“Cross” star Ryan Eggold said people thought his decision to go blonde for his role as serial killer Ed Ramsey was rooted in an effort to channel veteran rapper Eminem.
“No, I was not going for Slim Shady,” Eggold told TheWrap after asking reporter Raquel Harris if she thought his look mirrored the iconic Detroit artist, who was once known for rocking a bleach blonde hair style during the early 2000s. “Lately people were like, ‘Were you doing an Eminem thing?’ I’m like, ‘What? No, he’s a killer. No.”
Eggold stars as Ed Ramsey the villain in the “Cross” Season 1. He’s member of Washington, D.C.’s upper echelon but comes from humble beginnings in the Midwest. He’s suave, laid back, charming but devious. And he loves playing cat and mouse with Alex Cross (Aldis Hodge), toying with him to see how skilled the detective is noted to be. Ultimately, Alex ends up one step ahead of Ed, foiling his plans to collect 12 victims in an effort to emulate the most infamous murderers.
Eggold said giving Ed blonde hair was an idea he came up with after his departure from medical drama “New Amsterdam,” saying he wanted to distinguish himself from his Dr. Max Goodwin.
“I was coming off ‘New Amsterdam.’ I was playing this guy who was such a hero with so much heart and warmth and empathy for so many years, which I loved,” Eggold explained. “And I was coming into a new role that, as you said, is very, very different. I was looking at it and trying to think about how to embody it. And I just thought, ‘Here’s a guy who is meticulously crafting other people’s looks and manicuring them, managing their eyebrows and adjusting their hair color. And then I thought he would apply that same sense of curation to his own look.”
Eggold continued: ‘This guy so desperately wants to be larger than life and be accepted … There’s a part of him that that wants to be this all-American, perfect Ken doll. So I thought his, in his sort of deranged mind, his attempt at that would be this blonde hair and this smile and the suit and sort of an ‘American Psycho,’ you know, trying to be perfect. I thought that would be a fun dichotomy to play with.”
Despite receiving some “pushback,” Eggold said “Cross” creator Ben Watkins was totally game.
“Ben Watkins was supportive top to bottom,” Eggold shared. “Certain folks were like, ‘That’s weird.’ And I was like, ‘Yes, it should be weird. It should feel a little unusual.’ [For] me, who’s not a natural blonde, I knew it would look a little stilted on me a little, not quite natural. And I just thought it would make for a nice off-ness. Ultimately, everybody was was on board. But yeah, at first, some people were like, ‘He’s gonna do what?’”
Eggold said he sported the look a little while after “Cross” finished up.
“I kept it for a little while afterwards. It was fun to play with,” Eggold said. “It was kind of punk rock, you know, t-shirt, jeans with blonde thing … It’s cool. But I shaved my head fairly soon after, which was less about the hair and more about shedding playing a psychopathic killer.”
While Eggold’s role frightened viewers watching, the actor says there were some terrifying moments for him on set, specifically the teeth removal scene in Episode 5 with co-star Eloise Mumford, who played Ed’s victim Shannon Whitmer. In an effort to make Shannon look more like one of his serial killer idols, Aileen Wuornos.
“Some of the torture moments were hard because it required a lot of, like, actual, metal equipment. I mean, the chipping her teeth out, I had a chisel and a hammer next to her actual teeth, like, this close and as the actor, you’re so terrified of hurting the other actor. And also, teeth stuff is so scary and gross,” Eggold said, mentioning another horrifying scene was a monologue he had to perform as Ed.
“One thing that was kind of scary and exciting was the speech that they wrote for me. I think Sam (Ernst) and Jim (Dunn), two of our great writers, along with Ben, wrote this sort of manifesto speech for my character near the end, and that was terrifying, because I have this mask — I’m sort of dehumanized in this way. [Ed’s] like this thing, this entity now, and he’s spewing his ideology, which is very dark and very twisted and very much about death and things. So to figure out how to embody that and believe it, and where that lives in you was a challenge.”
All eight episodes of “Cross” are streaming on Prime Video.