Monsters: Menéndez Brothers star Cooper Koch has revealed what his reaction was when producer Ryan Murphy presented the idea for episode five of the Netflix-topping series to him.
The latest season of the TV super-producer’s true crime series Monsters centres around Erik and Lyle Menéndez, who are both serving life sentences for killing their parents in the late 1980s.
At the time, the siblings claimed they were acting in self-defence after years of physical, emotional and sexual abuse, while the prosecution argued that the Menéndez brothers’ motivations were financial.
Episode five – titled ‘The Hurt Man’ – features a 35-minute single shot of Erik (Cooper Koch) sharing the abuse he and his brother Lyle (portrayed by Nicholas Alexander Chavez) allegedly suffered at the hands of their father José and mother Kitty Menéndez prior to killing the couple.
“I cried,” Cooper told Deadline. “Ryan told me that I got the job, and then on the same day, he told me that I was gonna have that episode. And it was always planned to be that way, it was always one scene and one shot, and it didn’t really change. The script didn’t really change at all from the first time that I read it.”
He also shared that he and co-star Ari Graynor, who plays lawyer Leslie Abramson in the series only rehearsed the scene once prior to filming.
He said: “At the end everybody was very moved and everyone was crying, including myself and including Ari. (Director) Michael just looked to us and said,‘I don’t want to touch it. I just want to shoot it.’”
The second instalment of Ryan Murphy’s polarising true crime series centres around Erik and Lyle Menéndez, the brothers who are currently serving life sentences for the murder of their parents in the late 1980s.
On Friday afternoon, the Official Charts Company confirmed that a surge in streams to Milli Vanilli’s I’m Gonna Miss You and Crowded House’s Don’t Dream It’s Over had led to them both re-entering the top 40 this week.
Don’t Dream It’s Over is currently at 37, while I’m Gonna Miss You is at 40.
This isn’t the first time this year that a popular show or film has resulted in an old song surging back into the charts, though.
Monsters: The Lyle And Erik Menéndez Story is now streaming on Netflix.
Since it began streaming last month, Ryan Murphy’s polarising true crime drama has divided opinion among critics and viewers, but has proved to be a huge draw for Netflix users.
However, it has now been replaced in the number one position on Netflix’s UK chart.
It’s probably no great surprise to hear that, as of Friday afternoon, Heartstopper has taken over the top spot from Monsters, a day after returning for its third season.
So far, the new batch of episodes have received near-unanimous praise for the way they handle “more mature” themes for Heartstopper, with the first half of the season diving deeper into Charlie’s mental health and eating disorder.
While almost all of the show’s central cast are back for the third season, one notable absentee is Olivia Colman.
Having already split opinion right down the middle and sparked plenty of debate about its more graphic and salacious scenes, HuffPost UK managed to speak to the cast of The Lyle And Erik Menéndez Story about the making of the show – and its aftermath.
Cooper admitted was “super nervous at first” but his meeting with the Menéndez brothers proved to be a “really amazing” experience.
He met with Lyle and Erik Menéndez, as well as a group of other incarcerated individuals, in the prison gymnasium, where the inmates shared their names and stories, and the brothers also gave a presentation about a “greenspace project that they’d been working on”.
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“The thing that I really wanted to do was look both of them in the eye and tell them that I believe them and that I support them and I’m going to do everything that I can to advocate for them – and that in playing the role I tried to be authentic and just to have integrity,” he told us.
Cooper added: “They’re both so kind, really upstanding individuals. They’ve done so much amazing work on themselves in prison.”
Cooper ‘can understand’ where the backlash against Monsters has come from, but he stands by the show
“I don’t think it’s changed my point of view on the series,” he insisted of the ongoing controversies surrounding the show. “We always [intended to take] this Rashomon approach with all these different perspectives.”
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“Our goal [was always] to really show all sides of the case – in my eyes, I sort of always saw it as the audience is going to be the jury and they’re going to be able to determine what they believe at the end of the show.”
“But I can understand and sympathise with how that would be jarring for people to see these other perspectives, and so I understand why it’s getting that sort of response,” he added.
“I think there’s a lot of support out there for the brothers, which I love.”
Nicholas Chavez admitted that working for the role was actually a big part of helping him get into character as Lyle
“It’s said in the first episode that José thought they could become a great family like the Kennedys,” he said.
“I think that there were many expectations of perfectionism within this family and I wanted Lyle’s physique to reflect that as well.”
He also took a similar approach when it came to Lyle’s toupée
Nicolas says “mask work” was an important part of his creative process.
“During this time in his life there were many expectations to wear masks in many different facets of his life,” he explained.
“The toupée, for instance, became very symbolic of this for me, a mask that was imposed on him by his father, and just because symbolic of the image that the Menéndez family wanted to project to the world about who they were.”
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During the making of Monsters, Chloë Sevigny found herself becoming protective of her young co-stars
She says that between herself, showrunners Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan, the show’s directors and her co-star Javier Bardem, “we all really wanted to protect the boys, first and foremost” and “make sure that they felt safe”.
“They had a lot to carry in the show and we felt like they were internalising it in a way,” she claimed. “We wanted to make sure that they had a way to kind of let go and turn it off and not internalise it too much.
“Javier was really supportive of them, and encouraging them, and we were saying how great how they were in scenes, but also how important it was to sit down, talk about the work, talk about ourselves personally, about our families and be open with one another.”
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Chloë was also ‘really impressed’ with the support offered on set by Netflix
“The whole environment was very sensitive to the material,” she revealed. “Netflix has released a statement across the cast and crew that if any of the material we were dealing with was triggering in any way to anyone they would provide help and support for them.
Chloë revealed it this was “really the first time I had seen that on a set, and I was really impressed with the way they handled it”.
Javier Bardem had apparently been wanting to be part of a Ryan Murphy show since visiting his wife Penélope Cruz on the set of American Crime Story
“I had the chance to be on set back in the day in Miami for a couple of days, and I saw the quality of everybody behind and in front of the camera, and it was the first time I had access to a show like that on set,” the Oscar winner recalled. “Since that day, I was like, ‘I would love to make one of these’.”
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The Spanish actor previously collaborated with Ryan Murphy on the film Eat Pray Love, but Monsters is their first time working together on the small screen.
“I’ve known Ryan since 2009, and I know how loving and caring and what a beautiful person he is,” Javier added.
Despite all the controversy surrounding Ryan Murphy’s Dahmer, the show was a big part of Javier Bardem saying yes to Monsters
Asked if he felt trepidation about signing up to play José Menéndez because of the backlash against Dahmer, Javier claimed “it was the opposite for me”.
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“I binged the whole show in two nights, and I was mesmerised by the quality of it all,” he said.
“What I loved about it, among many other things, was what was underneath – the criticism of the homophobic, racist society back in the day, where if you were just a nice white guy, blond, you could more or less skate out of justice compared to other people.”
“And I knew that when he was bringing this show to us, there was way more than just a murder,” he continued. “It was something about trauma, abuse and relationships.”
Cooper Koch will ‘without a doubt’ be watching the Menéndez brothers’ authorised documentary when it debuts on Netflix next month
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“Absolutely,” Nicholas agreed. “I’m really excited to see the perspectives that they share with this documentary.”
“I’m quite glad that Netflix is giving them this platform,” he added.
Monsters: The Lyle And Erik Menéndez Story is now streaming on Netflix.