In 2019, Max Winkler was an indie film director about to level up.
Having cut his teeth directing sitcoms in the ’10s — including “New Girl,” “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” and “Fresh Off the Boat” — 2017’s dark comedy “Flower” was warmly received by audiences. His next film was the gritty boxing drama “Jungleland,” which starred Charlie Hunnam and Jack O’Connell. Debuting at the Toronto International Film Festival, it got solid reviews, and seemed like it could be a commercial hit — maybe even get some awards consideration.
Ultimately, the pair kicked off a robust collaboration that grew and grew, with Winkler directing episodes of and executive producing nearly every Murphy project, from the “Monster” franchise to “Love Story,” “The Shards” to “Feud: Capote vs. The Swans”
“Love Story”
Courtesy of FX
“I think we both genuinely like to impress one another,” Winkler says. “He writes the script and the scripts are really, really good. Or he does the dramaturgy for it, and says, ‘Are you interested in this?’ If it’s something I feel like I connect to, I love working with him. I find his brain fascinating, and the fact that I happen to find him to be truly singular and brilliant is the first part of it. So when he turns over a script and says, ‘Are you interested?’ I’ll go and I’ll make it, and we’ll talk about it. And we talk about what our influences are and what we want it to feel like. And then I will try really, really, really hard to surprise him and impress him and shock him by the time he sees a cut. We go back and forth and back and forth, and it’s like a dare. My collaboration with him is something that is really important to me.”
Even though Winkler is in Murphy’s inner circle, the creator is constantly full of surprises, as Murphy takes unexpected turns. For example, Winkler first caught wind of “Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story” while in the middle of keeping things running on two wildly different series.
“Monster: The Ed Gein Story”
Courtesy of Netflix
That penchant for dark humor reverberates through Winkler onto the set. Hunnam, who became friends with Winkler after “Jungleland,” and has worked with him such on projects as “Ed Gein” and “Lizzie Borden,” says that Winkler’s wit helped formalize the tricky tone on “Lizzie Borden.”
“One of the great joys of my career is getting to make Max laugh,” Hunnam says. “He laughs a lot during takes behind the monitor, and you try with something that you think is going to be funny and play it out. Whether you hear that laugh or you don’t is a barometer of how successful you’ve been. If we were making him laugh, we felt like, ‘All right, this is probably on the right track.’”
Despite his laughter, Ella Beatty, who plays Lizzie, says that Winkler also has an openness that allowed her to experiment in portraying the complex character.
“He has such a spirit of play and emotional availability,” she says. “So there really was an environment of trusting what happened and getting really specific on your homework in the beginning, so that you can come in and not show any of it and you can just play.”
“Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story”
Courtesy of Netflix
Working so closely on so many of Murphy’s shows not only gave Winkler a creative charge — “OK, I can express myself in a different way and still do what I do well” — but the newfound spotlight of high-profile projects also gave him an exciting new relationship with art.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
