How ’Lisey’s Story’s Dane DeHaan Collaborated with Stephen King to Reimagine His Chilling Role

Dane DeHaan’s take on Jim Dooley may be one of the most unsettling performances of the year. Whenever DeHaan appears in Lisey’s Story, dread follows in his quiet, contemplative, and sporadically unhinged wake. And if the Stephen King character reminds you of some of the most explosive and unpredictable corners of the internet’s incel community, that’s kind of the point.

“We latched onto the misogynistic aspect of it, the almost incel-y, unpredictable people that you see today that are the ones terrorizing people and being violent,” DeHaan told Decider on the role. “A villain of today’s society, a byproduct of all these things in today’s society that are causing young men to be violent.”

But Dooley wasn’t always that way. It took a lot of hard work for this larger-than-life King character to transform into a foe that will chill modern audiences to their core. That portrayal would have never happened if it wasn’t for the open collaboration between Lisey’s Story‘s writer Stephen King, its director Pablo Larraín, and the actor behind the monster. DeHaan walked Decider through what it was like to transform a classic King trope into a source of modern horror.

Decider: Your character in Lisey’s Story is deeply disturbing. What did you first think when you were reading over the role of Jim Dooley?

Dane DeHaan: I generally probably thought that. He’s a deeply disturbing person. What was exciting about the opportunity was after reading it I sat down with the director, Pablo Larraín, and we started talking about what he really wanted to do with the character and all these ideas he had for him to make him something different, certainly different than what’s in the novel but also different than what was written in the script and make this creepy, off-putting person that would resonate with a modern audience. The way he talked about it and the ideas he had were just so intriguing. It kind of turned out to be this incredibly exploratory process between him and myself and Stephen King. That was just incredible and unique in a way. I’ve never really worked like this before.

Can you elaborate on what you mean about creating Jim Dooley to be someone who would scare a modern audience?

Yeah, sure. How he was originally written was as a large, physically intimidating Southern guy. We wanted to evoke something that was more in line with things that are scary in today’s society. Certainly we latched onto the misogynistic aspect of it, the almost incel-y, unpredictable people that you see today that are the ones terrorizing people and being violent. A villain of today’s society, a byproduct of all these things in today’s society that are causing young men to be violent.

It certainly comes across. I understand that King was pretty heavily involved on set. How did working with him help sculpt the character? And what did you learn from him as an actor?

He was amazing to work with, especially the way we worked on my character Dooley. He was allowing us the freedom to explore and to expand and to change something that was originally written into something different. What would happen was I would have conversations with the director. We would have these moments on set of exploration and things that weren’t necessarily in the script. Stephen would watch that, and from that and probably conversations he was having with the director, would write additional material for the character. That would be an invaluable tool to get new scenes. Like, “Oh, I get what you guys are doing. What about this? And what about this?” In that way he was really allowing the writing to speak for itself in terms of how we were collaborating together.

Obviously that’s an invaluable tool when you’re creating a terrifying person. You get to do it with Stephen King, and he’s writing you stuff. It’s pretty mind-blowing to even say, but he was incredible to work with. And maybe what I learned from him was the value of not being precious about your art or your material and allowing it to change, allowing it to morph. The value of collaboration.

Throughout the first three episodes there’s this budding tension between Lisey and Dooley but in Episode 4 they finally collide. What was it like working so closely with Julianne Moore?

It was really incredible. Obviously her work and her career speaks for itself. She’s one of the best. But I think what was surprising and refreshing about working with her was how kind she was, how much she wanted to get to know me, how giggly she was, and how from that I really trusted her. And I felt like she trusted me. When making something so dark and when the cameras are rolling to have to go to those dark places, it was nice that trust was coming from a place of true kindness. She’s really just an incredible person.

The first two episodes of Lisey’s Story premiere on Apple TV+ Friday, June 4. New episodes premiere Fridays. 

This interview has been edited for clarity and length. An earlier version of this story incorrectly referred to Dane DeHaan as Dan, and has since been updated.

Watch Lisey's Story on Apple TV+