Morag Peacock was not a Wuornos obsessive when the job arrived. She told The U.S. Sun that she had to research the case, surround herself with documentaries and factual footage, and go through what she called a horrible catalogue: the crimes, the upbringing, the record. She is Scottish. She performed in an American accent. She studied hours of tape for the quirks, the mannerisms and the expressive use of the eyes, then filmed every scene herself. When she first read that AI was involved, she hesitated. She told USA Today she is either too much of a boomer or simply not up with the trends, and she and her agent checked what the end result would actually be. Her verdict, given to The Hollywood Reporter and to Los Angeles magazine, was that she had not been cloned, that there was no AI persona, and that the audience was watching her with a digital mask on top, closer to CGI or to a costume added last than to a replacement. She told Los Angeles, “We filmed every scene. I, me, Morag, did perform every bit of that.”

The test she did not expect was recognition. She told The U.S. Sun she was impressed and that it was very strange, because she could recognize herself behind and underneath the mask. She spotted her own eyes, which she described to USA Today as her brown beady eyes, in the finished woman. Her family recognized her too. The Hollywood Reporter reported that she was pleasantly surprised when she saw the trailer. The mask still read as the executed woman. Both things were true at once, and that is the detail that makes the illusion harder to dismiss. Peacock singled out the execution scene as the intense one, the final words, the part she called quite tough. Producers say the chill on set came before the likeness. Dost told The Hollywood Reporter that with no VFX visible, a finished take already felt like Wuornos was in the room. The mask was added later.

Peacock has also said it felt almost as if the ᴅᴇᴀᴅ woman had been brought back to life, a line ᴅᴇᴀᴅline carried when the series was announced in July 2026, and she has been careful to keep the other half of the sentence: still her, under a costume, not a clone. She knows the split in the audience. She told USA Today she is not a fool, that some people will not like this at all and others will not mind, and that what mattered was that it sat right with her and with her boundaries. Dost has used her performance as the bright line against the other kind of AI. He told USA Today he would draw a clear line between this mask and an AI actor such as Tilly Norwood, which he called awful, because that approach tries to replace actors and, in his words, people do not want actors replaced. Peacock did every scene. The layer came last. The eyes are the crack in the perfect face, and they are also the proof she used to decide she had not been erased.