Tyler Posey is in his murder mystery era starting with Fox’s Murder in a Small Town — and hopefully ending with a role in a Knives Out sequel.
“I love Knives Out so much,” Posey, 34, exclusively told Us Weekly after playing Ryan in the Tuesday, October 21, episode of the procedural. “I’m a huge fan of Freida McFadden’s writing and her first movie [The Housemaid] is about to come out. So I would love to be involved in that — in any of it.”
Posey wants “more of this genre” when it comes to future roles, adding, “I actually have a murder mystery [and horror] project that I’ve written and that’s that we’re going to start filming pretty soon. I’m all for it.”
Fans can get a glimpse at Posey in his element in Tuesday’s episode, which followed a troubled high schooler who discovered a wounded body in the woods. This led investigators to look for the attempted murderer and the evidence pointed to an unsolved case involving the victim’s daughter from years prior.
“Everything was appealing about the show. I am a huge fan of murder mystery whodunnit and there’s just something so appealing about it. You get so sucked into the content and the audience really gets to play along. It’s this puzzle piece that the audience tries to figure out the entire time,” Posey shared. “One thing that’s cool about the show is that it’s based in this picturesque and beautiful seaside town. Underneath there’s a lot of murder and problems. That’s really cool symbolism for a lot of these guest stars — especially my character, Ryan.”
Posey was thrilled to play the “super layered” character.
“He looks like this really kind guy. He’s spiritual and he’s got crystals all over him. He’s checking in on his friend and he worried about him, which I think is all true. But underneath, there’s just all this torment and a layer of everything that he’s gone through, which is all these terrible accidents that just keep following him around,” he explained. “He keeps digging himself deeper and deeper into these really troubling holes. At a certain point, his only resolve to get out of this hole is to do something really drastic.”
The actor continued: “People love to watch human nature [stories] and to be able to respond and resonate with these characters. Ryan is just so complex and troubled and sad. You do feel for him and what’s cool about this character is that a lot of the viewers will find a lot of sympathy for him.”
After the episode built up the mystery of the killer, it might have come as a surprise to some to see Posey get unmasked at the end.
“We wanted it to be really natural because we wanted him to actually be that character. We gave him this really great backstory of how he met Jack through grief counseling because he wanted to make sure that Jack wasn’t on his trail. He wanted to stay close to him but in doing so he really did develop a friendship and a love for Jack,” Posey noted. “Everything is real with him and we just really leaned into the realness of him being very concerned. You know, he was, but it just it kind of seems like to the audience that he’s concerned about his friend — rather than concerned about his own livelihood. We really got to lean into that and play with that and it does throw off the audience. Playing a role like this, you definitely want to make sure that you’re not giving it away.”
There was also a “balancing act” of hinting at Ryan’s true nature while not giving it away for those holding out hope that Posey was playing a good guy after originally winning Us over with his fan-favorite role on Teen Wolf.
“We really got to play into that. We had to walk this balance of making sure this guy stays very concerned and have a levity to him,” he added. “That is the hope that I have for everybody who’s watching the show because that’s the, that’s the nature of these shows. You don’t want to know who did it until the very end.”
Murder in a Small Town airs on Fox Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET.
