Playing Charles Manson Is Really Working for This 'Justified' Actor

Talk about being typecast for the weirdest sort of role ever. Damon Herriman, of FX’s Justified fame, is going to be playing the infamous Charles Manson on both the next season of David Fincher’s Mindhunter and Quentin Tarantino’s new movie Once Upon A Time In Hollywood. But this is definitely not the worst sort of typecasting an actor could face, especially because Herriman is poised to work with some great directors on both projects.

Quentin Tarantino’s “Manson movie” finally cast Herriman as its Manson, according to VICE. But according to Collider, director David Fincher had already cast Herriman as Manson in the second season of Netflix’s Mindhunter before Tarantino nabbed him for the Once Upon A Time In Hollywood role. Herriman apparently had one of those faces that both teams looked at and thought, “Yea, that’s Manson,” which obviously worked out for him, but it’s probably a little bit weird to realize you have more than a passing resemblance to a convicted murderer.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is a crime drama that will explore the Manson Family murders, according to The Guardian. It will be set in Los Angeles in 1969, and the outlet describes the part as Herriman’s “first major U.S. movie role.” Mindhunter season two, on the other hand, takes place in the late 1970s and early 1980s, VICE reports.

Not only will Herriman get to work with Tarantino, but other actors cast in the project include Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Burt Reynolds, Al Pacino, Dakota Fanning, and Margot Robbie, who are all Hollywood heavy hitters in their own ways. So being sort of “typecast” into Manson roles is definitely not the worst thing that could happen to Herriman’s career at this particular moment.

Herriman already shot his scenes for Mindhunter in July, Collider reports. But there isn’t a release date yet for the second season of Mindhunter, so it’s not clear whether it will debut before Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, which is scheduled for release on July 26, 2019, according to IMDB. This may end up being a race to see which project presents Herriman as Manson to the world first.

The fact is, neither of these roles are even Herriman’s first time playing a famous convicted criminal. He also previously played the Lindbergh baby kidnapper Bruno Hauptmann in Clint Eastwood’s J. Edgar in 2011.

But he’s also been in a ton of other projects, according to Herriman’s own IMDB page, so hopefully he’s not stuck playing murderers and kidnappers or Manson in particular for the rest of his career. But for now, being cast as Manson in two different projects certainly isn’t a bad thing for the former Justified cast member.