Niecy Nash will also play the famale lead of the series as his neighbor.
Mey RudeEvan Peters is working on a different type of horror story for Ryan Murphy.
American Horror Storystar Evan Peters has been cast as the lead role of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer in the upcoming Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan series Monster: the Jeffrey Dahmer Story. Peters will be joined by Scream Queens star Niecy Nash.
Nash is playing Glenda Cleveland, considered the female lead in the series. Cleveland was a neighbor of Dahmer’s who contacted the police and FBI several times trying to get them to investigate Dahmer but she was ignored.
At one point she even contacted police after a 14-year-old victim ran from his house. But because Cleveland was Black and Dahmer was white, he was able to talk to police and convince them that the boy was an adult partner of his.
Unlike previous depictions of Dahmer’s story, this one will focus on his victims and the police incompetence and corruption that allowed him to kill for so long despite being reported by neighbors multiple times. The series spans the 1960’s, 70’s and 80’s and ends with Dahmer’s arrest in the early 90’s.
According to Deadline. “The series dramatizes at least 10 instances where Dahmer was almost apprehended but ultimately let go. The series also is expected to touch on white privilege, as Dahmer, a clean-cut, good-looking white guy, was repeatedly given a free pass by cops as well as by judges who were lenient when he had been charged with petty crimes.”
The cast also includes Richard Jenkins, Penelope Ann Miller, Shaun J. Brown and Colin Ford. Jenkins and Miller are playing Dahmer’s father and mother, Lionel and Joyce. Brown is set to play Tracy, an intended victim of Dahmer’s who fought back and escaped the killer’s apartment, leading to his arrest.
Also joining the series is Janet Mock, who will write and direct several episodes, like she did on Murphy’s other series Pose. Rashad Robinson, from racial justice project Color of Change will serve as a supervising producer.
Jeffrey Dahmer was convicted of murdering 16 men and boys between 1978 and 1991. Known as the Milwaukee Cannibal, he would torture, dismember, and eat his victims. Two years after he started his jail sentence, he was beaten to death by a fellow inmate in 1994.
Murphy is no stranger to the true crime genre. His series American Crime Story has filmed two seasons. The first covered the OJ Simpson murder trial, and the second season told the story of Andrew Cunanan’s murder of fashion designer Gianni Versace. An upcoming third season will tell the story of the Monica Lewinsky trial. It stars Beanie Felstein as Lewinsky and Sarah Paulson as her confidant Linda Tripp.
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