Dennis Quaid, who had a shining role in The Substance last year as a Terry Gilliam-style grotesquerie, will play American killer Keith Hunter Jesperson a.k.a. “The Happy Face Killer” (because of the smiley faces he wrote on notes to authorities) in a new series, Happy Face, for Paramount+.
The only thing America is better at than producing serial killers is drama series and movies based on those serial killers. Maybe it was the leaded gasoline of the mid-20th century that crushed the nation’s neural empathy centers, but the 60s through the 90s churned out some of the most deranged serial killers of all time.
Though Quaid plays the dead-eyed killer as the center of the string of grisly murders in the early 90s, the series focuses on Jesperson’s daughter, Melissa G. Moore who, at 15, discovered her father’s secret life as a criminal.
The series is based on Moore’s 2018 podcast, Happy Face, which deals with her coming to terms with her father’s crimes and her own identity. Moore must also find out whether an innocent man will receive the death penalty for a crime that her father committed. In 2021, Moore talked with Marie Claire about creating the podcast and the media about events with real victims:

“Before the podcast, I mostly worked making daytime true crime segments, but I had somewhat removed myself from my own story. And that was intentional, emotionally, because I did carry this guilt of, every time I tell my story, I’m giving attention to my dad. I struggled with that. But I met with Don Findlay [son of Jesperson’s victim Julie Ann Winningham]. He gave me, basically, his blessing to continue my work telling my story. That liberated me.”

Quaid Plays Against Type

With a career that spans over 40 years and 70-plus roles, Quaid is often seen as a rugged, all-American actor with a bankable eye glint. As one might imagine, playing a serial killer wasn’t initially appealing to The Right Stuff actor, who had some misgivings about the part.
Quaid is also 70, and as actors settle into veteran status, we sometimes get exciting swings where they go against the grain. Ben Kingsley, Tom Hanks, and Liam Neeson have all played some off-type characters in their later years and cinema is the better for it.

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The show also stars Tony winner Annaleigh Ashford as Moore, with Jennifer Cacicio serving as showrunner who also ran Your Honor and Shooter. The sereis is executive produced by Robert and Michelle King, Liz Glotzer, Moore, Conal Byrne, Will Pearson, Michael Showalter and Jordana Mollick.
Happy Face premieres on Paramount+ on March 20th with two episodes and an episode a week after that.