Ryan Murphy is defending his work on Monsters: The Lyle & Erik Menendez Story following criticism from Erik Menendez that he gave a “dishonest portrayal” of the series.
“I think that’s interesting because I know he hasn’t watched the show, so it makes me wonder,” Murphy said during a red carpet interview for E! News’ Grotesquerie on Monday. “I hope he does watch it, and if he does, I think he’d be very proud of Cooper Koch, who plays him.”
“This is a case that happened 35, 30 years ago,” Ryan continues, “and we present many, many perspectives. That’s what we do in every episode of the show. New theories are presented based on people who were involved in the case or who we interview. I think some of the controversy comes from people who believe, for example, that the brothers were incestuous. Some say that wasn’t the case. Some say that it was.”
“We know the outcome,” Ryan pointed out. “We know that two people were brutally shot. Our perspective and what we wanted to do is present all the facts to you and ask you to do two things: to judge for yourself who is innocent, who is guilty, who is a monster, and to have a conversation about something that is never talked about in our culture: male sexual abuse. And we are doing this responsibly.”
“Sixty to 65 percent of the show is centered around Eric and Lyle Menendez talking about the abuse, what it was like for them, how it made them feel, and the two boys in the show go head-to-head in court. There’s actually a half-hour episode, brilliantly performed by Cooper Koch (who plays Eric), where Eric just talks about what happened to him and why he did it.”
According to the show’s official Netflix logline, Monsters “tears into a historic event that shook the world, inspiring modern audiences’ fascination with true crime and asking viewers in return: ‘Who are the real monsters?'”
Nicholas Alexander Chavez and Cooper Koch star as Lyle and Erik Menendez, with Javier Bardem as Jose, Chloe Sevigny as Kitty, Nathan Lane as Dominick Dunne and Ari Graynor as Leslie Abramson.
