For as long as the England-hailing star has been an actor, he’s favoured substance over stardom – at times, even forgoing billion-dollar franchises for roles he can really sink his teeth into. With Ryan Murphy’s Monster, he’s got the best of both worlds – playing one of history’s most notorious serial killers in one of the decade’s most talked about TV phenomena.

Manabouttown.tv — A rumbling train drowns out Charlie Hunnam just as he’s about to reveal the project he wishes he’d never taken. He laughs at the interruption, then doubles back – this time confessing the role he auditioned for but, thankfully, didn’t land. Before he can utter the project’s name, another blaring locomotive barrels past, silencing him again. “That train is my publicist!” he yells with a grin. “Preventing me from saying things I shouldn’t.”

Many people are lucky, but there’s more to it with Hunnam. Just a fleeting moment with him is enough to make you believe in karma, since karmic law tells us good things happen to good people, and, well, Charlie Hunnam is apparently very good. Hunnam is the kind of good that, instead of being tended to by a full staff, cleans his own home, pays his own bills, shops for his own groceries – despite being an international screen mainstay since his 2008 worldwide breakthrough as Jax Teller in Sons of Anarchy. “Fuck the glitz and glamour, hit ‘em with the Blitz and Hammer,” he says, quoting noughties UK rap legend Dizzee Rascal. Good like, when homophobia held strong through the 1990s, Hunnam attended equal rights demonstrations. “I was quite popular [there],” he smiles, although he probably understates. He’s so good that in this interview – one of many in which he will participate to promote his role as one of history’s most infamous serial killers in one of television’s most popular franchises – Hunnam is happily chatting well beyond our scheduled time, in direct defiance of his publicist (his officially appointed one, rather than the train).

Ed Gein, the actor’s latest lead role, was a two-time 1950s killer also famous for exhuming corpses, including that of his own mother. He has been the real-life inspiration for Norman Bates in Psycho, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’s Leatherface, and now, Ryan Murphy’s exceedingly bingeable anthology series, Monster. The collaboration between Murphy and Hunnam was borne out of a two-hour lunch at Chateau Marmont, during which the former offered the Englishman the role on the spot. According to the star, it was a “mic drop” moment, and Hunnam instinctively accepted – script unseen. Over the next few weeks, the impostor syndrome had set in: “‘I don’t know what I’m going to be able to do if I can’t understand this guy,’” he thought.

But Murphy had done extensive research, presenting a show that unfurled mental illness with profound compassion. Hunnam approached the work in a similar vein, devouring any material that gave insight into Gein’s environment, activities and pathology. “I was thinking, ‘Why did he do what he did? How can I make him a human?’ He did horrendous things, but it’s also heartbreaking… I did find him to be a really tragic figure.”

Identifying with his characters – no matter their background, occupation, or sexuality – has become something of Hunnam’s superpower. Before roaring onto screens as Jax, the motorcycle gang leader in Sons of Anarchy, Hunnam was a 16-year-old from the Newcastle suburb of Byker (yes, really). He’d just been turned away by an acting agency when fate intervened: on Christmas Eve 1996, he happened to cross paths with the lone production manager of the only TV show filming within 200 miles. That chance meeting led to his first audition – 1999’s Queer As Folk, Russell T Davies’s groundbreaking drama about three gay friends in Manchester.

Queer As Folk ran for only two seasons, but its impact was seismic, cited as part of the cultural conversation that prompted the UK government to bring the age of consent for gay relationships in line with that of straight and lesbian couples in 2001. Hunnam, one of its three stars, was just 18 when it premiered.

“I was certainly aware when it came out that we felt like we were doing something important,” he says. “Prior to that show a gay character on television’s entire storyline was that they were HIV positive or something like that – always reductive, like ‘This is all this person is.’ [Our] show was about three human beings living their lives with a whole plethora of relatable, real-life issues who just happened to be gay.” Continue reading Press: Charlie Hunnam On Facing The Monster