Based on a true story, American Murderer follows Jason Derek Brown (Tom Pelphrey), a charismatic con man bankrolling his extravagant lifestyle through a series of scams. On Brown’s trail: Lance Leising (Ryan Phillippe), a dogged FBI special agent determined to put Brown behind bars.
When Brown’s funds run low and his past catches up with him, he plots his most elaborate scheme yet, pitting himself against Leising in a deadly game of cat and mouse - and becoming the most unlikely and elusive fugitive on the FBI’s most-wanted list.
With the movie now available to watch on the big and small screens, we were fortunate enough to speak with star Shantel VanSanten (The Flash, The Boys) earlier this week. She plays Jason's sister, Jamie, in the movie, and gets put through the wringer in what proves to be a highly emotional and hard-hitting role.
During our conversation, we learned what drew Shantel to American Murderer, how she went about inhabiting this real-life character, and got her thoughts on the complex relationship Jamie has with her killer brother.
It's worth noting that this interview took place on Halloween, so we obviously had to ask Shantel what her favourite horror movie is...that's an answer you'll definitely want to check out!
Check out our full conversation with the American Murderer star in the player below.
I loved this film, but when the project and this role were offered to you, what was it that really grabbed your interest?
There were a few factors. The first thing I did was read the script, and instantly…obviously, the story is not about Jamie, but it’s about different people’s perspectives of who her brother was. To be able to tell that slice of the pie was really interesting to me. The family dynamic, the nuanced complexity of loving somebody who has done the worst possible thing you could ever possibly imagine, and the fallout from that. The disappearance of their father and the disappearance of her brother…there’s this tiny little window into each person’s lens that we get to see who he was and how he was seen in the world. That’s really interesting to be and after speaking to Matthew, the writer/director, and realising our ideas were quite aligned and knowing that Tom, Ryan, Jackie, and all sorts of incredible actors were attached to it meant it felt like a place where I knew I was going to be able to creatively spar with really wonderful actors. That’s always exciting.
I know Jamie spoke to the press about Jason for the first time last year, but was she someone you got to speak to and, if not, was even getting to see her talk of any use to you at all?
So, we filmed this in 2020! We filmed it before she came out with her book [Laughs] and I could only do the research I had through the internet. Matthew was really great about it because he said, ‘We’re not filming a documentary. This is not a real telling of what happened. This is fictional.’ It’s a story about this man and what he did and the intrigue Matthew had in it from different perspectives. It was really about drawing upon humanness and upon the complexity of human experience in some of the worst situations with the people we love the most. I didn’t have those tools and it was okay! What I did have was lots of people’s theories [Laughs] and I guess my own judgements as well. Going to a Most Wanted list and seeing someone who is next to Osama Bin Laden and thinking you could ever compare the two was my own judgement. You find yourself saying really terrible things like, ‘Well, he only killed one person.’ Then you’re judging yourself for ranking who is better than who or who is worse than who!
Taking those feelings and infusing them into a character that had their own personal love, connection, and blood as someone who is capable of this and what that complexity would feel like. I really remember filming the scene with Tom where he’s packing up and I come home after seeing the news. Just getting to sink our teeth into what that scene was…it was the same in that scene with Jackie Weaver, my mom, and not wanting to turn my brother in because he’s your brother. It’s hard because my Shantel brain thinks, ‘WTF? He did this murder, you have to turn him in!’ But, the human sister love bond side is so much more complex and interesting and that’s what I do: it’s to play those shades of grey and whether or not that’s truthful to how she felt, it was the story we ultimately decided we wanted to convey about family and love.
Jamie and Jason do have a very close, quite complex dynamic, but did you and Tom get a chance to work on that much before shooting or was their chemistry something you found quite quickly on set?
