Ryan Murphy is pushing back against members of Erik and Lyle Menendez’s family who have slammed Netflix’s “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story” as a “grotesque shockadrama.”
“The family’s response is predictable at best,” Murphy tells me, just hours after the family’s statement was released on social media via Erik’s wife Tammi. “I find it interesting because I would like specifics about what they think is shocking or not shocking. It’s not like we’re making any of this stuff up. It’s all been presented before. What we’re doing is we’re the first to present it in one contained ecosystem. What’s grotesque about it? … Tammi [and] the family, they have always done this and they did this recently — they say, ‘lies after lies’ — but then they don’t say what the lies are. They don’t back up anything.”
The Menendez brothers are currently serving life sentences without the possibility of parole for the first-degree murder of their parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez, in 1989. The series dramatizes the killings and the subsequent trials that ended in their conviction in 1996.
Murphy also shares that he believes “Monsters” is “the best thing that has happened to the Menendez brothers in 30 years.” He continues, “They are now being talked about by millions of people all over the world. There’s a documentary coming out into two weeks about them, also on Netflix. And I think the interesting thing about it is it’s asking people to answer the questions, ‘Should they get a new trial? Should they be let out of jail? What happens in our society? Should people be locked away for life? Is there no chance ever at rehabilitation?’ I’m interested in that, and a lot of people are talking about it. We’re asking really difficult questions, and it’s giving these brothers another trial in the court of public opinion. From what I can tell, it’s really opened up the possibility that this evidence that they claim that they have, maybe that there is going to be a way forward for them.”
Murphy believes if the trial was held today, the brothers may have gotten a lesser charge of manslaughter and a lighter sentence. “The second trial was a travesty. I think it’s insane that all of the evidence that they claim really happened was not allowed to be admissible,” he said. “That’s a mistake. I think the behavior of those male jurors is an outrage. I think a lot of those jurors were homophobic. I think that they refused to accept the idea that sexual abuse could happen to men. I think that’s outrageous. So what do I think? I think that if there’s new evidence, yes, it should be heard. I also personally do not believe that someone should spend their entire life in prison.”
Cooper Koch, who plays Erik, exclusively told Variety that he spoke to the real Erik for the first time on the night before the series premiered on Netflix. About a week later, he met Erik and Lyle when he joined Kim Kardashian for a visit to their prison to talk to inmates about prison reform.
Unlike Koch, Murphy said he has never reached out to the brothers. “I have no interest in talking to them,” he says. “It’s very good that Cooper has a relationship with them, and I’m very close, obviously, with Kim Kardashian, who has spoken to them. I love Kim, and I believe she does God’s work. I believe in prison reform. I believe in everything she believes in. I don’t know what I would say to them. What would I ask them? I know what their perspective is.”
Nor does Murphy feel the need to becoming an advocate for Erik and Lyle like Koch said he wants to be. “I believe in justice, but I don’t believe in being a part of that machine,” Murphy says. “That’s not my job. My job as an artist was to tell a perspective in a particular story. I feel I’ve done that, but I wish them well.”
