“It’s kind of murder-y and gory and extreme,” Chelsie Preston Crayford grins. “It’s always fun to be a little bit unhinged.”
We’re talking about her new series Dark City: The Cleaner which, as well as being murder-y, gory and extreme, is also darkly funny. The show follows aserial killer who takes a janitorial job at a police station in order to monitor their investigation into him.
The series does not squander this killer idea. It’s unique and, due to its graphic nature and off-kilter premise, is quite an unexpected show to be made here. It’s full of terrific performances, and having been shot on location around Christchurch, it feels distinctly Kiwi. Even with those superficial similarities to the American crime-drama Dexter.
Preston Crayford, fresh off starring roles in Nude Tuesday, M3GAN and Baby Done, stars as Melissa, a journalist who travels down South to investigate the “Christchurch Carver”, as the papers have dubbed him, a serial killer targeting women before getting extremely involved in proceedings.
But we spend almost the entirety of time with Cohen Holloway (After the Party, Hunt for the Wilderpeople), who plays the unassuming, socially awkward Joe - AKA the Christchurch Carver.
Dark City: The Cleaner is streaming now on Neon, Soho and Sky Go. Photo / Geoffrey Short
“It’s such an exciting role. He’s a cleaner and, you know, also a psychopath,” Holloway says, before adding, “Although, the night before I had to kill someone, I’d get really quiet about it.”
The show literally takes you inside the head of Joe via Holloway’s deadpan, dry narration, which comments on every interaction and reveals every thought of the character, no matter how mundane, morbid or murderous. There’s a frightening banality to his thoughts and the matter-of-fact way he describes his actions. Not to mention the method by which he selects his victims, by first inventing entirely fictional, full-blown romantic relationships with them.
For Holloway, going deep inside the mind of a murderer every day for almost two months took an emotional toll. He says as an actor, it’s easier to play a victim than a violent perpetrator.
“It was real tough,” he says. “I bought a little kit set fire from the local Mitre 10, and I’d go home, light a little fire and just let the day go. That helped me heaps. It was a little ritual to come back to myself.”
“What’s so beautiful about working with Cohen is that he is so light-hearted and funny,” Preston Crayford says jumping in. “On any show, the lead sets the tone of the set. And Cohen lifted every room that he walked into. Even though it was this really dark subject matter, it was also a really fun atmosphere and always done with, like, a lot of humour. You can’t just have the darkness - you also have to have some humour and fun in there. Cohen brought that tenfold.”
Holloway smiles and says, “You’ve got to find the joy or the spark of wanting to open that door and go in that room. To go to that part of yourself.”
While Holloway felt the burden of his character’s violent proclivities and murderous thoughts, Preston Crayford found Melissa’s outlook freeing.
Cohen Holloway plays Joe Middleton, a janitor at the local police station, in Dark City: The Cleaner. Photo / Geoffrey Short
“As a woman, you deal with a base level of fear walking around in the world. I’d really think twice before walking around at night or things like that. There was something about being the dangerous person - even just at work - and experimenting with that frame of mind,” she says. “That was really liberating, because I was like, ‘Whoa, I’m the scary one! Yeah!’ I don’t usually feel that way in my normal life. I found it really fun. Not taking it too seriously, but having fun with just being a bit psycho for a while.”
The screen is home to so many iconic serial killers and legendary performances that have embedded themselves into pop culture. Think Anthony Hopkins menacingly licking his lips from behind bars as Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs, Christian Bale’s manically gleeful rampages as Patrick Bateman in American Psycho, or Anthony Perkins’ seemingly harmless murderer Norman Bates in Psycho. Each so varied and identifiable in their own unique ways. Holloway admits finding his take on a psychopathic serial killer was “a real toughy”.
“I found him through the inner monologue,” he says. “I’d talk to people on set and there would be an inner monologue written for Joe. The writer, Paul, actually came on set, and the whole process of what you’re filming is totally different to what’s in his mind. He’d say, ‘Are you gonna, like, do that a bit bigger?’, and I’d be like, ‘Well… the story before and after this scene… and with the music and everything, this is all you need. Otherwise, you’re just a [boring] scary guy’.”
For her part, Preston Crayford found her inspiration a lot closer to home. In her bedroom, in fact.
“I have this toxic trait, which is that right before bedtime, I get the zoomies and try to annoy whoever I’m with as hard as I can. My partner calls it ‘Little F**ker mode’,” she laughs. “I came back from the first rehearsals and Melissa was really hard to find and pin down. Then we had the next lot of rehearsals, and I came back and said to my partner, ‘Oh my god. She’s Little F**ker!’. I was delighted, because she’s like the most annoying part of me.”
Chelsie Preston Crayford as Melissa in Dark City: The Cleaner. Photo / Geoffrey Short
The show is based on the novels by the award-winning crime writer Paul Cleave who, like Stephen King, plants his stories in his hometown. His book The Cleaner came out in 2006, with its follow-up Joe Victim appearing seven years later in 2013. It was a very different time, so it raises the question of whether a show based on a serial killer who exclusively targets women is a tough sell in our enlightened year of 2024.
Preston Crayford shrugs and lobs the question back.
“You tell us,” she says, before elaborating: “But I did have apprehension for sure. I was asking questions about what Melissa’s role was going to be in the show and whether she was going to enact that same type of violence to men.”
Then, as a slightly scary grin takes over her face, she says, “Because that felt important to me - to have equal opportunity murdering.”
Karl Puschmann is the Culture Editor and an entertainment columnist for the NZ Herald. His fascination lies in finding out what drives and inspires creative people.
