Apple TV has premiered its new crime drama series Nocturne, the dark story of a former homicide detective named Jonah Lynn (Liev Schreiber), who is drawn back into investigating the seemingly copycat crimes of deranged serial killer Jurek Walter (Stephen Graham), whom he arrested and put away years before. But when the FBI steps in, Jonah starts working around the law with his surrogate daughter, agent Saga Bauer (Zazie Beetz) to both track the killer and infiltrate the facility where Jurek is held, to see if there are secrets the killer is hiding in his calculating mind.
I had the chance to speak with Nocturne star Stephen Graham about how he’s approaching the character of Jurek Walter, who already has shades of other famous onscreen killers like Anthony Hopkins’ Hannibal Lecter. Because while he may seem safely locked away in a cell, Jurek Walter is already clearly a threat that extends beyond his small box.
“Right at the very beginning, I said to Tim, look, I think I’ve got a way into this fella, but you may think it’s a bad idea: But I think he kind of meditates a lot,” Graham explained. “And Tim was like, ‘Whoa, okay. Wasn’t expecting that. Elaborate.’ And I was like, ‘Well, I just think it’s to find that sense of stillness. But also, you know, through the practice of meditation, that kind of enhances the patience that he has. And he has to be extremely patient because he’s waiting for that one opportunity to try and find somebody who can be literally the key to that first door opening.”
“Because his objective is to get out of that concrete box. Predominantly, that’s what it is: He needs to get out of it at some point. And with that, you need patience. And I think that kind of paradox, of a man in a cell who’s practicing meditation and kind of a stillness and a silence within him. I just thought it was an interesting way in, and that’s kind of what we went for. So I’m glad you clocked that.”
(MILD SPOILERS) The very first scene of Nocturne sees Jarek talk a convict in the next cell into bashing his own brains out against the wall as a “cure” for his mental illness; the two-episode premiere also established how Jurek is uniquely twisted even amongst serial killers: burying his victims alive with enough food, water, and air tubes to make their deaths a prolonged exercise in the worst kind of torture: false hope. He also seems to delight in the psychological pain and distress his kidnappings and murders cause, with the families of the victims and the cops all forever scarred by the horror of failing to save those who needed it. Much of Nocturne‘s momentum, so far, has been the tension of never knowing if Jurek is the one with the upper hand, and (like Se7en), the detectives are just moving through the paces that have been set for them.
One character who clearly doesn’t know what he’s getting into is Karl Anders (Rory Culkin, an orderly at the psychiatric hospital who is the latest to be assigned to Jurek. Culkin had the best take on what kind of character Jurek Walter is: “I looked at the way Karl looks at [Jurek]; it’s like he’s this exotic predator. Like a tiger. This beautiful, fascinating creature that could maul you in a second. And that just makes him even more fascinating. So, yeah, I would say a beautiful predator.”
Nocturne premieres new episodes every friday on Apple TV.
