Paul Walter Hauser says ‘people-watching’ prepared him to play serial killer on ‘Black Bird’ [Exclusive Video Interview]

Luca Giliberti
·5 min read
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There are a lot of different techniques and strategies on which actor Paul Walter Hauser leaned to prepare for his transformative turn as (suspected) real-life serial killer Larry Hall on the Apple TV+ miniseries “Black Bird.” But chief among them, the actor divulges in a recent webchat with Gold Derby, was “people-watching” (watch the full exclusive video interview above).

“I think some of the best stuff that I’ve tried to do or that people have said they liked — I’m ripping it from somebody I saw at the airport, some dude I stood next to at a urinal, or literally [fellow actor] Vincent D’Onofrio,” admits Hauser. “To play [Hall], I studied D’Onofrio in ‘Full Metal Jacket.’ There were just a couple of things I aped. One of them is that kind of Kubrick stare, the famous long, soulless, soul-being-sucked-out stare.”

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Based on James Keene and Hillel Levin‘s 2010 memoir “In with the Devil: A Fallen Hero, a Serial Killer, and a Dangerous Bargain for Redemption,” the series follows Keene (Taron Egerton), a one-time high school football star and decorated policeman’s son-turned-drug dealer, as he is sentenced to 10 years in a minimum security prison and presented with a unique choice: Either he enters a maximum security prison for the criminally insane, befriends Hall and convinces him to confess to murdering up to 14 girls, or he serves his full sentence with no possibility of parole. Though he almost bails at the 11th hour, Keene recognizes that his only way out is to choose the former option.

SEE How Apple TV+ can complete a Golden Globes trifecta with ‘Black Bird’

While Hauser relied mainly on the scripts by series developer Dennis Lehane and the other writers to prepare for his role, external research helped him get a grasp on, for instance, Hall’s breathy, high-pitched voice. Even though there were only around 10 to 12 seconds’ worth of audio with which the actor was able to work, what he could deduce from those was that the real-life killer sounded like a “wounded animal.”

“But the thing about wounded animals is sometimes they play dead… I really do think [Hall] was kind of playing dead,” elaborates Hauser. “Clearly, he thought that there was going to be a way out of a life sentence in prison. And he had to uphold some sort of façade — that was my biggest takeaway from [my] research.”

If you ever heard Hauser’s voice change slightly throughout the show’s six episodes, you probably heard correctly. Although this alteration wasn’t originally intended by the actor, he and Lehane found a way to not only make it work but also use it to add even more layers to Hall.

“The first two episodes — that is way more honest to what his real voice was. And in all of the confusion of playing the character, and what I was going through in my own personal life while filming, I just lost it… And in Episodes 2 to 3, there was a transition where it started to get noticeably higher,” avows Hauser, who says Dehane came up with the idea to have Hall’s voice change depending on the circumstance in which he finds himself. “When he’s lying, when he has to find a different sort of character for prison, the real voice is more like [that in] Episodes 1 and 2. And when he says something that he feels comfortable with, the voice can drop a little bit… So, I ran with that from Episodes 4 to 6, where I was cognizant of — let’s let it live in this fairyland, and then let’s bring it down to the depths of hell when he’s in 5 and 6, when he’s talking to Jimmy Keene.”

SEE Taron Egerton (‘Black Bird’) could set a male acting record by triumphing at Golden Globes

In our chat, Hauser also discusses the complex dynamic between Hall and Keene, who develop a close rapport as the series progresses — though Hall, of course, does not realize until the very end that he was being played all along. “I think for Larry, there was something there that he had ignored, [where] he thought, ‘Well, if this guy is still unrelentingly friendly to me, maybe it’s indicative of something about me.’ So, a lot of it is once again gainful disposition. It’s selfish. It’s ego,” asserts the actor. “What’s on top of it [then] is the idea of, ‘Oh, I have a friend. My brother’s on the outside of prison; [Keene] is my brother inside of prison. Wow, maybe if we both get out, we would hang out. What would it be like to hang out outside of prison with this guy?'”

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