David Dastmalchian Says He Approached Playing Boston Strangler Killer 'Very Cautiously' for New Film

Nicholas Chalmers

David Dastmalchian has portrayed unsettling characters in films like The Dark Knight and Prisoners, but he saw his latest role as Albert DeSalvo (aka the presumed Boston Strangler) as a "heavy-duty responsibility."

"With Albert in particular, because of the nature of his life and the pain and damage that he inflicted upon very real people who have very real relatives who are still very much alive, I approached the performance very cautiously and I made the choice going in to do as much absolute research as I could do," Dastmalchian, 47, tells PEOPLE.

"Because climbing inside of that skin and sitting inside that brain means trying to unlock the human who would perform such acts," he adds.

Dastmalchian — who has also appeared in all three Ant-Man films, as well as 2021's The Suicide Squad and Dune — says he conducted significant research into DeSalvo's life for the role in addition to "really leaning on my director and the really powerful script that we had to shape the rest."

"I was able to spend some time in Boston just by myself driving around, going to places where he would have hung out, reading as much as I could about his childhood and his life," he says.

RELATED: Why Keira Knightley and Carrie Coon Were Not 'Allowed' to Do Boston Accents in Boston Strangler

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DeSalvo, who was never actually charged with the Boston Strangler murders, confessed to the crimes — the murders of 13 women that took place between 1962 and 1964 — in 1967 after he had already been jailed for other crimes. Though the killer's identity remained up for debate for decades, Boston police uncovered DNA evidence in 2013 that linked DeSalvo, who died in 1973, to the crimes. As the film shows, there is still much that remains unclear about the case.

RELATED: The True Story Behind Hulu's Boston Strangler

"But it's a heavy-duty responsibility, in my opinion, because you're telling a story that is based on real events and there are real victims," Dastmalchian adds. "You need to know what it is that you're doing and why you're doing it."

The actor praises writer/director Matt Ruskin's "strong vision" for the film, which he says allowed him to dive into "the very, very uncomfortable places I had to go to bring Albert to life."

"This is not a movie about a man who hurts women," he adds of the film, which stars Keira Knightley and Carrie Coon as real-life Boston Record-American reporters Loretta McLaughlin and Jean Cole, who covered the murders as they happened. "It's a story about women who are fighting to tell women's stories in an environment where the power structure doesn't want those stories completely told."

Aside from Knightley, Coon and Dastmalchian, Boston Strangler also stars Chris Cooper, Alessandro Nivola, Morgan Spector and Bill Camp.

Boston Strangler is now streaming on Hulu.