Jason Clarke isn’t a Method actor, but he’s close

(Clarke, from Et] recordings of the trial, reading books on psychology and working with dialect coach Tim Monich, Clarke underwent a physical transformation to become Alex. He gained about 40 pounds, wore a wig and dyed his eyebrows since he did not want to rely on prosthetics. The physicality of the character helped everything click into place.

- Jason Clarke

"ALL OF A sudden, you become the reflection you see," Jason Clarke says about playing Alex Murdaugh in Hulu's "Death in the Family."

(RICK WENNER For The Times)

“Tm not a Method actor, but you're allowing it to creep into you, you know what I mean? You're allowing yourself to creep into it,” he said. “All of a sudden, you become the reflection you see, with the lenses on, with the hair, with the makeup, with the weight, the suit, with the clothes, that all of a sudden, hang on. lam what I am. And there's nowhere I won't or can’t go.”

Clarke is no stranger to playing characters based on real-life people — he portrayed Sen. Ted Kennedy in the 2017 film “Chappaquiddick,” Lakers general manager Jerry West in the HBO series “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty,” mountaineer Rob Hall in 2015's “Everest” and attorney Roger Robb in 2023's “Oppenheimer,” toname a few.

Series co-creator and showrunner Michael D. Fuller said Clarke's performance in “Oppenheimer” showed him Clarke could pull off the role. Although the characters are very different, Fuller said he saw the “physicality, the confidence, the masculinity” required to play Alex in that performance. And Fuller’s hunch proved correct — at least in the eyes of Mandy Matney, the journalist whose podcast provided source material for the series and who was an executive producer on it. According to co-creator Erin Lee Carr, Matney “would get a chill in her body because she felt like she was looking at and talking to Alex Murdaugh.”

“He's just one of our best living actors,” Fuller said. “There's always something human about him, there's always something confident about him, and then there can be something scary about him. That’s why I think he was singular for this part.”