Michael Chernus opens up on playing a serial killer in Devil in Disguise: John Wayne Gacy: What helped me was…
Michael Chernus talks about his recent series Devil in Disguise: John Wayne Gacy, the mental toll it took on him and his love for Indian cinema
Actor Michael Chernus played the eponymous serial killer in the recently released true crime series, Devil In Disguise: John Wayne Gacy. For him, the most amusing part about his character was the normalcy of it. “What's scary about a number of these serial killers is that they are living amongst us. They are sort of hiding in plain sight, and he's the epitome of that. He's the perfect example of that as he was not hiding. He was just out there in plain sight. He was trying to fit into normal society,” he says.
Elaborating further on John’s persona, Michael shares, “He was very involved with local politics. One of the things that people always associate with him, that the media kind of got wrong in the ’70s, was that he was a clown. So people think that he killed people dressed as a clown, but actually it was just another way that he tried to ingratiate himself with normal society. He'd go to children's hospitals and parades, and it was just another way to seem harmless and totally safe.”
Ask him if the darkness of his character ever took over his mental state and he reveals that it was John himself that helped him not succumb to it. “The thing that helped guide me was John Gacy himself. He talked about there being multiple Johns, multiple versions of himself – John the contractor, John the politician, John the family man, and then the bad guy, the evil guy. So thinking of it as this person who has these different masks, these different personalities that they put on, depending on who they're talking to or dealing with, that was a real way in for me,” he says.
The actor adds, “Knowing I didn't have to play the totality of him all at once in a way that it shouldn't appear evil very often, helped me. We only see the mask drop and see the guy behind it here and there. But that he's doing all these other personalities to kind of just blend into society and seem harmless and just like a friendly neighbour, that was helpful for me to not have to go to the dark place all of the time.”
Having been part of projects like Severance, Orange Is The New Black and Spider Man: Homecoming (2017), Michael is no stranger to global fandom. “It's a very exciting time to be an actor and be in the entertainment industry where we have these streaming platforms where our work reaches a global audience. You also make choices as an actor based on that responsibility,” he says, adding, “With this story, I was very conscious of the fact that we are also trying to shed light on some of the victims and their stories before they ever crossed paths with John Gacy, and just trying to retell this story in a way that wasn't done when he was arrested in the 1970s.”
Amongst his global fanbase are also many Indians, and Michael has only love for the people and the country. “I've always wanted to come to India but I've never been. But now I definitely have to come. I didn't know I had so many fans there, so I'll be there,” he shares, expressing whether he would like to dabble in Indian films: “I'm so impressed by the Indian film industry, but I've kind of got my hands full here right at the moment. But you never know.”
