Evan Peters underwent intense prep to play Jeffrey Dahmer

Evan Peters, who plays Jeffrey Dahmer in Netflix's hugely successful 'Dahmer - Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story', explained the arduous preparation he did to portray the notorious serial killer. While the series has garnered its fair share of criticism, the 35-year-old actor's visceral performance has been widely praised.

In a conversation with Murphy and the series' ensemble cast, released on November 28, Peters detailed the arduous work that went into capturing Dahmer's ominous essence.

"He has such a distinct voice and that dialect," Evan Peters said.

He added, "I worked with dialect coaches and then created this 45-minute audio composite that I listened to every day to stay in the accent, but also to get into the mindset for the day and all the scenes we were shooting. I attempted to understand what he was thinking and going through. I just tried to stay in it because it was too hard to go in and out of it."

Murphy pointed to a 1994 Dahmer interview with NBC's Stone Phillips, the only network television interview Dahmer ever granted, that Murphy personally suggested as inspiration.

Peters said he 'watched as much as I could', which included courtroom footage of Dahmer. However, it was more than just the voice that Peters focused on.

"I studied how he moved," he said. "He had a very straight back. He didn't move his arms when he walked."

Peters took things into his own hands, literally. Murphy revealed that Peters actually wore lead weights around his hands to work on Dahmer's distinct posture.

"In the beginning, it was important for me to understand how that felt. As we were shooting, I let that go. In the beginning, I wore wardrobe shoes, jeans and glasses. I always had a cigarette in my hand, just trying to make all of these external second nature so I wasn't thinking about them when we were shooting," said Peters.