Ryan Murphy Rebuffs Erik Menendez’s ‘Monsters’ Criticism: ‘I Know He Hasn’t Watched the Show’
Ryan Murphy brushed off Erik Menendez’s criticism of his latest true crime series, Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, saying of Menendez: “I know he hasn’t watched the show.”
Murphy made the comments during a red carpet interview with E! News ahead of the premiere of his new horror show, Grotesquerie, on Monday, Sept. 23. Erik had previously issued a statement (through his wife Tammi) saying Monsters gave a “dishonest portrayal of the tragedies surrounding our crime.”
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Murphy called Menendez’s claims “interesting” and “curious,” adding, “I hope he does watch [the show]. I think if he did watch it, he would be incredibly proud of Cooper Koch, who plays him.”
Erik and Lyle were both convicted and sentenced to life in prison for murdering their parents, José and Mary Louise “Kitty” Menendez. The brothers have long claimed that their motivations stemmed from a lifetime of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse from their parents. In critiquing Monsters, Erik suggested the show had “taken the painful truth several steps backwards… to an era when the prosecution built a narrative on a belief system that males were not sexually abused, and that males experienced rape trauma differently than women.”
Murphy rebuffed this claim outright. He said the show actively wanted to confront the issue of male sexual abuse, saying “60 to 65 percent” of the series centers around the Menendez brothers talking about their abuse. He even highlighted a particular episode comprised entirely of Koch, as Erik, talking about “what happened to him and why he did what he did.”
When it came to other elements of Monsters that Erik — or others — might take issue with, Murphy said the show took a “Rashomon approach” to the case and presented viewers with “many, many, many perspectives” and theories “based on people who were either involved or cover the case.” One of the more controversial ones, Murphy acknowledged, was that Erik and Lyle had an incestuous relationship, a theory put forward by several people, including the journalist Dominick Dunne (played by Nathan Lane in the show).
“The show is a whodunnit like that,” Murphy continued. “We know how it ended, we know two people were brutally shot. And so I think people are a little confused about what we were trying to do. Our view, and what we wanted to do, was present you all the facts and at the end of it, have you do two things: Make up your own mind about who’s innocent, who’s guilty, and who’s the monster; and also have a conversation about something that’s never talked about it our culture, which is male sexual sexual abuse.”
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