Zac Efron as serial killer Ted Bundy. Not an actor you’d immediately be drawn to casting in such a role, right?
However, the former teen heartthrob has taken on the role of the callous killer in Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil And Vile and is pretty convincing in his portrayal if we do say so ourselves.
In promoting the film, the star has admitted he was reluctant to take the role, feeling ‘true crime’ movies have not always gone down well. And as he told Metro.co.uk tonight, he’s not in the business of glamourising a man as horrendous as Bundy.
For director Joe Berlinger, though, there was no other man for the job. But it took some arm twisting.
Speaking at the European premiere of the film on Wednesday evening he told us his thinking behind getting an actor like Zac on board.
‘It’s a cliche to take a teen idol and put him in a dark role,’ Joe said. ‘He wanted to make sure it wasn’t gratuitous.’
Zac has taken on the gritty role of Bundy, who was believed to have killed more than 30 women in the 70s and executed for his crimes in 1989.
‘I wanted to send a message to [Zac’s] fans and demographic, there is a certain group of people for who Zac can do no wrong, he’s a wonderful guy even though no one really knows who he is in real life,’ Joe continued.
‘That’s the hold Bundy had over people. He was able to lure their victims to his deaths, to manipulate the American media, who made him into a perverse folk hero; to manipulate the American justice system.’
Told from the perspective of Bundy’s long term girlfriend Elizabeth Kloepfer (played under the name of Liz Kendall by Lily Collins), the film explores the mind of the killer, rather than displaying the murderous acts themselves, however one main criticism from armchair critics before any real footage was shown was that it was ‘glamourising’ a serial killer.
In that way, is it a problematic mission for a director like Joe – who also produced Netflix’s Conversations With A Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes earlier this year – to make a crime film of this notion?
‘The conversation generally about “is true crime exploitative? Is it unfair to the victim?” is good and healthy, but a lot of it was knee jerk,’ he said of the initial pushback.
‘And I don’t think anyone who has seen the movie can say it’s glamourising. By the end he’s alone on death row, the one person he cares about has rejected him and knows the truth; we see him as needy and the terrible human being he was.
‘We’re arming a new generation with important information: just because someone looks and acts a certain way doesn’t mean they’re good.
‘We all curate a glamourised version of ours lives on social media, it’s all the great moments. I have sh**ty moments in my life too but I don’t put them up. Even when we have the best of intentions, we present a false image to the public and there are some people who do that with very nefarious intent.’
Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil And Vile is released in UK cinemas and Sky Cinema on 3 May.
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