John Wayne Gacy Series ‘Devil in Disguise’ Is No Ordinary Serial-Killer Drama

Michael Chernus has starred on some of the most acclaimed series of the last decade-plus, including Orange Is the New Black and Severance, playing a specific sort of supporting role: often goofy, occasionally schlubby, rarely taken seriously. In 20 years the Juilliard graduate had never played the lead onscreen. That changed when he was offered the title role in a Peacock series called Devil in Disguise: John Wayne Gacy.

Initially, Chernus was not interested. He didn’t want to take a meeting. He felt ready to play a lead—just not as one of the most infamous serial killers in American history. “Absolutely in no way did I want to be a part of something that was glorifying John Gacy,” the actor says. “I didn’t want to be involved in something that was gratuitously showing graphic violence or sexual assault.” He’d seen other serial-killer shows fall into that trap, though he declines to name names, saying, “The victims, if they’re named at all, only [appear] in their relation to the person who perpetrated the crimes.”

After his agent pushed him to reconsider, Chernus still met with writer and producer Patrick Macmanus, a veteran of true-crime series (Dr. Death, The Girl From Plainville). There, he learned that Macmanus’s vision matched his own. “He said to me, ‘Gacy’s not going to be at the center of this, so you won’t be in every scene.’ And to me that was such a huge relief,” Chernus says. “That’s where some of my experience as a supporting actor really came into this. I didn’t feel like it had to be all about me or about my character. With this story, I didn’t want it to be.”

For the record, Macmanus didn’t want to make a Gacy show either at first; he actually said no to the project two times. Universal was developing its adaptation of the hit docuseries John Wayne Gacy: Devil in Disguise in 2022, during a time when Ryan Murphy’s Dahmer—Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story was setting ratings records on Netflix. However, the series was also being sharply criticized by relatives of multiple victims it depicted. “I honestly didn’t want this to be Dahmer,” Macmanus says. “And truth be told, at the time, I didn’t really know how to make it anything but that.” (“I want to go on the record as saying I’m a huge personal fan of Ryan Murphy’s and what he does and how he does it,” Macmanus adds.)

Eventually, Macmanus was assured that he could make the show his way—which meant unlearning the lessons of his own past successes. “My career will constantly be evolving from trying to take a hard look at my failings,” he says. Macmanus regrets not focusing more on the victims in those past projects. With Devil in Disguise, he and his writers decided to shift gears. “We really, truly were trying to figure out a way to focus on the victims—what their lives were like and who they truly were, with no connective tissue to John Wayne Gacy at all,” Macmanus says. “The ultimate goal was to ensure that when people left our show, they saw more than a name. They saw more than a number. They saw more than a life associated with this horrendous tragedy, with this absolutely evil man.”

Premiering October 16 on Peacock (with all eight episodes launching at once), Devil in Disguise: John Wayne Gacy opens in Des Plaines, Illinois, circa 1978. The disappearance of 15-year-old Robert Piest leads the police to Gacy, a broadly liked, well-connected community member living in nearby Norwood Park. He’s identified as Piest’s last point of contact, and so he’s taken into custody—only for the cops to realize the magnitude of what they’ve discovered. Gacy murdered at least 33 young men and boys, most of whom he first raped and tortured. Piest was his last victim on record. Gacy was sentenced to death after his conviction in 1980 and executed by lethal injection in 1994.

The series explores the fallout of Gacy’s murders from several angles. We follow the cops (played by Gabriel Luna and James Badge Dale, among others) investigating his crimes while navigating systemic and personal biases; Piest’s grieving mother (Marin Ireland) as she demands answers; and the lawyer (Michael Angarano) roped into defending the indefensible. We observe Gacy through their eyes, if with the foresight of precisely what they’re all dealing with. Each episode uses flashback sequences to explore the life of one of Gacy’s victims—though, crucially, we never see them interact with Gacy, who typically lured boys to his home with promises of money, work, or drugs and alcohol. In these flashbacks, we get no ominous hints of their horrific fates. Instead, they’re moving, often joyfully queer coming-of-age stories, bright lights shining through a harrowingly dark tale.

“There’s plenty of googling that can go on in order to do a deeper dive into how these victims interacted with John Wayne Gacy,” Macmanus says. “I had absolutely no interest in directly connecting the victims to him.”

