Nicholas Alexander Chavez says his final callback audition to play Lyle Menendez in Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan’s “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story” was not like others he had ever been on.
“Usually when you go to a callback, there’s four or five other people there to play the part. But it was just Cooper [Koch] and myself,” Chavez says, referencing his co-star who plays Erik Menendez. “And then Ryan [Murphy] strolled through, and we had no idea who was going to be there, so it completely took us by surprise. They made sure that we felt comfortable. We went up there, we did the scenes. I think it felt electric right off the bat with Cooper. Ryan called us two days later to let us know that he wasn’t going to make the show if he couldn’t make it with us.”
Chavez says his preparation for the Netflix series included reading, watching and listening to everything he could about the siblings and their two trials. The Menendez brothers are currently serving life sentences without the possibility of parole for the first-degree murder of their parents, José and Kitty Menendez, in 1989.
Koch spoke to Erik on the phone the night before the series premiered on Netflix last month, followed by meeting him and Lyle when he visited them in prison with Kim Kardashian. Chavez, like show co-creator Murphy, has no such plans.
“As an artist, you can’t help but have kind of a morbid curiosity about the people who you play, and after living in this character and circumstances for the six months of shooting this project, I think that there is, on some level, a desire,” Chavez says. “But ultimately, I’ve recognized that as an artist, it’s important to have the grace to be able to release characters after they’re done. That’s a big part of the job, and I’m kind of holding true to that.”
Asked if he believes the brothers deserve a retrial, Chavez will only say, “I know that there’s been a lot of discussion about this. I’m really interested to see what happens in the future. I think that it’s up to the United States justice system to decide that.”
“Monsters” was still in production when Murphy cast Chavez in his other series, FX’s “Grotesquerie.” “During the last few weeks of filming ‘Menendez,’ I was shooting ‘Grotesquerie’ as well,” the actor recalls. “Then the night that we wrapped ‘Menendez,’ I remember I got in a in a car, and then they took me to the hotel near where we were filming ‘Grotesquerie,’ and I jumped right in the next day. I think I filmed for five days straight after that, so it was truly one project into the next. It’s been very cool to experience Ryan’s creative vision in two different worlds because they’re very different.”
Travis Kelce makes his acting debut in “Grotesquerie.” “He’s so charming, He’s so charismatic, he’s so down to earth. And you can definitely tell that the guy plays professional football for a living because the guy’s a team player,” Chavez says of his co-star. “He came in super collaborative. He performs with confidence. I was honestly blown away that it was his first time acting.”
Does Chavez consider himself a Swiftie? “Am I a Swiftie?” he says with a smile. “You know, her music, it’s infectious. And whenever it comes on, I find myself dancing along to it. She she has so much fun and also just what a performer.”
He considers, then adds, “OK, fine, “I’m a Swiftie.”
