Eddie Redmayne: 'You must find the humanity and trauma in monsters'

Starring opposite Jessica Chastain, he plays real-life serial killer Charles Cullen, an American nurse who is thought to have murdered as many as 400 people between 1988 and 2003.

We sat down with Redmayne at the Zurich Film Festival, where he received the Golden Eye award, to unpack his darkest role to date.

This interview originally appeared in Radio Times Magazine.

Did you know anything about Charles Cullen or his crimes before you read the script?

Eddie: I didn’t know anything about it. No one had given me any context of what the script was. As the story revealed itself, I was in total shock. But also, I was so intrigued by this person, and what was behind him.

Cullen is serving multiple consecutive life sentences in prison — did you try to meet him?

Eddie: No, I wouldn’t have been able to have access. Charles Graeber, who wrote the book [The Good Nurse: a True Story of Medicine, Madness and Murder] the film is based on, did manage to get access and so I had specifics from him. But I also had Amy Loughren [Cullen’s fellow nurse, played by Chastain], who was my eyes and ears in some ways. That felt more appropriate.

He might be the most prolific serial killer in history. Did you come to view him as sick or evil?

Eddie: Oh, well, there’s no question that what he did was monstrous, and inexplicable – but that’s not helpful when you’re playing someone. You must find that humanity and look for the trauma. And, my God, there was a lot of trauma.

You’ve played several real-life characters. Is that tricky?

Eddie: Even when I’m playing fantastical characters, I try to ground them in truth. That’s the only way I can go about it. Even if I’m playing Newt Scamander [a fictional character in JK Rowling’s Fantastic Beasts movies], I take the qualities that character has… like he’s a zoologist. You always need something tangible to start with. And you go in acknowledging that it’s never going to be documentary. It’s never going to be real.

How did you find working with Jessica Chastain?

Eddie: Jessica is amazing. Firstly, she was a pal. For her, it was an incredibly difficult film. Playing her character’s arrhythmia – the stakes are always so high. She would be running around the set, before the camera was rolling, to get her heartbeat up!

The film will be in cinemas and will also be available on Netflix. Is streaming killing cinema?

Eddie: I don’t think so. I fell in love with acting through theatre and through film, and I’ve been to the cinema a lot since COVID. I’ve watched this film in a cinema. And I’ve seen that extraordinary thing that shifts in the air when you feel a group of people feeling something at the same point.

Do you think a blockbuster like Fantastic Beasts is vastly different to The Good Nurse?

Eddie: They are by their nature different. One of the things that I learnt on Fantastic Beasts is that it’s sort of your responsibility as one of the lead actors to engage in the process. A lot of my interaction was with imaginary creatures. At its best [film-making] is the intimacy of collaboration. So when you’re doing a scene with a Niffler, one of the magical animals, I don’t just want a tennis ball there. I want the VFX [visual effects] artist [performing] in front of me.

Is being in a huge franchise an enormous commitment?

Eddie: They’re marathons… but I love the characters and love Jo’s [JK Rowling] work. I feel amazingly lucky. After the first Fantastic Beasts my daughter Iris was born, and I could take off the best part of a year. But as my wife said, with this job there’s always something eating into your time off.

You recently starred in Cabaret in the West End, singing and dancing alongside Jessie Buckley. Was that nerve-racking?

Eddie: Cabaret was something that I had wanted to do for many years… and I worked with an extraordinary director and a formidable choreographer and designer who really pushed me outside my comfort zone. It’s been a really rejuvenating year for me.

You’ve won an Oscar — do you ever think, “I’ve cracked it”?

Eddie: I fear complacency. And I fear losing the burning kind of fire which was in me when I was starting to act and still working in a pub. I never want to sit back and get complacent. I’ll always keep learning.

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