Michael Chernus takes a groundbreaking brilliant deep dive into the soul of serial killer John Wayne Gacy starring in “Devil In Disguise: John Wayne Gacy” his performance is not to be missed. meeting Michael in person getting to know him and his story is also something not to be missed. So scroll down and find out his thoughts on what might surprise you about John Gacy, stepping into character and what kept him from sinking deep into darkness while filming, his lifelong love of music, Westchester County living, shyness, being punctual, Juilliard days, bluecollar workwear style and a delicious plate of oysters.

the bare magazine: what did you learn about John Wayne Gacy that might surprise someone to hear?

Michael Chernus: How many times he was almost caught or could have been caught, how long he got away with his horrendous crimes for, the fact that he was literally hiding in plain sight. Just how many people had given his name to the cops but for some reason or another law enforcement looked the other way or he talked himself out of getting charged. Also, and this is one of the saddest part to me, there are still unidentified victims. There are still unidentified remains of his victims buried in graves in cemeteries throughout the Chicagoland area.

For the premiere of “Devil In Disguise: John Wayne Gacy”, my brilliant stylist (Jorge Morales) had the idea to embroider something on my suit lapel, some words to honor the victims. I suggested that we have “we remembered” embroidered on the jacket because that is what is inscribed on the headstones of the unidentified victims of John Gacy.

Another thing that may surprise people is that the killer clown thing was overblown and exaggerated by the media. Because “Killer Clown” sells newspapers and “Schlubby Blue Collar Killer from the Suburbs” doesn’t. That’s not to say that John Gacy wasn’t a clown. He was. Absolutely. But he wore the clown costume at children’s hospitals and parades not to lure young boys back to his house. He did it to seem innocent, harmless, safe. He joined the “Jolly Joker Clown Club” and created his clown persona “Pogo the Clown” because, as he said, no one would suspect a clown of murder.

bare: can you share a few ways you were able to embody and connect with him?

MC: This is a tricky one. The entire premise of our show was to shift the focus away from John Wayne Gacy and put it on the victims (all young men and boys), their families, and the law enforcement officers that brought Gacy to justice. So the real challenge for me was how to embody this person fully but not center him or make it so that the audience cares for him or feels bad for him.

There were pitfalls all over the place for me to fall into. I certainly didn’t want to do some mustache-twirly caricature of a serial killer. And I didn't want to feed the pop culture machine that has already turned him into some larger than life killer clown figure. I mean, people have this weird fascination with Gacy. They have tattoos of him on their bodies, or they own Gacy action figures and memorabilia (or, muderabilia, as its called). He had thousands of penpals when he was on death row. People were obsessed with him. Fascinated by him. I didn’t want to feed the celebrity of him. I wanted to burst that pop culture image, the almost cartoon image of him, a bit.

So I started with research. I did a real deep dive. I went into a bit of a rabbit hole. I did a ton of research not just on John Gacy but on the time period, on what was happening in Chicago in the 1970s, what queer culture was like back then in Illinois.

I listened to the Sufjan Stevens song “John Wayne Gacy, Jr.” (from his incredible album ILLINOISE) on repeat, over and over and over again, almost every day.

I read every book that I could get my hands on, watched every documentary multiple times, listened to all of the podcasts.

But it wasn’t until I got to Toronto, where we shot the show, that it all started to fall into place. I began working on his voice. Watching interviews with him and studying the way that he spoke and his odd, folksy rhythms and speech patterns. I had a wonderful dialect coach, Jeffrey Simlett, helping me craft the Chicago accent. And I got into exploring his physicality, the way he walked, his slouch. The way his big black leather jacket felt when I put it on. And of course hair and makeup…the mustache and the slicked short hair with the brylcreem in it. All of these details were part of building the character so that ultimately, when we were rolling, I could be free to just listen and respond as him.

bare: how did you manage snapping out of the darkness?

