“Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story” stars Cooper Koch and Nicholas Chavez have responded to criticism from the real Erik Menendez, who slammed the Ryan Murphy-created miniseries as a “naive and inaccurate” portrayal of him and his brother. The show dramatizes the lives of Erik and Lyle, who say they were abused by their parents throughout their childhoods. The brothers murdered their mother and father in 1989. After two criminal trials — the first of which was broadcast on television, elevating the case to nationwide infamy — the siblings were both sentenced to life sentences in 1996.
Koch, who plays Erik Menendez in the series, said he empathized with his real-life counterpart.
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“[Erik’s reaction] definitely affected me and it made me feel things,” he said. “I sympathize with him, I empathize with him. I get it. I understand how difficult it would be to have the worst part of your life be televised for millions of people to see. It’s so exposing. I understand how he feels and I stand by him. In terms of approaching him and approaching the part, I just really wanted to do as much research and dig really deep into myself to really portray him with integrity and just be as authentic as possible to support him and also to support his family and all the people who stand with him.”
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Nathan Lane, who portrays journalist Dominick Dunne in the series, was skeptical of Menendez’s reaction considering he hadn’t watched the series.
“You know, he hasn’t seen the show,” he said. “He’s Just criticizing it and condemning it without ever having seen it, so one has to take that with a grain of salt. Obviously, to have your life portrayed this way in a Netflix miniseries … he wasn’t one of the producers, so not everything might be flattering or make you happy. But I would say you should probably see it before you speak out again.”
Javier Bardem, who plays family patriarch José Menéndez in the series, said that while he hasn’t read Erik Menendez’s criticism in full, he sees it as a logical result of the show.
“I know he has spoken, but I haven’t read it,” he said. “But of course it’s absolutely normal, logical and legitimate to say what you think about your own life being on a show. I support that. [Series creators] Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan give different perspectives, different views of the same issue because nothing is set in stone. That also includes the way to perform the character. We have to be open as actors to play and shift from one perspective to the other, depending on who are who is telling the story.”
Series co-creator Murphy previously pushed back against Erik Menendez’s criticisms on Tuesday, saying that the show takes “a ‘Rashomon’ kind of approach, where there were four people involved. … Two of them are dead. What about the parents? We had an obligation as storytellers to also try and put in their perspective based on our research, which we did.”
“Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story” has proven to be controversial since its launch on Netflix in mid-September. The series drew mixed reviews, with Variety chief TV critic Aramide Tinubu writing that the series “has no idea what it wants to be. Therefore, it just dissolves into a retelling of unspeakable abuses and gruesome crimes.”
