How Zac Efron became Ted Bundy for a revolutionary type of serial killer movie

If you were asked to cast an actor to play the most notorious serial killer of all time, your first thought probably wouldn’t be to call the teenage heartthrob from High School Musical. But that’s exactly what Joe Berlinger did.

The Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile director knew he wanted Zac Efron to play Ted Bundy as soon as he’d decided to take on the script, because Extremely Wicked isn’t your usual serial killer movie.

It shows Bundy through the eyes of his live-in girlfriend Elizabeth Kloepfer (Lily Collins), who changed her named to Kendall and wrote a book about her experience - Collins even met her while preparing for the role. The film focuses on Bundy as a person, rather than as a killer.

“I was not interested in making a film about the depravity of violence,” Berlinger said in an interview with Sky Cinema. “I was interested in making a film about why and how people are deceived by psychopaths.”

Efron is known for his effortless charm. He made millions of teenagers fall in love with him as Troy Bolton, and hasn’t stopped making people swoon now he’s into his 30s.

Bundy, strangely, was the same - and it was his charisma that helped him get away with his heinous crimes long enough to kill at least 30 women.

This is why, after initial doubts, Efron agreed to take on the role. He was assured the film was not about glamorising murder, but providing a chilling look at how psychopaths can manipulate through their allure and magnetism.

“The way so much of the public believed he was innocent shows how good Ted was at being bad, and that is the lucrative part for an actor, that element,” Efron told Sky Cinema.

He was excited about using his Hollywood-ready personality to find a fresh new perspective on true crime.

So he had the looks, he had the charm, the one thing he didn’t have, though, were the teeth.

Efron, like most of the rest of Los Angeles, normally has a perfect veneer. That would have to change for him to portray Bundy, whose crooked smile became a key part of his conviction.

Bundy left bite marks on victim Lisa Levy, and they were so distinctive they helped the jury send him down for murder. It was essential that this detail was included, so Efron spent hours on end wearing false teeth - to the extent that his retainer no longer fit by the end of shooting.

“It’s forever changed me!” Efron says, and he had to be careful not to bite down hard, otherwise he’d damage his actual teeth.

They were Efron’s one major prop in transforming into the notorious serial murderer. That’s what makes Bundy - and Extremely Wicked - so chilling. The charm, his glistening eyes, the captivating personality? They were already there.

Bundy used these tools on his victims, and he used them on the general public too. Bundy’s landmark trial in 1979 was the first to be televised live in the United States. It was the first time people were allowed a real look inside an active court room, and boy did Bundy know how to play it.

“The court was Ted’s stage,” Efron told Sky Cinema. “When they put the camera inside Ted Bundy’s murder trial it gave him power and control,

Now, by giving the victims a real voice and by asking us to consider how we tell stories of violence and the people who enact it, Efron and Extremely Wicked are hammering a nail in the coffin of the salacious days of true crime that Bundy began, by ushering in a new, more thoughtful chapter in the genre.

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