Ryan Murphy defends his work on Monster: The Story of Lyle and Erik Menendezin response to Erik Menendez’s criticism of the series, which he called a “dishonest portrayal.”
“I find that interesting because I know he hasn’t seen the show. So I find that odd,” Murphy told E! News on Monday in an interview on the red carpet for Grotesque.“I hope he watches it. I think if he watches it, he would be incredibly proud of Cooper Koch, who plays him.”
“It’s a 35-30 year old case,” Ryan continues. “We show many, many, many perspectives. That’s what the show does every episode. You’re presented with a new theory based on people who were either involved in the case or covered it. Part of the controversy seems to be that people think, for example, the brothers had an incestuous relationship. There are people who say that never happened. There were people who said it did happen.”
“We know how it turned out,” Ryan stressed. “We know that two people were brutally shot. Our position and our goal was to present you with all the facts and get you to do two things: make up your own mind about who is innocent, who is guilty and who is the monster, and also have a conversation about something that is never talked about in our culture, which is sexual abuse of men, and we do that responsibly.”
“60 to 65 percent (of the show) is Eric and Lyle Menendez talking about their abuse, about their victimhood, about what they went through emotionally. These two guys on our show get their moment in court. In fact, we have a 30-minute episode that Cooper Koch (who plays Erik) does so brilliantly. Just Erik’s words about what happened to him and why he did what he did.”
According to the show’s official Netflix logline: Monster “delves into the historic case that took the world by storm, paved the way for today’s audiences’ fascination with true crime, and asks the audience in turn: Who are the real monsters?”
Nicholas Alexander Chavez and Cooper Koch play Lyle and Erik Menéndez, with Javier Bardem as José, Chloë Sevigny as Kitty, Nathan Lane as Dominick Dunne and Ari Graynor as Leslie Abramson.
