How Paul Walter Hauser landed in ‘the devil’s playground’ with ‘Black Bird’

Playing a convicted murderer — and probable serial killer — is challenging enough, but playing a real-life murderer whose victims were young girls? I’m a better, more reliable, kinder version of myself — to myself and other folks.” In the fact-based Apple TV+ series, charming convicted drug dealer James “Jimmy” Keene Jr. is dispatched by the FBI to the maximum-security prison holding convicted murderer Lawrence Hall. “So when you’re in a town like New Orleans, which has a lot of darkness, and you pair that with playing a serial killer. In one of their final scenes together, when Hall is hurling poisonous invective at Keene, “After the second or third take, as the guards are pulling me away, I tried to stick my fingers in Taron’s mouth as if to say, ‘I’m gonna give you something to remember me by.’ “I’m trying to scare him for real. When you have another actor that’s game, you get results like that.” By the end of the shoot, “We both just wanted to take a shower and get the hell outta New Orleans,” Hauser says with a laugh.