our first conversations were like “wouldn’t Evan be great,” it really wasn’t practical, especially during the pandemic, getting him back and forth. He had a very big role in season 10 and a very different role. So we just sort of knew that even though he was our dream guy, it probably wasn’t possible. I spent a few months looking at other Dahmers, I think we saw about 700 possible Dahmers altogether, all on tape. We got done with that search and we had some really good people, but then Ryan was like I think we have to see if we can make it work with Evan. We knew that Evan would just knock this out of the ballpark. And so Horror Story peoples’ heads of course exploded, but we made it all work and it was worth it. That’s the great thing about Ryan. Most showrunners would go oh, he is unavailable, we have to move on. Ryan figures it out. We wrote scenes together, we changed schedules, we did everything. Because at the end of the day, Ryan knows that casting is as important as the script, so he does whatever is possible to make sure he has the cast he wants.
Awards Daily: What I found particularly fascinating about Evan’s performance was his choice to play Dahmer minus charisma. Somebody who is an alcoholic trying to dull his senses because he does know right from wrong. Was that surprising to you to see him go in that direction? It’s a brave choice as an actor to essentially play dull.
Eric Dawson: I go back with Evan 20 years. We did things when he was just a guest star and then obviously the
![](http://www.awardsdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Dawson.jpg)
first season of American Horror Story. I’m just in awe of his talent. I remember after the first day of shooting, I called to see how it went, and they said the camera turns on and he is Dahmer. I literally got chills because I knew. He was the only person that we were considering that we hadn’t seen do it. But it’s such a small leap of faith with him. I love the choice and I think that’s what caused everybody to lean in a little bit to the show, because he was so still. I think that was probably the magic of the show.
Awards Daily: Then you have someone like Niecy Nash, who is more known for comedy. I think she represents the victims that you don’t necessarily think about. There are the victims that, of course, were murdered, but there are the victims who had to live around him and in fear–his neighbors. The depth and the angst that she brought to this…I should have learned by now not to be surprised by what actors can do anymore. When you were looking at her, were you thinking to yourself I haven’t seen this from her before?
Eric Dawson: You know what’s really interesting? I think there were 250 roles in the show over the ten episodes and I think three weren’t auditioned. Richard, Niecy, and then Dyllon Burnside were the three that didn’t audition. I felt like Niecy is part of the Ryan Murphy acting troupe. I think we go all the way back to Popular and Nip/Tuck with her and in fact, my office even casted her in The Rookie: Feds. Anyway, we have a long history with her. The thing I learned from Ryan early on back during Nip/Tuck and the Horror Story days is when you have good actors, you can take them in so many different directions. That was the magic of Horror Story where every year somebody played the opposite of what they played before. I think he really understands that talent can just be pulled and pushed. And somebody like Niecy, again, not a huge leap to think that she could do that.
![](http://www.awardsdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Jenkins.jpg)
Awards Daily: Richard Jenkins, as you had already mentioned, as Dahmer’s father, Lionel, was absolutely brilliant. I love the casting of Penelope Ann Miller and Molly Ringwald as the two wives of Dahmer’s father. Penelope and Molly are actors who maybe it’s been a little bit of time since they’ve gotten something this juicy. Can you talk about the three of them being the representation of trying to normalize this young man who clearly isn’t normal in retrospect?
Eric Dawson: I think Richard Jenkins was sort of the heart of the show and to me, he grounded the show. If I look at the ten times I cried during the show, they were probably all his scenes. He was an interesting casting choice in the fact that he was older than what was written. Our original idea was to have the actor playing Lionel play the young Lionel and then the older Lionel. Since he was quite a bit older than what was written, it became apparent that we were going to have to cheat both the wives up in age and also have young versions of them. Even with his mother, Michael Learned, Richard is in his mid seventies, so all of a sudden it made grandma a little older too.
I think Michael is barely older than Richard, but Richard’s sort of a timeless face. When he was 30 he seemed like he was 50 and now he’s seventies and he feels like he’s 50. I’m glad we did it, but it did all of a sudden make us rethink what scenes Richard is doing and what scenes is the younger version, played by Josh Bratton, doing and I thought he did a wonderful job playing Richard, because Richard’s so specific. Then with Molly and Penelope it was really great because again, Ryan wasn’t just trying to populate the world with famous people because he really felt the story was the star. At the same time, people of a certain age are going to have, hopefully, a background of work. When Penelope and Molly went on tape, I thought they were clever casting choices and it was a nice way to sort of fold them back in. I think Molly’s doing something now for Ryan as well. So, it’s nice to bring her into the family.
