Charlie Hunnam said the Ed Gein transformation for Monster series left him drained, but that same run of work set up a different kind of challenge in Monster season four. In Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story, he said playing Andrew Borden felt liberating because so little was known about the character.
“The [Ed Gein] season that I had done prior to this was so difficult, and took everything that I had to offer,” Hunnam said. That is the pivot point for Monster season four: he was not rebuilding a fully documented life, but shaping a figure from fragments, which gave him and the creators room to decide what Andrew needed to do inside Lizzie’s story.
Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan
Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan pitched Hunnam the Andrew Borden role while he was still working on Monster season three. He said the move appealed because the new part did not demand the same kind of exhaustive reconstruction as Ed Gein, and because the creators were already thinking through how the household functioned inside the season.
“We got to create the version of Andrew that was most impactful for Lizzie’s story, and to try to speculate what it was about him and that household that drove Lizzie to do what she did,” Hunnam said. That is the practical difference between the two jobs: one role required immersion in a heavily researched figure, while the other asked him to help build the dramatic gaps left by the record.
Fall River, Massachusetts in 1892
Fall River, Massachusetts, in 1892 is the ground this season is built on. Andrew Borden and Abby Borden were killed there, and Lizzie Borden was put on trial and acquitted for the axe murders. Rebecca Hall plays Abby Borden, and Ella Beatty plays Lizzie Borden, which keeps the story centered on the household rather than on one isolated performance.
Hunnam said, “After doing all of their research, Ian and Ryan felt more than likely that Lizzie was responsible. Which I do, too.” That line matters because it explains how the season frames Andrew Borden in Monster: not as a stand-alone biography, but as one part of a case the creators had already studied closely before they started shaping the drama around it.
Andrew Borden in Monster
“Probably not!” Hunnam said when asked about the other show he and Ryan Murphy had been discussing before Monster came up. He added that he already knew Ian Brennan was “the best writer out there,” and that Max Winkler, his “dear friend” and “creative partner,” was attached, which made the switch feel less like a gamble than a direct handoff into a role with fewer fixed edges.
For viewers, the practical takeaway is simple: Monster season four is built around a case where the central figures are already being argued over inside the story, and Hunnam is leaning into that uncertainty instead of fighting it. The unanswered point is not whether he can carry Andrew Borden; it is what specific material Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan used to decide how far the season should push its reading of Lizzie Borden.
