Unmasking the Devil
US true crime drama Devil in Disguise: John Wayne Gacy dramatises events leading to the discovery of Gacy’s double life as a serial killer and the impact of his crimes on his victims’ families. DQ hears more from stars Michael Chernus, Gabriel Luna and Marin Ireland.
A familiar face on screen thanks to parts in Severance, Orange is the New Black and Patriot, US actor Michael Chernus admits he was “very hesitant” about taking on the titular role in true crime drama Devil in Disguise: John Wayne Gacy.
From showrunner Patrick Macmanus (Dr Death), the series dramatises events between 1972 and 1978 when 33 young men were kidnapped, murdered and buried in a crawl space beneath the home belonging to their killer, Gacy.
The series then attempts to peel back the layers of Gacy’s life to determine why this charming and funny man, a community leader with an “all-American” job – he even entertained sick kids while dressed as a clown – would commit such terrible crimes, while also exploring the impact of his actions on the families of his victims and the systemic failures, missed opportunities and societal prejudices that enabled his reign of terror.
When he was first approached to play Gacy, Chernus thought, “Oh, boy. What am I going to do with this?” he tells DQ. “My agent called me and said, ‘Would you be willing to take a meeting about the character, John Wayne Gacy,’ and I was very hesitant at first. I didn’t want to be involved in something that was going to feel salacious or sensationalising this story.
“I also wasn’t sure if I wanted my name attached to this man’s name for the rest of my life. But when I met our showrunner, he pitched me this idea of focusing more on the victims, the victims’ families and the law enforcement individuals who brought Gacy to justice. Thinking about that larger scope of the story interested me, and knowing that he wasn’t going to be the main focus of the show really put some of my fears at ease.”
Now streaming on Peacock in the US, the eight-part series is produced by UCP and was filmed in Toronto. The cast also features Gabriel Luna as Detective Rafael Tovar, who received a tip relating to missing 15-year-old Robert Piest that first led officers to Gacy’s home, and Marin Ireland as Elizabeth Piest, the mother of Robert, who was Gacy’s final victim, plus James Badge Dale, Michael Angarano and Chris Sullivan.
Here, Chernus, Luna (The Last of Us) and Ireland (Dope Thief) tell DQ about their approach to portraying real people and the show’s ambition to highlight the impact of Gacy’s actions on both the families of his victims and the law enforcement officials confronted with the horrific scale of his crimes.
Michael, you’re known for playing characters or starring in series with a comedic edge. What were your first thoughts about leading a true crime series?
Chernus: As an actor, from a career perspective, that was exciting to me. But the interesting thing about Gacy [compared with] some of the other serial killers we know about was he was so gregarious. He was such a social creature and, by many accounts, he was charming and friendly and came across as harmless. So there is somewhat of an overlap with other characters I’ve played, which is the front-facing element of him as kind of this goofy, lubby, Polish, blue-collar guy in Chicago.
He almost had an ‘aw shucks’ kind of demeanour about him, but then had this somewhat secret, dark, other layer underneath. So there was weirdly a way in for me that was quite easy in the beginning to play, that one mask of him that was similar to other characters I played, but then discovering that dark underbelly was the challenge.
Marin, how do you reflect on being part of this show and the story it dramatises?
Ireland: With Michael Chernus, who’s been a very dear friend for a very long time, we keep talking about how proud we are that this show focused so much on the victims, and that the heart of the show is in the right place. Michael is such a wonderful person. I remember saying to another friend of mine that part of why I wanted to do this project was because he was playing Gacy. I knew then that the heart of the thing would be in the right place, and we would all be honouring the victims and their families together.
Gabriel, what was your introduction to the series?
Luna: Well, the first conversation I had was with Patrick Macmanus. My team came to me at the tail end of my shoot on the last season of The Last of Us in Vancouver and said, ‘Patrick wrote this part for you. It’s a character who’s based on a real man.’ I read the first three scripts, and that’s the reason why I even came to the table. I appreciated the way he was handling the material.
We were all hesitant and kind of fearful of moving into this direction with this material, but even from that first moment I read these first three scripts, it became increasingly meaningful, and in an unexpected way. As we were working, we realised this was special and unique, and it was in a way a continuation of the work Detective Tovar did, that the rest of his colleagues did – the work that carried on after the case was closed.
How would you describe the role of the police in the series?
Luna: It is a three-track story and you follow the attorneys and the whole courtroom element of the story. The investigative aspect of it all culminates in the first episode, as far as who did it – it’s no secret in our story who did it. Then it becomes a story, from my point of view, of what happened to this guy [Tovar] and his family, because it really tore families apart – not just of those parents who lost those kids, but everyone who worked on this was tainted in a way.
