Vicky Krieps on Being ‘Scared’ to Play Real-Life Nazi in ‘Monster: The Ed Gein Story’ After Grandfather Was in Concentration Camp

SPOILER ALERT: This story discusses plot developments from “Monster: The Ed Gein Story,” currently streaming on Netflix. 

Vicky Krieps‘ role in “Monster: The Ed Gein Story” is a result of the series’ often fantastical storytelling. In the season premiere, Ed (Charlie Hunnam) is shown a comic book by his love interest Adeline (Suzanna Son) that features the deadly exploits of “The Bitch of Buchenwald,” Ilse Koch. Koch was a real-life Nazi war criminal, played here by Krieps, whose sick specialties include flaying the skin off of Jewish people and making objects out of it like lampshades. But taking the role was not an easy choice for Krieps, until co-showrunner Ryan Murphy explained how the two killers’ stories came together. Krieps spoke to Variety about why she came around on the controversial role and her family’s personal connection to the Holocaust.

What research on Ilse did you do before you took the role?

For me to accept the role was actually part of the journey. I wasn’t ready to play such a role, because my grandfather was in a concentration camp. This part of history is very close to me and my family, and so I was very worried to do that on TV, whether it would be done respectfully. It scared me: What would happen to me if I would revisit this? So the research was the easy part for me, because since I was eight years old, I had read all the books on the Holocaust that you can find. What helped me was knowing that it’s based on a comic character, and therefore Ed Gein’s fantasy of her is through the comic. That was freeing to me, and why I felt I can do this, because this is actually clearer, portraying someone who’s larger than life. To me, she was like a mix of an old Hollywood star and a ’50s housewife who wants to be perfect. Because she wants to be so perfect, she doesn’t realize that what she’s doing is going over dead bodies.

My research was more, “How do I embrace being the actress who’s just portraying a fantasy, a comic?” And then obviously knowing how her story ends made me feel like we have something here. We never saw Hitler or any of them really realize what they’ve done. It’s not like she really understands and there’s real remorse, but there’s definitely something, and it goes into becoming crazy. She goes crazy in the end by understanding what she did, and I thought this was very important that many people can see one of those people actually go down. Then I just went for it.

When you’re playing somebody so evil, do you have to work to find a shred of humanity that you can hold on to?

I think what helped me to get in, the final piece of the puzzle, was when I understood that she is very much like some people today, and all she wants is to be perfect. She wants to be the perfect woman and have the perfect life and the perfect house and the perfect husband. If she has to cure for that, then this is what she will do, this sick perfectionism. That was really what helped me into the character and into her evilness. It also immediately made me think of Hannah Arendt. She wrote this important piece about the evil in everyday life. The evil is in the kitchen, it’s in the house, it’s in private, that is the most human kind.

I feel like I understood very much what Ryan wanted. It’s a whole question of, “What is the monster?” The monster may be us, because a lot of evil in the world is done because we believe that we know who’s the bad guy, or we think we know what the monster is. Obviously, the monster and the bad guy is always the other, and I think the only way to move forward as a society is accepting that we are the other and we are the monster, and we are the bad guy. All of us. This is how I understood it, and this is how I tried to approach it. It was important for me to give her so much humanity that you ask yourself, “Why do I like this woman now? Why do I feel sorry for her when she’s bad, bad, bad?” I just find this whole question fascinating because of my family and my background. But I didn’t expect it to be so fun and really freeing to portray.

Your character is weaved into Ed Gein’s story in a complex way. Was it difficult to visualize how the two stories mixed at first?

I really had to trust Ryan. And I think this is why it took me 3 emails to finally say yes, because I needed to trust him. Reading the script, I was like, “This is so crazy. I don’t really understand how this is going to go together.” From the moment on the donkey, I was really like, “What? I have to sit on a donkey in my underwear, really? How is that supposed to be serious?” And all the way to the ham radio, which is something they wrote as we were shooting. I hadn’t read the ham radio episode when I started it, and when it came, I didn’t understand anything because there is nothing to be understood. It just doesn’t work. We live in different centuries, so it’s all in his mind. Ryan and [co-showrunner] Ian [Brennan] and [director] Max [Winkler] really want to create something artistic. If you want to create artistic stuff, you have to, at some point, just give up and trust whatever, your intuition. So we really just trusted it to be crazy, but it makes sense in the end.

How familiar were you with Ryan Murphy’s universe before signing on to “Monster”?

I hadn’t seen too much TV. I have two little kids, and I was always busy with that, so I hadn’t seen his work. I had seen “Hollywood,” but didn’t know it was related to him. People told me, “Oh, it’s Ryan Murphy,” you know. So we had a Zoom call. He explained it to me, and I liked the person I was speaking to. I had the feeling there’s someone who’s intelligent and who really wants to tell something and who really needs me to help him tell that world. So that was always an important factor. Then I went to watch his stuff, and I was so amazed and happy that I got to see “Feud” — I loved it. I couldn’t believe when it ended. I just wanted to continue watching these two women, or the Capote one, all these worlds. It’s just so beautiful. That was one of the reasons why I said yes, because I had the feeling that he would take care and he will make it so that this part of history is not going to be just used to create sensation. Now I’m a fan.

You’re in the upcoming Lizzie Borden season of “Monster.” What can fans expect?

They can expect that it’s, again, going to be one of these worlds that you just want to dive into and stay with these people. It will be a feminine world. And I think this has not yet happened in that way in Ryan Murphy’s universe. In his universe, this will definitely be the feminine planet. We will have fun playing on it, and I hope the fans will have fun watching it.

This interview has been edited and condensed.