Charlie Hunnam Scores Lone Monster Golden Globe Nomination

While the Golden Globes continued to recognize Ryan Murphy‘s controversial Monster anthology series, the third installment, focused on Ed Gein, received fewer nominations than the first two seasons.

Charlie Hunnam, who stars as Gein, received the lone nomination for Monster: The Ed Gein Story, landing a nod for best actor in a limited or anthology series or motion picture made for television. He’s up against Jacob Elordi (The Narrow Road to the Deep North), Paul Giamatti (Black Mirror), Stephen Graham (Adolescence), Jude Law (Black Rabbit) and Matthew Rhys (The Beast in Me).

Last year, Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story received three Golden Globes nominations while 2022’s Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Storyscored four with Evan Peters winning for best actor in a limited series.

The third season of the true-crime series from Murphy and Ian Brennan, which debuted on Netflix in October and reached the top of the streaming charts, centers on Gein, the 1950s murderer whose crimes inspired Psycho, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Silence of the Lambs, and explores his struggles with undiagnosed schizophrenia. Like the anthology’s previous installments — Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story and Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story — the season has faced criticism for the show’s depiction of its subject matter.

Hunnam defended the series in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, explaining what he hoped audiences would take away. “If people are compelled to talk about it and think about it, hopefully they’ll actually be compelled to watch the show,” he said in October. “What I would hope and feel really confident in is that it was a very sincere exploration of the human condition and why this boy did what he did…. I never felt like we were sensationalizing it. I never felt on set that we did anything gratuitous or for shock impact. It was all in order to try to tell this story as honestly as we could.”

Also refuting that the show glamorizes the murders, Brennan previously told THR, “I don’t think this season is sensational at all. I think it’s sensationally good.” He added, “Ed at its core is a story of mental illness. It was as important for us to show the horror of his inner life and his sort of prison that his brain was trapped in to show that horror as it was about this or that kill.”

Each season of theMonsterposes the same question: Who is the real monster? And in Ed Gein, there’s a scene where the murderer breaks the fourth wall and says to the camera: “You’re the one who can’t look away.”

Hunnam — who will next star in Monster season four, focused on Lizzie Borden — told THR what he hopes viewers contemplate. “Is it Ed Gein who was abused and left in isolation and suffering from undiagnosed mental illness and went and that manifested in some pretty horrendous ways? Or was the monster the legion of filmmakers that took inspiration from his life and sensationalized it to make entertainment and darken the American psyche in the process?” he said.“Is Ed Gein the monster of this show, or is Hitchcock the monster of the show? Or are we the monster of the show because we’re watching it?”

Nikki Glaser returns on Jan. 11 to host the awards ceremony.

Golden Globes producer Dick Clark Productions is owned by Penske Media Eldridge, a joint venture between Penske Media Corporation and Eldridge that also owns The Hollywood Reporter.