With his beefy résumé, dashing good looks, and recent marriage to up-and-coming British bombshell Kaya Scodelario (Skins and The Maze Runner), it’s safe to say Benjamin Walker is a force to be reckoned with—and that’s even before he puts on Patrick Bateman’s murderous smile for the upcoming Broadway run of American Psycho.

No stranger to the stage, Walker (a Juilliard graduate perhaps best known for his critically acclaimed performance on Broadway as the title character in Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson) is excited to dig into the lead role in the musical, rife with eighties-inspired songs by Duncan Sheik and directed with style by Rupert Goold.

“It’s excruciatingly gruesome and beautiful at the same time,” says Walker of the project, in which he, as Bateman, frequently has direct conversations with the audience. “There’s something voyeuristic about it. And though I think there will be a healthy amount of distance from the story in the play, I think you’re going to root for Patrick Bateman in this one. He’s your anti-hero. Everybody’s got a little bit of the devil in them.”

The handsome Armani-clad Bateman—a tough Wall Street guy who also happens to be a serial killer—is described by Walker as “kind of distant and cold.” That’s about as far as you can get from Walker, a 33-year-old native of Cartersville, Georgia, who currently lives in Williamsburg and hosts a monthly comedy variety show he produces with friend Rudy Valdez called “Find the Funny” at Joe’s Pub. Or, as he joked for our sake, maybe it could soon be renamed “Vanity Fun.”

American Psycho, based on the same Bret Easton Ellis book that inspired Mary Harron’s 2000 film starring Christian Bale, begins previews at Broadway’s Gerald Schoenfeld Theater on March 24.