By Paul Salfen
When Hulu announced that Australian actor Jason Clarke would step into the skin of disgraced South Carolina attorney Alex Murdaugh for the third season of the anthology series – retitled Murdaugh: Death in the Family – the reaction was immediate: “He’s perfect.” Clarke, the intense, shape-shifting leading man of Zero Dark Thirty, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, and Chappaquiddick, has made a career out of vanishing into morally complicated men. But even by his standards, the real-life story of Alex Murdaugh – opioid addiction, multimillion-dollar fraud, a botched fake suicide, and the brutal 2021 murders of his wife Maggie and son Paul – felt almost too unbelievable to play.
“I read the scripts and thought, ‘Can I really do this?’” Clarke tells AMFM Magazine’s Paul Salfen over Zoom, “Then I thought, if my family’s okay with it and I’ve got time to put on the weight… this is a role you can truly disappear into. You put it on like a suit and become somebody else.”
And disappear he did. Clarke gained a startling 40 pounds, softened his native Australian accent into the thick Lowcountry drawl, and delivered a performance that has critics and true-crime followers alike calling it one of the most unsettling transformations of the year.
“He Fooled Everyone Except Mandy Matney”
Based on the blockbuster Murdaugh Murders Podcast by journalist Mandy Matney (who receives a knowing shout-out in the interview), the Hulu series traces the unraveling of the once-untouchable Murdaugh legal dynasty. It begins with the 2019 boat crash that killed 19-year-old Mallory Beach – an incident that put youngest son Paul under scrutiny – and spirals into revelations of theft from paraplegic clients, decades of courthouse corruption, mysterious deaths, and ultimately the double murder that shocked the nation.
Clarke’s Alex is charming, erratic, and terrifyingly convincing. One minute he’s dancing to the Beach Boys at a house party; the next he’s staging his own assassination by asking a distant cousin to shoot him on a rural roadside.
“These people aren’t stupid,” Clarke emphasizes. “His son, his wife, his law partners, the entire community – everyone believed he was an upstanding, loving man. Someone who lived next door to him said, ‘He fooled everyone apart from Mandy Matney.’ That line stuck with me. You have to honor how good he was at the con.”
The Physical and Mental Toll
To become Murdaugh, Clarke didn’t just gain weight – he changed the way he moved, the way he breathed, even the way he thought.
“I’d take cold showers in the morning and tell myself, ‘Don’t complain. Just take it.’ Because this guy never questions himself. Action – just go. Even if it’s shit, just go,” he laughs. “I was listening to a lot of J Balvin, Latino dance music – anything to keep a party going on inside, because there was always something going on in his head.”
The transformation was so complete that when Clarke finally wrapped the prison-jumpsuit scenes, he shed the weight almost as quickly as he’d put it on.
Empathy, Justice, and a Broken System
Beneath the Southern Gothic madness, Clarke hopes the series sparks bigger conversations.
“We need empathy and justice more than ever,” he says. “Once you learn he stole settlement money from paraplegics and their families, there’s no empathy left for Alex. And yet that’s the best justice system we have. I hope people walk away feeling something for Maggie, for Paul, for Mallory Beach, for everyone he destroyed.”
Quick Fire with Jason Clarke
Favorite scene to shoot? “The funeral speech for Maggie and Paul. You just jump off the cliff and start bawling. Don’t think. Just go.”
Weirdest preparation ritual? “Cold showers and J Balvin on repeat. Keeps the internal party going.”
Next role after playing one of America’s most hated men? “Something with puppies, hopefully.”
Murdaugh: Death in the Family, starring Jason Clarke as Alex Murdaugh and Patricia Arquette as Maggie Murdaugh, is now streaming in its entirety on Hulu.
As Clarke signs off – it’s clear the actor has given everything to one of the wildest true-crime sagas in modern history. And somehow, against all odds, he’s made Alex Murdaugh terrifyingly human.
