ROSS LYNCH

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There are, by now, any number of documented ways to break out of the Disney Channel box. Justin Timberlake joined a boy band, Britney Spears sexed up pigtails and a schoolgirl uniform in “…Baby One More Time,” Cole Sprouse went to NYU to study archaeology before returning to television in Riverdale, and Miley Cyrus twerked with a foam finger at the Video Music Awards. Ross Lynch, the actor and singer formerly of Austin & Ally, has found an entirely new path, however: playing a serial killer.

In his new film My Friend Dahmer, which marks his post-Disney feature début, Lynch, now twenty-one, plays famed murderer Jeffrey Dahmer—convicted of raping, murdering, and dismembering seventeen men and boys, sometimes committing necrophilia and cannibalism as well—in his high school years, offering a fascinating look into his time as a lonely, neglected teenager before he began killing. The young Dahmer has a fascination with embalming cats and other roadkill—he would later move on to doing the same with some of his human victims—but he is in some ways similar to a lot of adolescents, misunderstood and desperate to fit in, and that facet is what Lynch draws out in his nuanced performance, although he makes it clear that the film is not a defense of Dahmer’s future actions as much as a cautionary tale. “I empathized with him, because I’m being him and you can’t judge your subject if you’re an actor,” he explains. “He was a teenager and there were causes that led him to do what he did later in life, but I also know from the research I did that he wasn’t necessarily fond of killing. He couldn’t help himself, but I know that he was also lonely and he wanted somebody that wasn’t going to leave him, because so may people already did.”

Based on Derf Backderf’s autobiographical graphic novel of the same name (Backderf, played by Alex Wolff, actually went to high school in Ohio with Dahmer), the film imagines Dahmer’s twisted inner life and was even filmed partly in Dahmer’s childhood home. Lynch says he felt comfortable there—“I was home in a way, because that was my character’s house,” he laughs—but says the authenticity of the setting was unnerving to most of the rest of the cast and crew. One particularly unsettling moment came after filming a pivotal scene of the contentious final goodbye between Backderf and Dahmer. “After we wrapped, I thought we were going to throw up because the feeling was so intense,” Lynch recalls. “I had never been more lost in a scene, which is the goal in a way. You want to be present in the moment to where you’re not thinking about anything else, but Alex went out back and was like, ‘Man, eff this guy Dahmer!’ and we lost power to everything. Then he was like, ‘I’m sorry…’”

Lynch happily anticipated the inevitable headlines—“Disney Channel star plays Jeffrey Dahmer, whatever,” he jokes—and chose the role precisely because it was unexpected and offered a new challenge. He filmed the upcoming comedy Status Update, playing a popular teenage heartthrob opposite fellow Disney graduates Olivia Holt and Gregg Sulkin, before My Friend Dahmer, but says he is pleased that it is this film that is marking the first step in a new phase in his career. “I like having that huge one-eighty flip and I like surprising people,” he explains. “I’m looking to do it again. I liked it a lot and I want to be unpredictable.”

Lynch says the dark film was exactly what he was looking for after four years on the Disney Channel, but he admits that, even while he was invigorated by the opportunity to stretch himself, the project took a lot out of him emotionally. “I really went headfirst and I was really experimenting with my process,” he says. “They put this mousse in my hair to make it that mousy color, and every day when I got home I would take a really long shower and I could see the color leaving my hair and it was kind of my way of shedding Dahmer for the day, but there were still days when I felt strangely numb. That’s ultimately what happened to Dahmer, he became sociopathic and he lost his humanity. When I got home after filming it, I was antisocial for a little while.”

Born in Colorado, Lynch moved to Los Angeles with his family as a preteen looking to pursue entertainment in all its various mediums. An accomplished guitarist, pianist, and singer, he also fronts the pop rock band R5, which he formed in 2009 with three of his siblings and a family friend. His big break came in 2012 when he landed the lead role in Austin & Ally as a musician who becomes famous after a video of him performing goes viral. The show would run for four years until its finale in January 2016. “I was fifteen when I booked it, and I didn’t really realize it, but my dad told me that it was the biggest audition I’d ever had,” he explains. “It’s such rocket ship. Obviously there’s a lot of scenarios where it doesn’t go anywhere, but there’s a lot of people who have had really great success from starting there. The fifteen-year-old version of me was just excited to have a job.”

Austin & Ally was one of the Disney Channel’s most popular shows during its run, and made Lynch an international celebrity amongst tweens. He headlined the Disney Channel musical Teen Beach Movie, which became the second-highest-rated Disney Channel Original Movie when it premiered in 2013, along with its sequel, cementing his popularity and his reputation as an all-around entertainer who can sing, act, and dance. “I’m not necessarily strictly a musician or strictly an actor,” he reasons. “I just like to be creative, and I actually look forward to doing more things that people wouldn’t expect me to do, just to broaden the horizon.”

To that end, Lynch also made his stage début last year, starring in a production of A Chorus Line at the Hollywood Bowl. No stranger to large audiences thanks to his years of touring with R5, Lynch says he was nonetheless struck by the power of theater during the weekend-long run. “That was unreal,” he recalls. “One of the coolest parts about A Chorus Line is the starting number. You start facing the back and you’re doing it and then all of a sudden you turn around and it’s the freaking Hollywood Bowl and there’s endless rows of people.”

Lynch says that he spends most of his time working on his music—largely due to the face that he can do it on his own instead of waiting around to get cast—but with My Friend Dahmer now out to a largely positive reception, the film world appears to be wide open for him. And if some of his most ardent fans might not catch his latest turn, he is confident that it was the right decision for him as he embarks on his adult career. “I’ve heard from some parents who are like, ‘I’m not going to let my daughter see it, but I’m going to see it,’ which is awesome,” he laughs. “Some of the younger fans won’t get to see it, but they’re still stoked about it. I think ultimately people like to see growth and they like to see people succeed. I welcome the challenge.”

My Friend Dahmer is out now.