Monsters' Nicholas Alexander Chavez Can't Believe Actors 'I Admire' Are 'Watching the Show' and Reaching Out: 'Feels Otherworldly' (Exclusive)

It's safe to say that Monsters has changed Nicholas Alexander Chavez's life.

The actor, 25, stars as Lyle Menendez alongside Cooper Koch's Erik in Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, which premiered on Netflix last month. Since its premiere, Chavez tells PEOPLE he's had some truly pinch-me run-ins with some fellow stars.

"What's so exciting about this part of my life is that there's been all this conversation about Monsters. There's people who I love and who I admire who are actually watching the show, and then they're writing me and they're saying, 'I love your work,'" Chavez, 25, says. "And so to hear from people whose work I respect so much, that they feel that way about me, that feels just otherworldly."

He says that some of these people he admires are sliding into his DMs, but "they're also coming up to me at parties or things like that."

"It's just been really, really cool. It's been really, really nice," Chavez continues. "It's just cool to meet these other actors and just have a nice, mutual respect for the other person's approach to the work. It's really sick."

Monsters "got a lot of people's attention," he says, "and when you're in a project that does that, it does afford you the opportunity to have a lot of conversations with people that you just don't necessarily get to have [otherwise]."

"This part of my life feels like a discovery," he says. "I get to have the privilege of taking some meetings with some really, really cool, impressive, and creative human beings, who are creating some of the most interesting art in the world right now. And so I'm really excited to see where these meetings lead to, and what projects will come from it, and I'll discover what's next for me."

Chavez was cast as Lyle Menendez in April 2023, and began filming with Koch in December of that year, following the writers and actors strike, which he says "afforded me the opportunity to be able to deeply research this character."

"We started filming in December for a couple of weeks, and then everyone went on winter break. So it was nice to get that little taste of it. And then when we came back from winter break, we started working with Javier [Bardem] and Chloë [Sevigny], which threw two big wrenches into the mix. But it was so fun."

He raves of Bardem and Sevigny, who played Lyle and Erik's parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez, "They're both so just playful, and inventive, and creative, and kind human beings. I mean, what a total joy it was to work with them."

He was admittedly "a bit nervous" when Bardem, 55, and Sevigny, 49, started filming, but he says the seasoned actors "both make it really, really hard to be nervous around them."

"They're just both such friendly, kind people. I mean, I remember the first day with Javier, he came in and gave everyone big hugs, and he was just wonderful. He really was. And so I was nervous at first, but then not for long."

He has just as many sweet things to say about Koch, 28, who played his brother.

"Cooper is terrific at what he does. And I think that so much of our relationship just stemmed from the fact that we could each see in each other that we really, really respected the craft of acting, and we respected what we were all trying to do here, and we knew that it was going to be really, really challenging," Chavez says. "And so we wanted to make sure that the other person knew that they were supported."

"Cooper and I just had a really, really healthy respect for one another as artists, and our relationship off-screen just sort of blossomed as a result of that," he adds.

Since the show's premiere on Sept. 19 — which he promptly followed up with another Ryan Murphy project, Grotesquerie, in which he stars as a priest who moonlights as a Peloton instructor — life has been turned upside down for both him and Koch.

"It's a surreal experience," he says. "I think multiple times, he and I would just look around. We would just say, 'Is this real life right now? It's actually happening?' Because it's a crazy thing to process. It's a crazy thing to process."

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Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story is now streaming on Netflix.