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Ryan Murphy, who co-created Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menéndez Story, has reacted to the brothers’ criticism of the series and said he believes they should be thanking him.
The Menéndez brothers, who are serving life sentences for the 1989 murders of their parents José and Kitty, have been thrust back into the public eye following the release of the Netflix series.
They were arrested for first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder outside their home in March 1990 and sentenced in 1996. In 2024, new evidence emerged that has the potential to set them free, with their case now being considered by the LA District Attorney.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Murphy said that the series brought “an outpouring of interest” into the Menéndez brothers’ lives.
“The Menéndez brothers should be sending me flowers,” Murphy said. “They haven’t had so much attention in 30 years. And it’s gotten the attention of not only this country, but all over the world. There’s sort of an outpouring of interest in their lives and in the case. I know for a fact that many people have offered to help them because of the interest of my show and what we did.
“There is no world that we live in where the Menéndez brothers or their wives or lawyers would say, ‘You know what, that was a wonderful, accurate depiction of our clients.’ That was never going to happen, and I wasn’t interested in that happening.”
The office of LA County District Attorney George Gascon is reviewing possible evidence included in petitions filed by the brothers last year claiming that their father had molested them, according to NBC News.
The new information will be discussed at a hearing scheduled for 26 November, where depending on the court’s decision, Gascon said the brothers could “walk out.”
Erik Menéndez, who is serving a life sentence at the RJ Donovan Correctional Facility in California alongside Lyle, has described the series as a “dishonest portrayal” of the crimes he committed with his brother Lyle, accusing Murphy of “disheartening slander.”
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Murphy responded to it at the time, saying that “if you watch the show, I would say 60 to 65 per cent” of the scripted narrative centres “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.”
In the new interview, Murphy explained that he and co-creator Ian Brennan felt that they had an “obligation” to tell the stories of the people around the Menéndez brothers, including their parents José and Kitty.
“We had an obligation to so many people, not just to Erik and Lyle. But that’s what I find so fascinating; that they’re playing the victim card right now – ‘poor, pitiful us’ – which I find reprehensible and disgusting,” said Murphy.
“I also think that two things can be true at the same time. I think they could have killed their parents, and also had been abused. They could have been of ambiguous moral character as young people, and be rehabilitated now. So I think that story is complicated.”
Murphy also addressed criticism from Erik that the series ignores progress made since the 90s, going “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”.
Murphy said his primary area of interest was the “topic of male sexual abuse”, and that he was proud that the series provided survivors of sexual abuse a “way to have a conversation”.
“I was never that interested in the Menéndez brothers. What I was interested in was the topic of sexual abuse. I was interested in, specifically, the topic of male sexual abuse, and I wanted to talk about it. It’s something in our culture we rarely talk about. I did think it was outrageous during that [Menéndez] trial that so many men, particularly in the second trial, felt there was no such thing as male sexual abuse. That was an outrage. I was interested in that,” he said.
“And I know that’s launched a lot of conversations. In my own life, so many people have reached out to me who I didn’t even know were sexually abused. Our show gave them a way to have a conversation. And for that, I am tremendously proud.”
The Independent’s Katie Rosseinsky gave the show three stars. “This latest in the Monster series lacks the gruesome excesses of Dahmer. But it also feels like a muddled mix of the best and worst of Murphy’s oeuvre. It’s likely to please his legions of fans, but may leave his detractors feeling a little queasy,” she wrote.
Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menéndez Story stars Cooper Koch and Nicholas Alexander Chavez as Erik and Lyle Menéndez, and Javier Bardem and Chloë Sevigny as their parents José and Kitty.
Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menéndez Story is streaming on Netflix now.
