Ryan Murphy Not “Unsurprised” by Public Advocacy for the Menendez Brothers Following ‘Monsters’ Series

On Oct. 28, Erik and Lyle Menendez’s defense team submitted a request for clemency for the brothers, who in 1996 were convicted of first-degree murder in the 1989 killings of their parents José and Kitty Menendez. Public sympathy for the brothers and general reinterest in the case was sparked by Ryan Murphy’s scripted series Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story and the subsequent Netflix documentary The Menendez Brothers which both shed light on the physical, emotional and sexual abuse the siblings endured at the hands of their father. And though freeing the brothers, who could be released from prison as early as Dec. 11 following a review of their case, wasn’t Murphy’s outright intention in telling their story, the response of public advocacy, he says, was somewhat expected.

“I can’t say I was unsurprised, because when we finished shooting it and I saw the episodes, I thought they were incredibly powerful on several different points of view,” Murphy said at a Netflix FYC panel for the series in Los Angeles on Nov. 2. “That was always the purpose of the show, to show different complicated points of view, but I thought really what it did about raising and asking questions about sexual abuse was very, very powerful. And I think, love it or not, there’s a movement with young people who want to talk about that in a way that wasn’t available in 1989. So whether you believe them or not is kind of beside the point. What it did, I think, which is why I wanted to make it, was launch a conversation about that topic. And people were really drawn to it, and a lot of people got involved and made their opinions known after they watched the show, which was very, very interesting.”

Kim Kardashian has been one of the most outspoken celebrities on the matter, writing an essay for NBC News calling for Lyle and Erik to be released after meeting with them in prison.

“Kim Kardashian called me a month before the show came out and asked to see it, and I said, sure, she’s a friend, and she is somebody who’s very into prison reform, and she instantly got involved, and the DA and the governor’s office were flooded with a lot of reactions from people who had big opinions about the show,” Murphy explained during the panel. “So I do think it led to something interesting, and more important to me, when you make something, whether people love it or hate it, is beside the point, does it launch a conversation about something? I think the show definitely did that in a way that [co-creator] Ian [Brennan] and I were very proud of.”

The performances by Nicholas Alexander Chavez and Cooper Koch, who portray Lyle and Erik, respectively, in the series played a large role in capturing public sentiment. Both actors were new to the Ryan Murphy universe — Chavez subsequently starred in Murphy’s FX horror series Grotesquerie — and the trial of the Menendez brothers to a degree.

“I wasn’t familiar with the story until I got the audition and then once I got that, you’re trying to do an expedited research process,” said Chavez. “You’re trying to learn as much as you can as fast as possible so that you don’t make a fool of yourself in the room once you audition for Ryan Murphy. It was an ongoing journey in terms of what we were able to learn and then marrying that with the scripts that were written for us.”

The casting process was a lengthy one, with Murphy and casting director Tiffany Little Canfield spending six months looking for their Lyle and Erik.

“I just instantly felt, yes, those are our guys,” Murphy said of when he came across Koch and Chavez’s audition tapes. “In a process like this, you have to have a lot of approvals and when you do network and studio auditions, you usually bring five or six people per part, and you see them all, and then there’s a conversation, but I didn’t want to do that because I felt like if I don’t have these two guys then I just don’t want to make it. So for the final comeback, they showed up and it was only them. And they were sort of shocked, just sitting in a room looking around. And I was open, and I said, ‘I believe in you and I don’t want you to feel that you have any competition because for me and Tiffany, you don’t.’”

Hearing about the multiple auditions Chavez and Koch went through to get their parts, Javier Bardem, who portrays their father José in the series, joked about how things would’ve gone had he not been given an offer by Murphy.

“Thank God I didn’t do any audition for this; I would’ve never been hired,” he said. “I’m so bad in auditions. It’s amazing what an actor has to go through in order to get a job. How hard it is to be able to sustain the creativity when the pressure is so on. In the case of you guys, knowing that it could be a life-changing experience as it is, and being able to give the very best of yourselves, it always amazes me, the fact that an actor can really perform in an audition,” he added, praising Koch and Chavez.

The theme of safety was one that was routinely brought up during the panel discussion, with the actors remarking how their fellow cast members and the crew supported them while they tackled the difficult subject matters the series deals with. This was particularly true of episode five, “The Hurt Man,” which, in its entirety, is a conversation between Erik and his lawyer Leslie Abramson, played by Ari Graynor, during which he details the sexual abuse he was subjected to in his childhood.

“There’s absolutely no way I could have done it without her,” Koch said of Graynor, who was only shown from behind in the episode as the camera centered on Erik. “She held such beautiful space for me, and she became Leslie, which I think allowed me to be Erik. I’m the only person who got to see her performance and I feel so lucky that I got to witness that.”