Ryan Murphy has pushed back against relatives of the Menendez brothers, after the family shared their scathing review of Netflix’s new series, Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story.
ICYMI, the dramatisation of the namesake siblings’ infamous murders of their parents in 1989 has been on the receiving end of some pretty intense backlash, both from viewers and from the show’s real-life subjects.
Earlier this month, Erik Menedez himself criticised the show in a social media statement shared by his wife, Tammi Menendez, saying the Murphy-created series is “rooted in horrible and blatant lies”.
More recently, the extended family of the brothers shared a statement for themselves, reiterating that the Netflix series is “riddled with mistruths and outright falsehoods” and describing it as “a phobic, gross, anachronistic, serial episodic nightmare”.
“The character assassination of Erik and Lyle, who are our nephews and cousins, under the guise of a ‘storytelling narrative” is repulsive,” the family’s statement — shared on behalf of the brothers’ aunt, Joan VanderMolen — read.
Among other descriptors, the family labelled Monsters as “slander” and “grotesque”, adding that neither Murphy nor Netflix had contacted them to contribute to the show.
Now, Murphy has addressed the family’s criticisms in a new interview with Variety, describing their negative reaction as “predictable at best”.
Murphy, who copped similar backlash following Monster’s first, Jeffrey Dahmer-focussed season, said he would “like specifics about what [the family] think is shocking or not shocking”.
“It’s not like we’re making any of this stuff up”, Murphy added in reference to the show, which covers both the murders and the subsequent criminal trials. “It’s all been presented before”.
The showrunner went on to question “what is grotesque about it?”, before claiming that the Menendez family “have always done this”.
“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.”
Murphy even went as far as declaring that Monsters is “the best thing that has happened to the Menendez brothers in 30 years”, claiming the series has reawakened public interest in the case and has made people question whether the siblings’ life-long prison sentences should be reexamined.
“They are now being talked about by millions of people all over the world”, Murphy said, claiming that the show is “giving these brothers another trial in the court of public opinion”.
One person evidently interested in the case in the wake of Monsters is Kim Kardashian, who recently starred in fellow Murphy title American Horror Story: Delicate and visited the brothers in prison this week.
Kardashian was joined in her visit by Cooper Koch, the actor who portrays Erik Menendez in Monsters.
Image source: Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic and Ronald L. Soble / Los Angeles Times
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