Ryan Murphy is defending his new Netflix show, Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, amid criticism from one of the brothers at the center of the infamous murder case.
Erik Menendez slammed Monsters in a statement a day after the show’s September 19 release, expressing frustration with “Netflix’s dishonest portrayal of the tragedies surrounding our crime.”
On Monday, September 23, Murphy issued a rebuttal in an interview with Entertainment Tonight.
“I think it’s interesting that he’s issued a statement without having seen the show,” the writer-producer, 58, told the outlet, adding, “It’s really, really hard — if it’s your life — to see your life up on screen.”
Murphy said that “if you watch the show, I would say 60 to 65 percent” of the scripted narrative centers “around the abuse and what they claim happened to them. And we do it very carefully and we give them their day in court and they talk openly about it.”
Monsters has drawn controversy for how it depicts Erik, 53, and his brother Lyle, 56, in recounting the events that led up to their murder trial. The siblings — portrayed by Cooper Koch and Nicholas Alexander Chavez, respectively — were convicted for killing their parents in 1989 and remain behind bars to this day. Murphy and his Monsters cowriters present different perspectives on Erik and Lyle’s motives, including their claims that they’d acted in self-defense following years of alleged physical, emotional and sexual abuse.
“It’s a ‘Rashomon’ kind of approach, where there were four people involved in that. Two of them are dead,” Murphy told Entertainment Tonight, noting, “What about the parents? We had an obligation as storytellers to also try and put in their perspective based on our research, which we did.”
Murphy continued, “If you watch the show, what the show is doing is presenting the points of view and theories from so many people who were involved in the case.”
When asked about the show hinting at an incestuous relationship between the brothers, he countered that “Dominick Dunne wrote several articles talking about that theory. We are presenting his point of view. … And we had an obligation to show all of that and we did.”
In his statement last week, Erik admonished Murphy by name.
“It is with a heavy heart that I say, I believe Ryan Murphy cannot be this naive and inaccurate about the facts of our lives so as to do this without bad intent,” he wrote, adding, “It is sad for me to know that Netflix’s dishonest portrayal of the tragedies surrounding our crime have taken the painful truths several steps backward — back through time 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. Those awful lies have been disrupted and exposed by countless brave victims over the last two decades who have broken through their personal shame and bravely spoken out.”
He continued: “So now Murphy shapes his horrible narrative through vile and appalling character portrayals of Lyle and of me and disheartening slander. Is the truth not enough?”
