Ari Graynor didn’t reach out to the real Leslie Abramson while preparing for her role as the legendary defense attorney in Netflix’s “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story.”
“I knew that she had made it pretty clear that she never wanted to speak about any of her cases.” Graynor tells Variety. “You’ll notice that in all of the documentaries or programs that have been made, she’s never interviewed. She really took a step back, I think, not only because this case in particular was so painful for her, but she also did not mince words about the media and its effects on things.”
Abramson published a memoir, “The Defense Is Ready: Life in the Trenches of Criminal Law,” in 1997. Now at age 80, she is retired and rarely makes public appearances.
“I feel so deeply connected to her, and feel like I’ve fallen in love with her from afar,” Graynor says. “So much of this journey for me was wanting to do her justice. So now I’ve been trying to get an email to her. I’ve been trying to find people that might be able to pass it on to her, just to acknowledge her and to tell her what I saw in her and if she ever wants to talk.”
Graynor believes Erik and Lyle Menendez deserve a retrial, with the ultimate goal of seeing them released from prison. They are currently serving life sentences without the possibility of parole for the first-degree murder of their parents, José and Kitty Menendez, in 1989.
“I feel very close to them in this bizarre other reality,” Graynor says. “And I hear they’re extraordinary people who, as Leslie said at the end of the show … will make their lives meaningful and contribute beautifully to society. It sounds like from everything I’ve heard is that they are amazing. Erik is teaching meditation, they’re working on the [prison reform initiative] GreenSpace project. I would love to get to hug them one day.”
Photo by Phil Chester + Sara Byrne/@philchester + @sarakbyrne
I remind Graynor that series co-creator Ryan Murphy praised her “back acting” when I spoke to him about the fifth episode, a 33-minute single take featuring Erik (Cooper Koch) giving a detailed account of the childhood sexual and emotional abuse he suffered from his father. Graynor’s voice is heard, but viewers never see her face, as her back is always toward the camera. “I was thinking the other day for myself, personally, Episode 5 was the most pure artistic experience I’ve ever had because there wasn’t a camera in my face,” Graynor says. “There’s that theory in physics that an observer changes a state of something, and there was something about being so present and wanting so much to be there for Cooper and wanting to give him everything I could so that he could give everything he could. My face became a performance for one — for him.”
On a lighter note, Graynor recalls transforming into Abramson with the help of a big blonde curly wig. “It was one gorgeous, transformational, multi-faced perfect lady,” Graynor says of the voluminous locks. “There is no Leslie without her hair and her clothes. It so informed how I felt and how I found her.”
She recalls wearing the wig off-set to dinner with some family. “I had a four-hour break so I took her [the wig] to dinner in Silver Lake,” she says, smiling. “I sat down at the table and they had no idea who I was. The waiter, later in the evening, walked by and said, ‘Great hair.’”