“I don’t consider this show ‘true crime’—it’s a drama inspired by real events,” Chernus adds. “It’s exploring, systemically and structurally, how these crimes are able to be committed and go mostly undetected or unsolved for so long. I think it had to do with rampant systemic homophobia at the time.”

Macmanus and the Devil in Disguise creative team meticulously researched their subject, reviewing unaired footage and other materials from NBC News that had been obtained for the previous documentary but hadn’t made the final cut. They didn’t stop there. “We found emails, we found phone numbers, we found last known addresses, and we blanketed all of those in order to try to make contact with as many victims’ families as possible,” Macmanus says. Some got back to them; some didn’t. Macmanus stresses that he was not looking for “support” or an endorsement from the victims’ survivors. “I was looking for their concerns so that I could try my best to be able to alleviate them,” he says. He received blessings from each family with whom he connected.

Macmanus considered a few big names to play Gacy. Yet “this was never going to be an ‘offer-only’ sort of a thing,” he says. The role was too specific; the burden of getting it right was too great. Even with the caliber of talent throwing their hats in the ring, though, “once Michael came in, it was over.”

Early on, Chernus’s knowledge of Gacy was cursory at best—and, in retrospect, a bit misinformed. He knew that the press had deemed Gacy the “Killer Clown,” due to his time publicly performing in a local “Jolly Joker” clown club. “Mistakenly, you’ll see artwork on various pieces of media about him [in which] he’ll be holding a knife or something—and the more I dug into it, it’s just so inaccurate,” Chernus says. “It’s salacious, and it was cooked up to sell newspapers. While it fueled an international fear of clowns, it also, in some weird way, helped to humanize him.”

Through his deep immersion into Gacy, Chernus got to know the man as a “true psychopath”—a master manipulator, a chameleonic personality, an apparently dependable neighbor. He’d fix your flat tire, clear snow out of your driveway, make you feel at ease. “He was trying to blend in, in a way that’s different from other serial killers that we know about, where they were loners,” Chernus says. “He was really hiding in plain sight.” The actor felt anxious about walking that fine line and capturing Gacy’s geniality without making him seem charming or likable. He wanted to leave no room for sympathy. He didn’t want to glorify him.

The effort paid off. Chernus’s performance strikes an impressive balance, from the cool menace of his folksy accent to his off-kilter physicality. “He was an extraordinary leader on set and off set, and it was a hard role for him to delve into,” Macmanus says. “The idea that he allowed himself to be as open as he was every single day says something about who he is as a person—because it would’ve been very understandable to retreat into that role.”

Chernus avoided a Method-acting approach. “I didn’t want anyone having to deal with John Gacy more than they had to,” he says. When the director called “cut,” Gacy was gone, and Chernus was back. This took a toll in its own way: “I chose the mental health of the group over maybe my own individual experience. I was prioritizing that we all came out of this feeling okay,” he says. The actor felt troubled by portraying someone so utterly devoid of empathy, remorse, or shame. “I, Michael, know that this is a horrible, horrific thing my character is doing, while also knowing that my character doesn’t see it that way. It was just such a weird mindfuck,” he says. “I’d get back to my trailer at the end of the day and take off my costume, and then it would kind of all come crashing down on me.”

Before playing Gacy, Chernus watched his fair share of murder shows. Now? “Going through this experience, I don’t know that I will be consuming much true crime ever again,” he says. “When they’re not done with the utmost care, I have a deeper understanding now of what that might mean to the families of the victims—or how it helps shape our collective thirst for that content in a way that is not taking in the totality of what was lost.”

Macmanus agrees. They hope Devil in Disguise may help viewers come to share their feelings—that as they watch, the emotional impact of the lives cut short will resonate more than the grisly methods of a deranged killer. One thing we can spoil for you about this show: You won’t actually see any murders take place.

“It’s going to be a little bit of a testing ground, a proving ground,” Macmanus says. “Will people be not just comfortable, but engaged enough to allow their foot to come off the accelerator—and really live in these people’s lives? My intention is to take whatever we learn from this and do better and continue to push the envelope in the direction of ensuring that we’re bringing back the focus on the victims.”