Awards Daily: I want to talk now about the episode that made me cry and I’m probably going to have a hard time even talking about it–“Silence”. I thought it was the best hour of television I saw last year. There aren’t a lot of opportunities for deaf actors and then we’re also talking about deaf actors of color so your pool gets even smaller. Rodney Burford as Tony Hughes in that episode—it is his episode. It’s his story.
Eric Dawson: It was probably my favorite episode. It was the one piece of casting that we started so early because we knew it was going to be really hard to cast, and it was really hard to cast. Rodney didn’t really come from acting. He had a reality television show he did. To find young, handsome black, and deaf, we went way beyond agents and managers. We were just reaching everywhere. It was difficult because we weren’t in the room with him, and so we were trying to guide him through these scenes and we gave him a lot of material. Everybody sort of attacked the material differently, from pantomiming and running around the room, so it was difficult. And then it was also difficult to communicate changes in the auditions. By the time it got to Ryan, it was maybe the third time Rodney had gone on tape, just to tweak it so it made sense as an audition. It was hard, but he was wonderful. Like I said, I think it was probably my favorite episode, and the one I was most scared of as well.
Awards Daily: The scene between him and his two friends at the bar. It’s just these three deaf gay men of color talking about their lives, hopes, dreams, and aspirations. It’s my favorite scene in the whole show. Dahmer really doesn’t have anything to do with it other than being that specter of darkness looming over them. Can you talk about how that was set up and the other two actors? They looked like they knew each other for a thousand years, the way they communicated.
Eric Dawson: It’s so tricky too. Obviously there was no chemistry reading, there was no getting them in rooms together. They were all sort of auditioning for one role and then we moved them around to different roles. We were just trying to have a really cool mosaic of friends that were believable in that situation. It was handled with such sensitivity and allowing the camera just to be still and watch them, I felt like maybe we got lucky on that one. Karen Malina White, who played Tony’s mother, was just crazy good. That was one of those auditions that I literally just sent to Ryan and just said we have to pick her. He wrote back in 10 minutes “We have to.” It was so emotional and grounded and natural and raw.
Awards Daily: There’s something about the character, his birth, the discovery that he’s deaf, and his sweet, trusting nature. A different person might have played this in a way where you would be like, aren’t you picking up on the cues that this guy (Dahmer) is not right? That innocence that Rodney brought to it, I think, was key to making that episode work.
Eric Dawson: As a viewer, we know where it’s going and it’s breaking your heart that he’s not seeing it. It’s the same as Shaun Brown in the first episode, it was like a two-person play as well. You see where it’s going and you just know, and it’s just the two of them. It is like a two-person play. You see as his “Spidey sense” starts to go up and you just know he has to get out of there. I take my hat off to those guys because they really rose to the occasion, man.
Awards Daily: I’m glad you mentioned Shaun. That first episode was a white knuckle, dig your nails into
![](http://www.awardsdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Shaun.jpg)
whatever is next to you kind of thing. I think a lot of that comes from Shaun because you can see him starting to realize what kind of trouble he’s in, and he’s maneuvering and trying to negotiate. There’s a dead body in the room, you know? I’d never heard of Shaun before but that is just some extraordinary work. I wonder if some people couldn’t get past that first episode because it is so intense. I felt like I was almost in Shaun’s skin. I was so nervous.
Eric Dawson: The first episode is a hard one to get through, and I think if you get through the first episode then, as my daughters say, it gets easier to watch. They both were freaked out at the first episode. But obviously with the billion hours of viewing, people white-knuckled it through. I also think it was just so beautifully acted and written, that you were pulled in and you realized that you weren’t just watching a sensationalized show, you were watching something that was pretty well executed.
Awards Daily: The show started out with critics and potential viewers having preconceived, and I think, incorrect notions. I think now the perception has started to tilt in the other direction, where people are seeing why this story needed to be told. That has to feel good.
Eric Dawson: It does feel good. We had no idea what the reaction was going to be. It was really neat because it came out without a lot of fanfare or actor promotions and things like that. The swell came from word of mouth. So yeah, it felt really good.