NEW YORK — To play a serial killer in the new Apple TV series "Nocturne," Stephen Graham did what all good actors do: He watched a bunch of serial killers.
The Emmy- and Golden Globe-winning actor binged on true crime documentaries, handpicked by his wife, Hannah, who he says is slightly obsessed with the genre.
“She just kept going, ‘Right, this one’s really good. Watch this one.’ And I was like, ‘All right,’” says Graham. “I watched how they kind of manipulated certain people and how they believed their own truth.”
Viewers who tune in starting Friday will find a new frightening side of the "Adolescence" star, who this time plays an imprisoned murderer with ferocious intensity, beguiling hospital staff and frustrating law enforcement as he plots horrible things. All that TV binging of killers paid off, so to speak.
“You absorb them,” says Graham. “It’s like kind of going to an art gallery and being inspired by wonderful art. At some point, you may not even be aware of it, but it’ll be something that you may use.”
‘Nocturne’ is a transplant
The 10-episode drama “Nocturne” is an adaptation of the Lars Kepler novels “The Sandman” and “Lazarus.” It's been created by John Hlavin and Rowan Joffé, who shifted the location from Scandinavia to western Pennsylvania.
The series begins with a kidnapped teen resurfacing in the woods after three years. His abducted sister is still out there, presumably held by the same person who took her brother.
Authorities — including a broken, retired detective played by Liev Schreiber — turn to Jurek Walter, Graham's serial killer who terrorized the community for years. But Walter has a very good alibi: He's being held underground in a restricted unit of a psychiatric hospital. Maybe he has an accomplice?
To find out what's going on, the FBI sends in an undercover officer as an inmate, played by Zazie Beetz. There's a lot going on here: the hunt for a missing child, an ex-detective's obsession with solving a case he once abandoned and a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse with a serial killer — all shot cinematically.
“Audiences are very sophisticated, and there’s so much entertainment, even inside of this particular genre,” says Hlavin. “The goal was just to try to find a way to make the story feel different.”
Graham's serial killer is one of the tent poles. Viewers early on are taught that he has excellent manipulative skills, including talking another inmate into killing himself — from another cell. To get contraband and ferry out messages, he tries to befriend a hospital aide played by Rory Culkin.
Contrast between inside and out
The series leans into the contrast between the inmate confined to an underground cell and the wide open spaces of rural Pennsylvania. “Jurek is almost a wolf, you know what I mean?” says Hlavin. “And a wolf longs to be free, and we put him in effectively a kennel.”
The actors really put in the work. Graham and Culkin hung out outside of work to create a real bond, eating dinner, going to museums and catching a football game. They also gathered with the creatives on Sundays to go over scenes before cameras rolled on Monday.
For her part, Beetz learned some Dominican Spanish for one crucial introductory scene. The crew also stepped up: In some scenes they used huge fans to make trees wave, suggesting motion in the woods.
Schreiber was attracted by the scripts and working with director Tim Van Patten, who has won Emmys for his work on “Boardwalk Empire” and “The Pacific” and earned nominations for “Sex and the City,” “The Sopranos” and “Game of Thrones.” Schreiber says he saw the three leads as each dealing with existential isolation.
“Who defines you? Am I defined by my family? Am I defined by my colleagues? Am I defined by my career? And what happens when those things become untethered or unhinged and we’re set off into the world?” he says.
It’s a show that doesn’t want to patronize its audience and doesn’t spoon-feed it, either. “It feels like something you should be leaning into as opposed to folding your laundry while you’re watching,” says Hlavin.
Beetz says the series tries to carefully drop clues and the creators trust the audience to keep up while also making sure they're given enough context.
“That was something we were always kind of trying to strike the balance of like, ‘Are we giving away too much or are we not?’” she says.
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