Dateline NBC - Preview: “Devil in Disguise: John Wayne Gacy”

Episode Date: October 20, 2025

Andrea Canning sits down with the creator and lead actors from Peacock's new original limited series, "Devil in Disguise: John Wayne Gacy" to talk about making a new kind of true crime drama. One that focuses on the victims, the victims' families, and the detectives who never gave up on their mission to bring the victims home. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hey, everyone. I'm Andrea Canning here with a bonus episode for Dateline followers. We're diving into a chilling new drama series, now available on Peacock, the streaming channel, which is owned by our parent company NBCUniversal. Our colleagues at NBC News Studios are producers on the project. It's called Devil in Disguise John Wayne Gacy. Hey, guys, set the record straight. I killed. So many.

Gacy was one of America's most prolific serial killers. In the 1970s, he kidnapped and murdered at least 33 young men and buried most of them in the crawl space beneath his house. But here's what's different about this new show from other documentaries and films you might have seen on the murders. Gacy isn't the main focus. Devil in disguise is a show about Gacy's victims, who the young men were before they met Gacy,

their family's heartbreak and trauma after their murder. and the systemic failures and societal prejudices that allowed Gacy's crimes to go unnoticed for so long. Recently, I sat down with the showrunner Patrick McManus. He was also an executive producer, director, and writer on the series. We were joined by two of the stars of the series Michael Churness, who plays Gacy and Gabriel Luna, who plays the detective who helped crack the case. What followed was a conversation about honoring victim stories, crafting respectful narratives in true crime, and acknowledging the everyday heroes who solve those crimes.

Well, thank you all for being here. Yeah, thanks for having us. So, Patrick, let me start with you. Why did you decide to do this show and shape it the way that you did? Yeah, I mean, the story that I keep telling everyone is just the true story, which is that I turned it down twice. Really? Yeah, I did not want to do it.

And Universal Content and Peacock, they came to me a third time, and they had said, will you just take, will you just take a look at the documentary? And I, and I said, okay, and I watched the documentary that is on peak. I guess brilliant. The documentary is really, really amazing, but I didn't come away from watching the documentary wanting to do it, because at the end of the day, the documentary is very, very focused on John Wing-Gacy. And so I said to them, I said, look, if you will let me do it my way, and I didn't mean

it in an obnoxious way, I just meant that I want to focus it on the police, I want to focus it on the lawyers. I want to focus on the victim's families. And at the time, I said, and I would like to focus it on the victims. And to their credit, they said yes. And from that day, they have held true to that. As someone who, for Dateline, you know, I sit across all the time from victims' families, that's what we do. And the one thing that I felt like just quickly watching it, you know, right away, I could feel how much you captured the victim's families. Like the mom and she has that conversation with her daughter about Christmas and, you know, there's no food in the house. I'm going to head out.

Why, no? Just for a little bit, there's no food in the house. That's not true. Are we still having people over for a Christmas dinner? We should, right? But, like, that's what those families go through, where, like, what is the point of celebrating Christmas? You know, we don't know where our son is or, you know, whatever has happened to your loved one. And I feel like that was something that was captured really, really well.

Thank you. Our team of writers were extraordinary. They understood the job was, it's not about John Wien Gacy. It's about, like, the wake of wreckage that John Wayne Gacy left behind him. And that's murder, right? The ripple effect. Correct. Yeah.

At the beginning of our show, you already know that John Wenghacy murdered these 33 people. Yeah. There's like, it's interesting because there's. no mystery here right so everyone knows yeah there's no who done it and and i keep saying it's more of a who were who were they and that's that's we are on the same trajectory the the goals set forth by by these detectives at that time in that time period the responsibility they they felt that they held towards these families trying to put faces and names and voices to to the deceased only continues now with with what the writers our writers did in that room and piecing together these

really beautiful short stories and vignettes of the experience of these very young men, you know, young men and boys who had all the potential in the world and had it snuffed out. What can I do for you? I don't know too much about construction, but I'm a real fast learner. No time like the now or never. Why did you decide to play? Gacy, such a big role. And you played him so well. And he's, he's, sometimes he's creepy. Sometimes he's like the guy next door. Sometimes he's funny. There's, there's so many faces to him.