My contribution was to show his descent into this, not only physically descending into the crawl space, but also having to endure the collective spirit of people and the community just being chipped away. It was eating away at them, so that’s the story we’re telling with Detective Tovar.
How did you approach playing a real person in the series?
Chernus: Every role is very different for me in terms of how I approach it. I come from the theatre originally, and so I do have that background of ‘the play is the thing,’ ‘the word is everything,’ and that’s where you start. But with this, there was just so much research available to us. Our show is based on the Peacock documentary about John Wayne Gacy [titled John Wayne Gacy: Devil in Disguise], which is a wonderful documentary, so I had that to work off of. NBC News also produced that documentary and is a producer on our show so they had also a whole bunch of research that isn’t in the documentary that we had access to.
Then there are just hundreds of books and podcasts and other films and YouTube videos. It’s an endless path you have to research this story. So with this one, I did a lot of free work that I don’t always do.
Ireland: What’s interesting is the Piest family were very private, and there’s not a ton [of material about them]. We weren’t even trying to replicate [Elizabeth Piest’s] appearance. I remember talking to Cricket Brown, who plays Kerry [Piest], about the fact that because we’re not trying to be them in that way, it actually felt like it was really affording them a further sense of privacy, and that seems to be what they wanted. So really, we were playing the people that were written for us in the scripts. I felt like my biggest responsibility was telling the story of someone who lost a child, and that is, unfortunately, something a lot of people can relate to.
Luna: It wasn’t until after we were done that I really delved into Detective Tovar’s personal life and where he is now. But during the process of it, he just struck me every time I saw a photograph of them pulling bodies from the house. He dressed like he was in The Allman Brothers Band – he was a rock star-looking guy, he had a Joey Ramone-style haircut. I didn’t choose to do that with my hair because it probably wouldn’t work, but those rose-tinted aviator eyeglasses that he wore, he wore them every day at the scene. He was just cut from a different cloth than the rest. You can see it, and he’s from Crystal City, Texas. There’s just this kind of cowboy element to him, and that was where I went with it. The rest was just to be true to what I imagined that horrendous experience to be, and just to be available to my castmates and do our best to tell a story.
How was the atmosphere on set?
Ireland: We had a really nice, beautiful sense of camaraderie. It was the kind of atmosphere you hope for, with a lot of love. Michael Churnus, especially, is just the biggest-hearted person I’ve ever known, so it was an incredibly warm, supportive environment, which was such a blessing. But they were always like, ‘Sorry, you have to do this again today,’ because even the one scene that would have been more lighthearted, when Elizabeth goes to pick him [Robert] up was so emotional, because everybody knew what it was. It was the last time she ever saw him. So I didn’t really get a break, but it felt very worthwhile. It had a lot of meaning for me, and I felt like I was serving a purpose that was bigger than me in that regard.
How does the series seek to refocus the narrative on Gacy’s victims?
Ireland: We were talking a lot about what their lives were like before, and wanting to bring some of that life to the show so that people could think about that. Especially when we watch true crime, we focus so much on how somebody died and when, and we’re not often invited to think about the life they had before. That was something that was really important to the writers.
A lot of these victims were kids. Some of them were young men, but they were, in a lot of cases, queer, and that was also such an important thing to the writers room, because it was an era when that wasn’t something that was being talked about. They were on a journey of discovery in a time that was really hard for that. That was something we talked about a lot as a company. It felt a lot more like a company than it can sometimes on a show when everybody’s so disparate. That was nice feeling.
What does the series tell us about Gacy and the real events?
Chernus: The show and my performance is not really focused on knowing so much about him as knowing about the systemic failures that allowed him to get away with it for so long, and to learn more about some of these young men and boys who were lost. We couldn’t cover all 33 of them, but we cover a good number of them, and we hope to shine a light on who they were before they ever crossed paths with Gacy. That’s the real intention of the show.
Like that? Watch this! Suggested by AI, selected by DQ
Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story: A dramatised exploration of notorious serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, focusing on the systemic failures that allowed him to evade capture, the impact on his victims’ families and the social and media response to his crimes.
The Serpent: A dramatisation of the life and crimes of Charles Sobhraj, the cunning conman and murderer who preyed on Western tourists across Asia in the 1970s.
Des: A psychological drama based on the real-life investigation into and arrest of Dennis Nilsen, who murdered at least a dozen young men in London in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
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tagged in: Devil in Disguise: John Wayne Gacy, Gabriel Luna, Marin Ireland, Michael Chernus, Patrick Macmanus, Peacock, UCP