We got really lucky. When I signed on to it, and again, I’m not leading this movie, but I told Matthew, ‘There’s something really important here about family, especially considering the story of their father and the fact he was a con artist, got in trouble with the law, and disappeared.’ There was a story within a story in so few scenes that I understand, but we needed to make sure we conveyed it. We got to dive in and did some chemistry Zoom reads because it was still COVID times and quarantining for a while before we started shooting. Tom and I, over Zoom, just started to work it out and talk it out. When we actually saw each other on set, it just fell into everything so nicely because we had these times to talk about the relationship ahead of time and Tom is incredible and that was a really big factor in why I wanted to do the film as well. Not only Matthew’s passion and investment in writing and directing it, and following this story since he was young, but also working with somebody like Tom who is all in, immersive. I work in much the same way and it’s like theatre. You’re there and present for fourteen hours of playing and digging and discovering.
Emotionally, Jamie really gets put through the wringer by her brother, especially when she learns the truth, so was getting into Jamie’s mindset in those moments among the more challenging aspects of this role?
Yeah, of course. But, they’re the motivating drive for why I wanted to do it. I always say I want to take the roles that scare the shit out of me [Laughs], and the better ones are more complicated that I find myself wanting to back away from and instead really lean into that place of fear. That’s where we grow and understand human experiences. I’ve been in real-life therapy for long enough because of my own family dysfunction [Laughs] to understand and be able to use that coming to the table. As actors, we have a toolbox of experiences and when we can use them to gain insights and understanding and play through a character in our own experiences, it only makes it more worthwhile.
I actually spoke to Tom and he’s a lovely guy, as is Jason during his scenes with Jamie, so was it quite shocking for you to see such a different side of him with the other characters in this movie when you finally got to watch it?
[Laughs] I’m trying to think of the right word…yes and no. I knew the nature of the person that he wanted to be and that the film portrays him wanting to be, and then the person he found himself being. The best stories, by taking this away from being a documentary about Jason and being a story about a murderer, are really complicated. People are not always one thing. You can be a good brother. You can be a wonderful husband, but you can also be a murderer. Both can exist, and we forget quite often that we are not only our worst days. Of course, we have a reckoning to deal with when we create crimes and murders, and no part of me is condoning that, what I’m saying is that, internally, we can be conflicted. He could still be a good brother.
I knew that, in this portrayal of him, there was this doting boyfriend, a loving brother, and a party guy. There’s also a murderer. I don’t think those things exist within every human, but it’s really interesting to try to understand. I don’t think, unless you’re capable of those things, it’s something you can really fathom. What I can fathom is the human experience of allowing everything to exist at once and allowing all those black-and-white lines we can judge from our own perspective of not being murderers to be blurred, and to tell a really interesting, dynamic, and nuanced story.
Initially, of course, she does protect her brother by lying for him; what’s your take on what she was thinking in that moment? She knows what she’s done at that point, so what sort of perspective did you have in portraying that?
I mean, it’s love. You know? That’s love. Love is so complicated. We want to think that love means we’re always going to do the right thing and that love is pure and not muddled, but it is. Love makes us do the wrong thing sometimes and it’s like villains in stories. Villains are usually misunderstood and those are the best ones or the ones you can see pieces of yourself in because that’s terrifying. To think that you’re not this wonderful human being who isn’t always making the best possible choices and that love would always lead you to do the right thing, but it’s just not the truth.
What I search for in being a creative individual is truth, and my truth is, let’s say my own sister with how deeply I love her…it’s a whole other level of love. If she did something bad, I couldn’t imagine I would just do the right thing without some sort of conflict. That conflict is really interesting to sink your teeth into and make other people think about. It’s easy to judge and sit back and think, ‘Well, I would have…if only she did this…’ Instead, you think, ‘What’s the human story here? What’s the truth behind this?’ Just to tell it without judgement and worry about what the audience is going to think.
It is Halloween, of course, so I have to ask: what is your favourite horror movie?
Oh goodness me, oh my. I do not watch horror films! I don’t like Halloween [Laughs]. The last horror film I watched was so long ago…it was 28 Days Later. How many years ago? Like, 16…17…and still, to this day, if I’m on the ground floor in the middle of the woods and I walk by a window, I think I’m going to see someone with red beady eyes come to that window. I have too vivid of an imagination to sit through a horror. Stranger Things was like a horror film to me [Laughs]. That was the last one I ever watched and I could never name a favourite because I hate them all [Laughs].
American Murderer is now playing in theaters and is available on Demand and on Digital.