Tobias Jelinek went to extreme lengths for Netflix's 'Monster'

Tobias Jelinek has opened up about the efforts he put into playing Richard Speck in Monster: The Richard Gein Story.

While conversing with PEOPLE magazine, the 48-year-old, known for playing serial killers on-screen, revealed that he went to a “dark” place to play “horrific” mass murderer Richard in the recently released drama series.

Articulating his thoughts, Jelinek said, “Serial killers are not new to me. I have tended to play a lot of those different serial killers.”

“However, this one, I have to tell you, I wasn’t very familiar with Richard Speck before auditioning, and I did not know that he transitioned in prison. For me, as soon as I read it, that’s immediately where I went with it,” he explained.

The Hocus Pocus star went on to share that to prepare for the role, he first “went straight to imagination before going too much into everything [Speck] did, because that can get dark real quick.”

Eventually, Jelinek had to dig deep into court files in Illinois because Richard, also known as the Birdman, cold-bloodedly murdered eight student nurses in their Chicago residence in 1966.

The Batman & Robin actor remarked, “It was like watching and then really letting my imagination take it into a place of fantasy rather than too much fact.”

“I really wanted to get the timeline very clear. His manhunt was really the first widely televised serial killer manhunt, and the story is rather horrific,” Jelinek quipped.

It is pertinent to mention that Monster: The Richard Gein Story was released on October 3, 2025, on Netflix.