Charlie Hunnam‘s partner, Morgana McNelis, had to step in after his attempt to replicate serial killer Ed Gein‘s voice for season 3 of Ryan Murphy‘s Monster got to be too much.
Hunnam, 45, was asked by E! News at the 2026 Critics Choice Awards on Sunday, January 4, about McNelis requesting he limit channeling Gein’s voice off screen.
“She did [ask me],” Hunnam told Justin Sylvester during the awards show pre-show about the distinctive, soft, high-pitched voice. “I was slipping in and out of it all the time and she was saying, ‘Dude. You have to stop with the voice.’ At breakfast, it’s a little too much.”
In a separate interview with ExtraTV, Hunnam referred to McNelis, 42, as his wife while discussing how he rang in the new year. (The twosome, who have been linked since 2005, have never publicly stated that they are married.) , “We did it quiet,” he said.“ II always like to ring in the new year mainly on the 1st rather than on the 31st. So my wife and I went to bed early, got up, had a really beautiful hike and came in, set some intentions.”
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On Sunday, Hunnam’s performance in Monster was nominated in the Best Actor in a Limited Series or Movie Made for Television category. Monster: The Ed Gein Story, which premiered in October, centered on the “Butcher of Plainfield,” who was convicted of one count of first-degree murder and admitted to a second killing in the 1950s.
While it has been suspected that Gein was involved in multiple other crimes, he only admitted to exhuming multiple graves and fashioning grotesque keepsakes out of the bodies. Before Murphy chose Gein as the inspiration for season 3 of Monster, the criminal was the jumping off point for movies such as The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Psycho.
“[After we wrapped filming, my partner said] ‘Take some time after you finish. Because when you come home, you should be ready to see me,'” Hunnam recalled on the Today show before the show’s season 3 premiere. “I’d been shooting in Chicago, I decided to stay for a week and sort of decompress so I was ready to see her when I got home. And it was about an 8-hour drive up to Wisconsin from where I was to where Ed grew up and where he’s buried.”
For Hunnam, it was a “good conclusion” to the role “to go visit his grave,” which has been unmarked since 2000 after the infamous killer’s headstone was stolen and the burial site was repeatedly vandalized.
“And say what I wanted to say to him. [I told him I] hoped we had told his story honestly at the very least, and [I] didn’t invite him to come on the journey with me moving forward,” he continued at the time. “I was ready to say goodbye to him and that be the end.”
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Hunnam recalled having conflicting feelings toward the role.
“You have to have an enormous amount of love and empathy for a character that you play to be able to inhabit them. Because as despicable as Ed was in his acts, I wanted to find the human in there,” Hunnam told Variety that same month about playing Gein. “I personally don’t like to be forced to confront the most bleak and sinister elements of the human condition.”
He continued: “I could certainly see the accusation being leveled at me that I was too sensitive toward him, and let him off the hook a bit too much. My hope was, although I clearly don’t understand the function of these type of stories, I understand that people are very drawn to them. I needed to bring Gein to life in as honest and human a way as possible.”
Monster is currently streaming on Netflix.