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How Benjamin Walker Bulked Up for His American Psycho Role

How Benjamin Walker Bulked Up for His American Psycho Role

Joan Marcus
Joan Marcus

The yuppie serial killer gets a new staging—and a new body.

"When I first read about people wanting to make a musical of American Psycho, I thought, What a horrible idea," says Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, who went on to write the book for the stage version of the controversial Bret Easton Ellis novel. "But then I began to think there was a world we could visit, the 1980s, and that Patrick Bateman is our hero--or antihero--and I started liking the humor of it." Featuring music by Duncan Sheik (Spring Awakening), the show, which premiered in London in 2013, has now made its way to Broadway. Sheik is using entirely electronic '80s pop songs as cues for certain scenes, and the production is set to offer a nightmare phantasmagoria of Wall Street excess at its most selfish and vicious. Of course, the pinnacle of the 2000 movie adaptation was the edifying sight of aseriously ripped Christian Bale exercising in tighty-whities. Now Benjamin Walker will embody the yuppie serial killer Bateman--body being the operative part of the word. So does the actor think he's in optimal physical shape for the role? "Christian Bale is a beautiful man," Walker says, before adding dryly, "I'm doing some push-ups."

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