Ed Gein Monster Designer Drew on Night of the Living
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- Matthew Flood Ferguson, production designer of Netflix's 'Monster: The Ed Gein Story,' said during IndieWire's Craft Roundtables that seeing 'Night of the Living Dead' at age 11 — particularly the farmhouse rising 'like a tombstone' on the horizon — left him with a 'hollow, scary feeling' he later tried to recreate on set.
- Ferguson translated that childhood memory into production design choices, selecting wallpaper, space, scale, wood, and tone specifically to evoke the same dread for viewers and actors working on the Ed Gein series.
- Charlie Hunnam stars as Ed Gein in the latest installment of Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan's anthology series, which profiles real people who inspired some of horror's most iconic films, including 'Psycho,' 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,' and 'The Silence of the Lambs.'
- IndieWire's TV Craft Roundtables are currently streaming on PBS SoCal, the PBS App, IndieWire.com, and the outlet's social channels, presented in partnership with Netflix.
Why it matters: The piece reframes 'Monster: The Ed Gein Story' as a craft-driven prestige project rather than just another true-crime anthology entry, with Netflix backing a design philosophy that treats childhood fear as a tactile, buildable material — wallpaper, scale, and wood texture — to give Hunnam's performance a fully realized physical world to inhabit.