MC: I don’t even think that I realized it at the time but the best thing I did for my mental health was to move my whole family out to Toronto for the shoot. My wife, Emily Simoness, our daughter, June (who was 1 1/2 when we started shooting the show), even our dog, Murray, came to Canada. And we rented this big, beautiful townhouse in the dreamy Annex neighborhood. Our place had big windows so it got incredible light and it was just so cozy and sweet. If I had been alone in a hotel room for six months it could have gotten real dark, real quick. But I was surrounded by love whenever I came home from work.

Also my transpo driver, the legendary Alphonsus MacNeil, became a dear friend and his rides home from work saved me. We would roll down the windows and blast early Bob Dylan records and sing along and basically howl at the moon. Al MacNeil is part shaman, part priest, part hooligan, part scholar so we got along super well. And he was the keeper of the vibes for me on Devil In Disguise. I swear that he could read my aura or something. Cause if I had a particularly taxing day of shooting ahead of me and I was feeling stressed out he could anticipate it and he would be waiting for me in the driveway of my townhouse with a piping hot americano from Wild Hearts cafe and he would have Debussy playing in the car or Beethoven or some really groovy mellow jazz. But if I needed an energy boost he would sense that too and we would rock out to the song Loving Cup from “Exile On Main Street” by the Stones. That transpo van became a confessional booth at times, a zen monastery at other times. And on certain nights, on the drive home, it was a greasy dirty honkytonk bar. Man, I owe my friend Al an awful lot.

bare: please share some of your reasons for loving being a part of Severance.

MC: I feel so blessed to be a part of Severance. It is so iconic at this point, it has become a real global phenomenon. And it’s so different from anything else out there. At a time where many things feel derivative it’s cool to be on a show that is so unique.

And I love my character Ricken. And my genius on-camera wife Jen Tullock. Holy cow, what a force of nature she is! I just love getting to work with her.

Truly, everyone involved with the show is so damn good. Every aspect of the show is detailed, specific, intentional. It’s a rare one, for sure.

bare: how would you describe yourself to someone who hasn’t had the pleasure of meeting you — you can boast, and also describe the kind of moments that can stress you?

MC: People might be surprised at how shy I actually am. I’m very private. I’m an introverted extrovert. I had always assumed that I was an extrovert because I’m an actor - “Actor’s have to be extroverted, right??”

But during the pandemic, when we were in lockdown, I discovered that I’m actually a bit of an introvert. Suddenly I couldn’t go out and see people. It was forbidden. I couldn’t go to events or parties or dinners. And I was…thrilled. What a relief! All of that social anxiety just gone. Poof!

I hope that I come off as warm, kind, generous, empathetic. But I’m really very anxious. I’m a people pleaser so I worry a lot about what other people think of me.

What else? I hate hate hate being late. Punctuality is huge for me. If you’re not early you’re late is my mantra. And yet I am a procrastinator 5000 when it comes to things like emails or deadlines or, for example, answering these questions for your magazine hahahahaha!

bare: you love music and bought a few albums on our Brooklyn stroll, and you played bass in a band. Was there ever a moment you thought you might go that direction, or has acting always been your greatest calling?

MC: At the end of the day, I think every actor is just a frustrated rockstar.

Music has always been extremely important to me. Some of my earliest memories are of music: as a little little kid marching around my living room table to the seven dwarfs singing “Hi Ho!” on a Disney record we had. Or singing along to the Grease 2 soundtrack in my room. Or the day that my dad came home from work and gave me the Thriller LP. That album had just come out and I was obsessed.

In high school, I belonged to those BMG and Columbia House record club things where you’d get like 10 cassette tapes or 8 CDs free if you bought one or whatever. But then they would bill you every month for another album if you didn’t unsubscribe. I always forgot to cancel after the introductory offer arrived so I’d keep getting CDs in the mail every month. I know that drove my mom crazy.

When I moved to NYC, to attend the Juilliard Drama Division, I met two of my best friends in the world…Patch Darragh and Erin Gann. We would hang out in Patch’s dorm room because he was in a smoking suite, this was 1995 so you could still smoke indoors. And we would sing Simon & Garfunkel songs and Beatles songs while Patch played his acoustic guitar.