There are. And that was, in my opinion, very true of the actual man. And so I knew that the role would be a real challenge in that regard. But I had this great initial meeting with Patrick. He told me that there would be no murders on camera, that we were focusing on the victims, that there would be these short stories in every episode. Then he said to me, like, I hope you're okay with, you're not going to be in it all the time. And I was like, thank God. That's such a relief because, like, to have to embody John Gacy all the time just felt like maybe something I didn't want to take on just for personal mental health reasons, you know. You've been told that you look like him. Is that? Here and there, people would say that. And, you know, it's not the highest compliment. But, yeah,

Yeah, well, you know, people would say like, well, you look like that killer clown. You should see if someone would write a show or a film for you. And so it was always kind of in the back of my mind. Yeah. And Gabriel, you get to play the lead detective, which was such an important, you know, role in real life for this story. Yes, yes. I was privileged to play Detective Raphael Tovar, the lead investigator on the case. We got to talk.

Kids missing reported last. scene with you. Yeah, I don't know who that is. What did you take away as your most interesting moment of shooting, or the most interesting part of your character? There was a lot that I, you know, I, there's been doing this a long time, and you're always excited when you feel that, that you grew. It's just something in you grew.

And I, I think for me, personally. Personally, I had played a lot of invulnerable characters, I mean, maybe physically invulnerable in that they were, you know, robotic killing machines or superheroes with flaming skulls or, you know, just these heroes that seemed to be, you knew they were heroes by looking at them. And what I loved about this part was just the mundanity of his heroism. And I thought that was pretty special. And you really captured the weight that the detectives carry with these cases, you know, and there's just some phenomenal detectives across this country that will not stop until, you know, their person is behind bars. And I can feel that. Well, yeah, I mean, that's, it's an interesting aspect of the show because so much of the show is also about the systemic failure of Chicago PD to,

actually have stopped him, had multiple opportunities to stop him and didn't. As teenage male employees start disappearing, and nobody in your department looks into the guy? But on the flip side of that coin, are a group of detectives who were in that pit every single day who had their lives upended. I mean, I think they would never say it's PTSD, but I think that we could look back and say that they came out of that experience with PTSD.

And they were dedicated to ensuring that every, last victim was found. And where we got really the inspiration for Tovar's entire journey through the season was from a statement that he made where he said to this day he's still haunted by the idea that he didn't find everyone. We never wanted to make it feel like the police are the quote unquote bad guys. That is not it. It was it was the system failed and then the system very much stepped to the plate to attempt to figure out how to bring every, young boy home. And there's so many cases that have that same trajectory. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. Casey's final victim, Rob Pist, fell under the jurisdiction of a suburban police department.

And so in that way, it was one of Casey's many mistakes at the end where he abducted this boy from displains and this, that police department had the energy and the time to focus on this case. Yeah. And that's played, so his mother is played by Marin, Ireland. Maryland, you actually, like, open with this mother, the whole series, right, to set the tone for what you were going for. And she truly set the tone. Yeah. She set the tone at the table read. And just gave this incredible speech to the detectives and was already there.

I mean, could have rolled cameras on that first day. I hate to, I will just take it one step back and say that she did it in the audition. Yeah. Like, I mean, I mean this with the utmost of respect to these fine gentlemen and every other actor I've ever worked with. But I've never picked up a phone and called the head of casting. I picked up the head of, talk to the head of casting, a universal and peacock. And I said, I don't want to even have a conversation about this. And I didn't say it in a mean way.

I said, just watch the tape and then just say yes. And it was about 12 minutes later. Yeah. And everything's so deliberate. it. Like, you have scenes where the detectives are talking, but you're just looking at mom, right? And that's, like, on purpose, because that's the message of the show. It was on the page. Like, I wrote it that way very specifically. But the truth of the matter is, is that originally, in the first cut, we never left her. It was a slow pushing for the entire scene. We never turned around. My wife is upset, as you can imagine. he's got a job

so what's you meeting with this guy for he's getting his license this year saving up for a car all right well listen we have the file but they usually show up kids you know I think why

we are all fascinated by these true crime stories I think what's that what's the lynchpin of all that is is how personal it all is. And he's describing in cinematic vocabulary, just how personal we got with Elizabeth Peace, with Marin pushing in on her face.

But when you listen to your podcast or your show or any other true crime stories, I think that that is what brings people in and draws him in. And when we watch this, we see the human capacity for deviance and crime and murder and also the failures of just people, human people, who are doing their best, or in some cases are, in some cases are neglecting it, their human capability for neglect. You know, it's all just extremely personal.

And I think that that is really what people's fascination kind of stems from. Yeah, our Dennis Murphy at Dateline always says it's the marriage, not the murder, even though the murder is, of course, very important. But it's the relationships, right? that there's a title for your next show. But to be frank, I may put that up on the writer's room board in the future because that's a very succinct, beautiful way of putting what the point of these shows should be, right?

Yeah, well, because so often it's not some boogeyman type character, and I think that relates especially to this story is the fascination that it could be your next-door neighbor or it could be someone hiding in plain sight and just how sometimes how pedestrian and normal some of these killers are. Some, yeah, it's like more like 90% of them, you know, are. Yeah, it's very rare you get like a Charlie Manson or a night stalker who just kind of looks like a killer, you know, like. Like, run! Right, yeah.

but yeah sometimes it's just like the jolly chubby polish neighbor next door who's like offers to shovel your driveway for you you know who shook hands with the first lady yeah yeah and by the way you nailed the accent oh thanks that that means a lot i grew up in cleveland oh higher which that's not exactly the same as a chicago accent but just i know that sort of like cadence and rhythm and uh melody of of the kind of folksy midwestern uh and uh you know sometimes it's, you know, there are some scenes where it's very present and some scenes where it's not. And that was very much on purpose because, like, I feel like our version of gay seats when we were playing with is, like, leaning into that kind of, oh, shucks, folksy, kind of, you know, I'm so harmless, you know. That was good.

Yeah. That was really good. I would like to cooperate with you, boys. Help out in any way that I can. No, you were asking earlier, like, what's something that we took away about our character or what, you know, I feel like, There was some amount of, like, I had to find some kind of, I certainly don't have empathy or sympathy for the man. And I feel like there's this thing amongst actors where it's like, no matter who you play, you have to find a way in to, like, love your character, to understand your character and care about, you're playing the worst person who ever lived. You have to like, and this was the first, and I always believe that, like, in drama school.

And now I feel like that's BS. Like, I... Maybe I, I taught, like, he was a human being. That's a fact. He, like, lived and was flesh and bone. And so how, how do you make that final leap? And I, I don't know, you know, some of it was just, like, the imagination and creativity of an actor.

And I think if we're talking about what draws people to true crime, sometimes I think it's that, these things that just don't make sense, these senseless stories, these murders, and we're trying to make sense us. of it, right? We're trying, we want there to be a hero who solved it. We want there to be a reason why he did it, a motive. Yes, there was an insurance money or they wanted custody of the child or, you know, jealousy. Completely, yeah. And for me, it's like sometimes you just get to a point where there isn't an actual explanation. And sometimes there's just not. And we do have date lines where at the end, it's like, you ask, like, why did they do this? And they're like, I don't know.

You know? It's, you don't always get it wrapped up in a bow where you have all the answers and even if it's wrong, you know why. You know, you don't get that every time. You definitely know, yeah. And the other thing that you didn't, you know, go hard on was the clown theme. Like we saw elements of the clown. We saw the, you were sitting at the table looking at the evidence with the clown costume and we see the clown paintings. But it's not like you're going hard every second on clown, clown, clown, which is what Gacy is known for. No, yeah, and if I don't know if we can have a spoiler, but you never see the full clown. Like, you never see me fully, full face on camera as the clown. And that was very, very intentional. I think it was one of the things I first asked you in our first meeting was like, how much of the clown are you going to show? Because I was not interested in that part of the story. Yeah.

And it's part of the story, I feel like that got overdone in the 70s because it sold newspapers. And, you know, the killer clown. And it was something unique and obviously super creepy. but it was, it actually is a, it was a small part of who he was. You know, you didn't need it, though. Like, you were still creepy and scary and all of it. You don't have to be in a clown costume to freak people out. Yeah, but I agree.

I mean, I think that the clown is the least creepy thing about John Gasey. And if anything, I think it has done a lot of harm because it has sort of softened his image or kind of humanized him. Because even though we clowns are scary, it is also sort of child. as a childlike kind of like innocence to it. And I think it helped with his sort of cult personality and how like parts of like the heavy metal scene embraced him. And like, I think it was one of the many things we were hoping to do with this is kind of rewrite the story on him and be like, this guy's not cool. There's nothing interesting about him. Like he was, there was nothing

redeeming about this man. When you researched the victims and their families, what really stood out to you the most before you started all of this. How young, they all were just, as young as 13. Yeah, 12, wait, 14. I think it was, yeah, the youngest was, yeah, had just turned. Just turned. Randy rough it. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, just to piggyback on that, and it's a story that I, that I've been telling quite a bit, is that I have a very strange ability to compartmentalize and not get affected by the stuff that I'm writing or the things. that were filming or join the club there you got well you i think you you sort of have to right i hear i hear you yeah but i had um i i was flying back and forth between toronto and l a every weekend to be with my i have two sons and and my wife and this one sunday was after this particularly um simple but also a very powerful friday night of shooting that i was having a football catch with my eldest son who's 13 at the time is 14 now and it just

for the first time in 18 months of working on this project it was the very first time where it hit me and that I'm having a catch with my son who was the same age as the youngest victim and I had to excuse myself and go inside into the bathroom and it was the first time that I actually lost it. Like I really lost it. And so I agree wholeheartedly that that is one of the primary things

that affects you. I think the other one is just is a little bit about how, and we specifically chose the stories that we chose in order to shine a light on sort of a different pocket of the system failing and the prejudices within the system that allowed Gacy to get away with what he got away with.

So, you know, we have a story that is about a coming out story, of a story that is a straight love story. We have a story that is a sex worker story. We have a story that's a grooming story, right? And again, we only could tell six out of the 33. But each of them represented this, just utter failing of

of the world to take care of these young boys. And again, saying it, I'll just keep saying it over and over again, that they had so many opportunities to stop the number at two, to stop the number at eight, to stop the number at 14, right? And they just failed at every

turn. Yeah, that's such a good point. There was such, at the time in the 70s, there was such a judgment on the victims, and it was labeled like this, they were deviant, or runaways or, you know, that there was there was some kind of a judgment on the, on these boys that allowed people to sort of distance themselves from the humanity. This is like a lot like another story I'm covering the Gilgo Beach murders where, you know, a lot of sex workers were involved and, you know, just fell through the cracks. And were dehumanized because they were sex workers.

So, yeah. Yeah. And if it was, I always say this, like if it was the soccer mom in Westchester County, New York, that, you know, if they were bringing down soccer moms, it would be 24-7 coverage, right? Yeah, and that was one of the many things, you know, his last victim, Rob Pist, at the time, the paper said, well, this was a good boy from a good home, and all of a sudden, everybody was interested.

But what Patrick was saying was one of the things that struck me, too, is, like, his victims were from all kinds of backgrounds. Like, predominantly they were from sort of lower-class, blue-collar homes, from a lot from a similar neighborhood in Chicago. Some were sex workers, but some were not, and some were straight, and some were gay, and some were figuring out who they were. But, like, I think all of his victims were sort of,

there was sort of this universal stamp put on them at the time and society just sort of, like, dehumanized. Yeah, we can't do that. We can't. Gabriel, I was curious. So I know, I realized this was such a long time ago. What, like, what happened to the, you know, the detective you played? And also, I don't even know, to be honest with you, what happened to Gacy?

Like, so if you could just, I'm just curious. There was a, because of the approach we were taking, it being a fictionalized dramatization of this story, it was important to us not to draw specifically from the real men and women who are involved in this case. But after we wrapped, I kind of went in and did my own kind of reconnaissance and found out where our hero was. And he returned back to Texas. He is living down there with his wife. I think he's going to be pleased with your performance. Absolutely. You're fantastic. Yeah, John Gacy was executed in 1994 by lethal injection. It was, I think, the only second lethal injection in the state of Illinois. They just changed over to lethal injection. Yeah, so he was executed.

Yeah, that's a scene in the show where the lawyer's saying, you know, shut up. It's, you know, lethal injection is here now. The death penalty. You know, what do you stop running your mouth? Yeah. And it was a big deal at the time. There were protesters on both sides. There were people who were anti-death penalty protesting outside. And then, you know, people who were very pro kill the clown. And so it was a whole media circus like so many things around this case at the time. You know, there's still unidentified victims. And one great hope of mine is that maybe through telling the story and just like shedding a different kind of light on it that maybe we aid in putting a name. to one or two or three of those boys that still are unknown of their identities. That would be amazing if something like that could come out of this. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it has been a pleasure talking to all of you, and congratulations on this. Really just, I can't say enough good things. Thank you. Thank you so, so much to take the time. Thanks.