The Los Angeles Times does this series called “The Emmy Contenders” where they sit down with possible Emmy contenders and they basically do an in-depth discussion/interview about the work. Very little personal information, very few questions about anything other than the possible Emmy contender show. Jamie Dornan sat down with the LAT to discuss his work on The Fall. Most of the interview is boring (seriously, I watched about five minutes yesterday and it was like watching paint dry), but Jamie did reveal one disturbing detail about how he prepared to play a serial killer on The Fall. His preparation? He stalked a woman in real life.

Jamie Dornan, who plays stealthy serial killer on the Netflix crime drama “The Fall,” took extra (maybe, borderline illegal) steps in getting into the mindset of the tortured persona. The 32-year-old Irish actor dropped by the Times on Monday for a live chat, and he found himself reluctantly revealing a tactic he used to better understand Paul Spector, the husband and father who moonlights as a psychopath serial killer with a fetish for tying up his victims before killing them.

“The first series, I did do a couple of things to try to get inside [his mind]. On the tube, which is our underground system” — Dornan began with his anecdote before stopping himself. “Can we get arrested for this? Hold on … this is a really bad reveal: I, like, followed a woman off the train one day to see what it felt like to pursue someone like that.”

Dornan said he kept his distance from his target, and once she reached her stop, lurked behind her for a couple of blocks. And the resulting feeling was one that helped understand Spector’s compulsion on some level.

“It felt kind of exciting, in a really sort of dirty way,” he added. “I’m sort of not proud of myself. But I do honestly think I learned something from it, because I’ve obviously never done any of that. It was intriguing and interesting to enter that process of ‘what are you following her for?’ and ‘what are you trying to find out?”

[From the LAT]

This bugs me. I think Jamie knew that this anecdote doesn’t make him sound good too. I guess we can say “well, at least he felt shame” or “at least he knew it was wrong” but it still bugs me. Imagine it’s not Jamie Dornan, imagine it’s just some guy. Some guy is staring at you on the subway and then he gets off at the same stop and he follows you for several blocks. It’s extremely creepy, regardless of his “motive.”

Photos courtesy of Fame/Flynet.