It’s no secret that the hit Netflix show Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story contains some troubling content. The backlash has been pretty strong despite the record viewing numbers. Now we’re finding out that even one of the directors had trouble with the unsettling content.
In a recent interview with Variety, director Paris Barclay revealed the show took an emotional toll on him as well. He said he didn’t even originally want to take the job until he found out the angle from the showrunner.
“About six months before production started, Ryan called me and said, ‘We’re doing a series and we want you to be a part of it. I always listen to what Ryan Murphy has to offer because it’s always interesting. Ryan said, ‘It’s a miniseries about Jeffrey Dahmer,’ and I said, ‘Oh, that’s not interesting to me.’ But then he explained he wanted to tell it from the point of view of the victims.”
Barclay only ended up helming two episodes of the 10-episode run, but that was more than enough to trouble his psyche. He directed the difficult episode about deaf victim Tony Hughes who was murdered in 1991.
The episode was extremely troubling to watch and prompted Hughes’ family to publicly speak out against the show. Hughes’ mother said the show not only retraumatized her but exploited her pain for monetary gain.
“I don’t really have an opinion about that other than I really wish there’s a world where [Hughes’ mother] can experience it without pain, but I can’t imagine being able to see it without pain,” he said.
Barclay said he tried his best to humanize the victim and that he was proud of the work he did.
“We tried to elevate and we tried to embrace Tony. We tried to give him a voice. We tried as best we could to make him resonate with viewers. And that seemed to have happened. I’m really proud of what we did, not just for Tony, but also for the Deaf community. That was my mantra. We want to make these victims not disappear.”
What was really difficult, he said, was having to pore over and basically live with the horrible details of the crime. This was so bad that sometimes he couldn’t help but weep.
“Some of the scenes that we depicted were pretty harrowing. When you’re shooting them, you don’t just get to watch them for two minutes. You’re living in them for a full day and you’re repeating them. It definitely took its toll on you. There were times that I was at home crying just thinking about the emotional experience that the actors have gone through and what the real people went through.”
Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story is currently streaming on Netflix.