Charlie Hunnam is moving from Ed Gein to Andrew Borden, and he says the change felt like a release after a season that drained him. The actor, who played Gein in Monster season three, said the work before this next turn was so difficult that it took everything he had to give.
That is why the next role is drawing attention now. Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan pitched him Andrew Borden for season four while he was still working on the previous Monster season, keeping him inside the Netflix true-crime anthology even as the story shifted from one murder case to another. Hunnam said he had an amazing time with the creative team on season three, but the Borden part came with a different kind of freedom because there was far less material to lean on.
Hunnam said there was very little out there on Andrew, which made the part liberating and unlike Gein. That missing paper trail mattered because it gave Murphy and Brennan room to shape Andrew as part of Lizzie Borden’s story rather than as a fully documented historical figure. Hunnam put it plainly: they got to create the version of Andrew that would matter most for Lizzie’s story and speculate about what it was about him and that household that drove her to do what she did.
There is also a sharper edge to that freedom. After doing their research, Hunnam said Murphy and Brennan felt more than likely that Lizzie was responsible. That view sits against a case that has lingered for more than a century: Andrew Borden and Abby Borden were killed in Fall River, Massachusetts, in 1892, and Lizzie Borden was put on trial for the axe murders and acquitted. The new season of Monster is not just revisiting a famous crime; it is building a version of the family around a conclusion the creators already seem to favor.
For Hunnam, the shift appears to be less about playing another true-crime figure than about what kind of challenge he wanted next. He said Ian Brennan is the best writer out there and called Max Winkler, his dear friend, a creative partner, which helps explain why he stayed in the orbit of the series after Gein pushed him so hard. The real question now is whether season four can make Andrew Borden feel necessary in a story where the central mystery has already been judged in advance.
