Elijah Wood said his new drama based on Ted Bundy’s final years shows a different side to the infamous serial killer and does not “mythologise” him.
The Lord Of The Rings star appears in No Man Of God as a former FBI analyst who sat down for interviews with the murderer in the 1980s while he was on death row.
The Marvelous Mrs Maisel star Luke Kirby plays Bundy.
Recent projects featuring Bundy – including Netflix’s 2019 film Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil And Vile – have been criticised for glorifying the killer’s crimes.
However Wood said No Man Of God does not depict on-screen violence and avoids portraying Bundy as charismatic.
He told the PA news agency: “In the years leading up to his death, he was running out of options and it presents a very vulnerable person who doesn’t have that sort of charisma to lean on anymore. It’s not really working for him.
“And so it’s a depiction of a man in a way that we’re not used to seeing him. And I think that’s also very intriguing.
“We’ve seen enough, I think, of this sort of mythologising of him, and the kind of charismatic individual and it was interesting to shine a light on the sort of reality of what that person was facing at the time of his death.”
As well as starring in No Man Of God, Wood, 40, served as a producer.
He remains best known for starring in The Lord Of The Rings trilogy, which catapulted him to worldwide stardom in the early 2000s.
Wood said his choice of project is “always a heart response” and “never strategic”.
He said: “And look, there’s clearly an internal desire to want to continue to work and understanding that one has to work on something that people see.
“There has to be an understanding of that to a degree, of course, but looking for some kind of cross section of art and commerce is tricky. But it’s always – this goes back decades for me.
“I can’t – it’s really difficult for me to want to work on something that I don’t… that I’m not passionately excited about creatively, you know?”
No Man of God is on digital now and on DVD and Special Edition Blu-ray October 25.
