“It's the first time I've ever played a real person,” Teri Hatcher revealed about playing the title role in Lifetime’s The Killer Inside: The Ruth Finley Story. Best known for roles on Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman and Desperate Housewives, headlining a Lifetime “Ripped from the Headlines” film allowed Hatcher the opportunity to flex her acting muscles in a different way. “It was a really wonderful experience heading at that with the sort of respect and empathy that I wanted to have for who this woman was.”
(Lifetime)
The film tells the true story of Ruth Finley, a sexual abuse survivor who, now married and living a quiet life in Witchita, Kansas, seemingly finds herself the target of the BTK (bind, torture, kill) Killer. “The BTK Killer was unbelievably horrific and destructive and traumatic for so many families,” explained Hatcher during a press conference for The Killer Inside. “Doing that research as it applies to a real thing that actually happened, that was a new experience for me. I always think of acting, whether it's comedy or drama, as a puzzle. It’s your job to solve the puzzle and try to put the pieces together. I really was excited about it. I had a great time. It was super hard work. I came back after three weeks completely exhausted, but I loved the people I worked with. I loved Greg Bean, our director, our producers, the crew, it was a fantastic group of people that worked really hard to pull this off in a short amount of time.”
“She was coming from another job all the way in Europe,” added Tahmoh Penikett, who plays Ruth Finley’s husband, Ed. “She came on a few sleep hours and went right into makeup and wardrobe fitting. We were shooting within 24 hours. She's a committed veteran and within days, they had her being dragged around and doing very physical things, which weren't the best for her health and her sleep, but she committed and she didn't complain at all.”
“For the first time in my life, I had a true anxiety attack,” Teri Hatcher revealed about the stress of coming to Vancouver from Belgium on little sleep and without the usual preparation time for the role. “I can understand mental health issues, but anxiety isn't really my burden. To have this happen to me, where I literally thought my head was going to explode, it was so pervasive in my body, my skin, I was crawling, I couldn't breathe. I remember thinking, ‘Okay, is the universe trying to teach me how to play this character? Is that happening right now?’ So, whether or not the universe was trying to help me, that was what I took a hold of. I guess that's what actors do. They can take things from their real life and try to use it. So in a way, as difficult as the beginning of the movie was for me with what was happening in my real life, it was an opportunity for me to really understand what extreme anxiety was like and how it could cause your body to behave physically and mentally. So I was able to sort of take that into this movie and apply it.”
“As an actor, I'm always excited to work with accomplished actors like Teri because you know for a fact, regardless of what's going on in their personal life, they're going to show up, they're going to bring it every single time, and she did,” Penikett added. “I think we've all dealt with mental illness, whether it be personal or with a loved one. The stigma around talking about mental illness is fortunately changing… That's one poignant thing about this movie is we're talking about an era in the late 70s and 80s where you didn't really talk about that. You didn't discuss it much. You put those things under the rug. You keep that amongst your family. And even amongst a couple, perhaps there might not be real discussion about it because we're talking about people who come from perhaps a very conservative upbringing where it's taught you don't speak about your emotions. You have a stiffer stiff upper lip and you don't put your personal problems on other people, nor do you display them in any way. That's an unfortunate part of that era, even though it doesn't seem that long ago, but we definitely explore that, and it's an important part of this story.”
“These two characters, Ruth and Ed, have been married a long time,” Teri Hatcher concluded about how Ruth makes it through her dark ordeal. “They do love each other, and I think they're both lucky in this situation to have that love connection underneath the anxious scenario that they're in.”
The Killer Inside: The Ruth Finley Story premieres Saturday June 29th, at 8/7c on Lifetime.