Over time, we started writing our own songs and we formed a little band called “The Greens”. But it wasn’t really a band in the normal sense because Patch was the only one who knew how to play an instrument. We were more of a songwriting outfit, really. Acoustic folk rock composers. The Rodgers and Hammerstein and Leonard Bernstein of late night dorm room musings, full of three part vocal harmony and psychedelic imagery.

When we graduated from Juilliard, Patch and I moved into a railroad apartment together in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. But, mind you, Greenpoint wasn’t hip yet, this was 1999. Everything was Polish, everything. And the G train was miserable. You couldn’t get anywhere or do anything so we stayed at home and wrote more songs.

Eventually we had amassed like 150 originals. And they were good! Really good. I bought a cheap Yamaha bass guitar at Sam Ash on 48th street (the old music row) in Manhattan. And I started taking bass lessons from a guy named Larry Landon. He would advertise on flyers in bodegas and delis and bus stops, kinda like the now famous “Dan Smith Will Teach You Guitar” guy. I’d go to Larry’s midtown apartment once a week and learn the bass line to “Just My Imagination” or “Green Onions”. Erin bought a drum set and we started to jam but we almost got Erin evicted when we tried to have band practice in his tiny Washington Heights apartment. Full drum kit, amplified guitars and no sound proofing. Bad idea. That didn’t last long.

We had a few shows here and there. We wound up playing a gig at Galapagos in Williamsburg as part of a larger political event (this is in like late 2000 or early 2001), we did an open mic night at the Raccoon Lodge, we even played a party for the Juilliard Dance Division where we had microphones taped to hockey sticks as our mic stands and lyrics written on Dominoes pizza boxes.

My first couple years out of Juilliard were really tough and I didn’t work much as an actor and most agents weren’t interested in me. So I was really hoping something would happen with these Greens songs. I kinda understood that we couldn’t really play out as a band, Erin and I barely knew how to play our instruments at the time. But when we sang theses songs we heard the Beatles, we heard Brian Wilson, we imagined the orchestration and the full band sound, we pictured fully produced studio tracks of our songs and we even had imaginary album titles in our heads. Like “Send in The Clones” or “In the Parlance of our Times”.

Then in 2004, I was cast in an Adam Rapp play called “Finer Noble Gases”. The play is about a rock band and for most of the play the band members are drugged out and in various states of decay and disconnection. But the final moment of the play is the band playing a song together, it’s either a flashback, or a dream sequence, a glimpse of what once was or could have been. One final great rock show.

So, in order for the whole play to work the cast had to become a band. A real band. We had to be good. And connected and really locked in with each other.

We would rehearse the play during the day and then have band practice at night. We wrote some originals and learned some covers. We had a real legit professional drummer in the cast named Ray Rizzo (Days of the New, King Kong) so he kind of legitimized us immediately. The rest of the band/cast was Paul Sparks and Rob Beitzel on guitar and me on bass.

The theater, Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, had booked us gigs at real rock rooms in the East Village and Lower East Side. Legendary places like Sin-é, Pianos, and Arlene’s Grocery. Which really forced us to get our shit together. And whenever we would play out as a band, the playwright who wrote the play, Adam Rapp, would join us onstage. So, even though he wasn’t in the play he was in the band. We would joke that he wrote the play just so he could join a band.

After the play closed we just kept being a band. We kept rehearsing, we kept writing songs and making new music. We self-produced two records which we recorded at Soma Studios in Chicago. One album was called “Bear” and the other was “Robot.” The name of the fictional band in Adam’s play was Less. Which is what we went by at first, but when we went to record our first record we discovered that the name Less was already taken. So we called ourselves Less the Band.

For years, as Less the Band we toured the US and Europe. We even opened for My Morning Jacket in the UK for a few gigs. We had a weekly Monday night residency at Sin-é, we did an original rock opera called ASTROLAND at the iconic experimental art venue The Kitchen. We were a real band. But, at the end of the day, acting was always going to be my true calling. I think LTB played our last gig in like 2014 or something like that.

