(Warning: Spoilers ahead.)
Michael Chernus didn’t want anyone on the set of Devil in Disguise: John Wayne Gacy to spend a second longer with the prolific serial killer than they needed to. When the camera stopped rolling, Chernus didn’t stay in character as Gacy. He did not separate himself from the rest of the cast, nor did he show up to set dressed as a clown.
“Every step of the way, he was a leader on set, and he made it a set that you wanted to be a part of,” says creator Patrick Macmanus. “It could have been totally understandable for somebody in his position to not be present with everyone else, and that is the exact opposite of what he was from the jump.”
John Wayne Gacy, who was arrested in 1978, remains an ongoing fascination, depicted on screen numerous times (including American Horror Story: Hotel), as well as the subject of documentaries and podcasts. Now, an eight-part limited series on Peacock charts how the notorious Chicago serial killer was finally caught after many law enforcement failures, the young men who lost their lives, the families left behind, and the handful of survivors. Of the 33 victims Gacy was convicted of killing, five remain unidentified.
Episodes are named after one of Gacy’s victims, whose lives we see before they intersect with the killer and whose real-life photo we see in the closing credits (“I wish I could take credit for that one, that that was brilliance in the writers’ room,” says Macmanus). They don’t just exist in relation to Gacy. It shouldn’t feel revelatory to give these young men a voice, and yet here we are.
True crime adaptations are a staple part of the television landscape, and anyone tuning in to see a grisly serial killer story expects to see certain violent acts. Shows like Ryan Murphy’s Monster anthology have been accused of being exploitative and sensationalizing trauma. Devil in Disguise is not cut from the same cloth.
“The only thing that was non-negotiable was that we would never show a murder,” Macmanus tells The Daily Beast’s Obsessed. “That was from the very, very beginning. I would not budge off of that.” The Devil in Disguise showrunner is quick to point out that he isn’t a “heroic person who stood his ground,” as everyone involved with the production understood and backed his vision.
Anyone who hears the name Gacy will likely (as I did) picture the “Killer Clown” persona. Devil in Disguise uses the clown image so sparingly that when you do see face paint, I’d almost forgotten about this tabloid-favorite detail. “I felt that by pulling that back to the most muted way it could possibly be, was a statement in and of itself that we were trying to tell the story differently,” says Macmanus. “That we were trying to tell the not salacious, not gratuitous version of the John Wayne Gacy story.”
Casting an actor who can capture all facets of the serial killer—from menace to folksy charm—amid the stacked ensemble was important. Macmanus notes that everyone read for their roles (the cast includes Gabriel Luna, Marin Ireland, James Badge Dale, Michael Angarano, and Chris Sullivan) and that Chernus’ résumé spoke for itself.
The moment Macmanus knew it was going to be a good fit? “Right from the jump. I had asked him, ‘Look, you know you’re not going to be in every scene. How do you feel about that?’ His general response was ‘A-okay.’ He got what we were trying to do right from the start.”
Chernus is most recognizable as Severance self-help author Ricken, but the Juilliard graduate has long been a scene-stealer (Orange Is the New Black, Dead Ringers, and Mistress America, among many others). His performance is often grounded in comedy, but Gacy is an entirely different balancing act—particularly during somewhat non-threatening scenes.
“He [Macmanus] really took a risk on me. I’m sure there were much bigger names we wanted to play this part, and I’ve never been the lead of a TV show before,” says Chernus. “I took that responsibility very seriously, and I cared about the mental health of everyone, not just the actors, but our whole crew.”
Portraying Gacy did take its toll on Chernus, even if he didn’t realize how much: “I don’t think some of the gravity of what I was doing hit me until it was all over. I was just trying to do my best work and then make sure everybody else was okay around me. I got home and crashed for about a month after we finished.”
Part of the success of Devil in Disguise is its portrayal of Gacy as just one piece of a larger puzzle depicting the systemic failures that allowed him to operate. “I do, by the way, genuinely believe that with most pieces of true crime, there is a spine, a DNA thread of how systems allowed people to get away with it,” says Macmanus (who also created the first season of the Dr. Death anthology and co-created The Girl From Plainville).
Each episode includes a title card with information about the social action campaign that highlights the barriers that still impact young people as much in 2025 as they did in 1975. “It would be very easy to say that that was the 1970s and all of the isms that ultimately played party to and were partially guilty for allowing John Wayne Gacy to get away with what he got away with don’t exist anymore,” says Macmanus. “We all know, living, breathing, reading, and watching in the news and the world today, they are as present as they’ve ever been. They haven’t gone anywhere.”
Rampant homophobia, as well as bias about class, and labeling teenage boys as runaways, gave Gacy the opportunity to kill over 30 young men. “It’s the point of the show that is most relevant,” says Macmanus. Chernus mentions that Gacy was “hiding in plain sight,” and it is the failure to capture him sooner that dominates the series.
Gacy’s persona is also crucial in telling this story. “I didn’t want the audience to like him just as a person, I don’t like him myself—as Michael—I despise this man and what he did,” says Chernus. “Very early on, I was reticent; I was scared. What if people think he’s charming? Patrick said, That’s exactly what we want.”
In the first episode, Gacy remarks that he’ll give detectives “the old Gacy special.” No, he isn’t going to strangle them to death and bury them in his crawl space, but show them the friendly facade he used to lure teen boys into his car and home. Still, Chernus had to reconcile his issues with depicting the full Gacy.
“I care so much about the memory of the victims and am concerned about how family members and people who were involved in this case are still alive, would be affected by it,” says Chernus. “There was a minute where I didn’t want to embody Gacy fully and then realized that’s how we tell the story in the most effective way.”
One of the first things Chernus shot was a drunk Gacy telling his lawyer, Sam Amirante (Angarano), the story of his first murder victim (Timothy McCoy) to his last (Robert Piest), which provides the framework of an intense sixth episode. Chernus describes it as “a giant mountain for me to climb as an actor” because he was still figuring out how to depict Gacy. “I was thrown into the deep end, which was, in the end, such a gift,” he says. “I couldn’t have known it at the time, but I just had to swim.”
The actor was so saturated with information by this point that he “needed to get it out.” The final part of Chernus’ research involved a couple of days in Chicago before shooting. The city has changed dramatically since the ’70s. Bughouse Square is no longer a cruising spot (where Gacy picked up victims), but a fancy neighborhood with multi-million dollar condos. Still, Chernus found that retracing the different spots Gacy would travel from his house on Summerdale Avenue gave additional insight.
“He was logging a lot of miles every night. That relentless hunting—for lack of a better word—was chilling once I was traveling the distances that he would have had to travel to get to any place that he would frequent,” says Chernus. “He never slept. He was always out.”
As Chernus drove down Summerdale Avenue with his wife, he struggled to locate the sites where Gacy had committed most of his crimes. The original house no longer exists, and neither does that specific address, but there is another residence there now.
“We were trying to find it, and we had turned onto that street. I was like, ‘Where is this house? I don’t see 8213.’ I got chills. I realized I had just passed the new house, says Chernus. “Whatever you believe in, there was something. I knew I was on his street, but I didn’t recognize the house that exists there now; my body just felt something.”
That moment on Summerdale Avenue is difficult for Chernus to precisely articulate, but at its essence, that experience underscores what Devil in Disguise achieves. “It reminded me of the reality of it,” says Chernus. “This is not a story; it’s not a TV show. This is real.”
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