But, it has always been a major pain point for me that those songs from my early Juilliard days, the songs of The Greens, have kinda just sat on the shelf.

Patch and Erin and I rented a cabin in the Catskills last winter for a weekend and dusted off some of the old tunes and they hold up! Who knows, maybe someday they will find their way out into the world.

bare: we caught a little of your personal style — the layering, the trucker hat, the coolest sunglasses you stole from your wife! please describe it, and any shopping destinations or designers you love.

MC: My style rides the line between casual, blue collar workwear (think flannels, jeans, boots, trucker hats) and hippie, crunchy, psychedelic, Topanga Canyon vibes (think tie dye and cut off shorts and big sunglasses and sandals or crocs).

But then I also have a more dapper side, which has been enhanced & encouraged & developed by having to do press and red carpets as an actor. The dressing up part of being an actor doesn’t always come easy to me so I’ve had to cultivate and nurture that persona a bit.

I now look at fashion and style as almost like a shield or armor that I put on at press events. Its like a costume for a character that I get to play. “Red Carpet Chernus” plays at fancy dress up.

When I’m in more of the “Rural Chernus” vibe, I like to shop at Cato’s Army & Navy in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. They carry brands that I like and that fit me well. Stuff like Woolrich, Pendleton, Schott Bros, and Carhartt.

I also really love Alex Mill, Filson, Howler Brothers, JCRT.
Stuff that feels like you could wear it in a bar in the East Village or fly fishing in the Catskills or hiking in Santa Fe.

When we were shooting Devil In Disguise: John Wayne Gacy in Toronto, I discovered 18 Waits. Man, I love their stuff. I think I bought like 10 of their shirts and like 3 pairs of pants the first time I stumbled upon their shop. And then I dragged my buddy and co-star Chris Sullivan there with me like a week later. And we bought a bunch more stuff. It’s super hard to find fashionable clothes for dudes with bigger frames and big bodies.

The suit I’m wearing in these photos Is made by Tayion and my stylist, Jorge, sourced it for me.

bare: you have an incredible head of hair! Any particular products you like or barber you go to? Do you prefer yourself with the facial hair?

MC: If you can believe it my dad, who is 77 years old, has an even better head of hair. He has the hairline of an 18 year old. It’s those Hungarian genes.

I’m not fussy with my hair. I buy like American Crew products at CVS.

But its mostly because I’m at the mercy of whatever acting job I’m doing. I haven’t paid for a haircut in years. Its always done for me on set, in the hair and makeup trailer. I don’t really have to think about my hair. My hair is not my own, it belongs to whatever production I’m on at the time.

I do prefer myself with facial hair. But I’m losing some beard hair, I have bald patches in my beard. I was very self conscious about it at first but now I’m trying to make my peace with it.

bare: take us through some of your favorite activities upstate — and with your 2-year-old daughter.

MC: We live in northern Westchester County and we are really close to the Connecticut border. There are so many cute little towns near where we live and we love supporting local businesses.

Places like the Ridgefield Playhouse in Ridgefield, CT, where my dear pal Ryan Miller’s band Guster sometimes plays.

A wonderful bakery we frequent often is LMNOP in Katonah, NY. Amazing breads and pastries and awesome people.

We have loved the restaurant “Purdy’s Farmer and the Fish” in Purdy’s, NY, for years. Its a cozy place to just grab a seat at the bar for some oysters and a drink.

We like walking our dog at some of the scenic outdoor spaces near us like the Baxter Preserve, Ward Pound Ridge Reservation, and Sal J. Prezioso Mountain Lakes Park.

In the summer nothing beats seeing our friend Eric Pooley’s band “Goat Rodeo” play at Harvest Moon Farm & Orchard in North Salem, NY.

And, of course, our daughter loves hitting up the Danbury Fair Mall with our friends Rebecca Henderson and Leslye Headland and their daughter to ride the carousel.

We are very lucky to live in such a special place and yet be so close to New York City. I’m a Grateful Dad.

bare: please list your top six bare essentials.

MC: