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Erik and Lyle Menéndez had a very visceral reaction to Ryan Murphy‘s Monsters — but how were they even able to watch the controversial series from prison?
“We were able to see quite a bit of it. I watched some of it through video chat that they allow us to do here,” Lyle, 57, revealed during the Thursday, February 20, episode of the “2 Angry Men” podcast. “And obviously, we’ve seen a million clips of it on TV and heard a lot about it.”
Lyle clarified that he and Erik, 54, haven’t watched the whole show just yet while serving their sentence at Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility, adding, “We feel like we’ve seen the entire thing. But we have not yet.”
From what he did see, Lyle, for his part, had nothing but praise for Nicholas Alexander Chavez and Cooper Koch‘s performances.
“Ryan Murphy’s project was very widely disseminated. It really did actually move a lot of people to understand the childhood trauma that Eric and I suffered and particularly the horrific stuff that Eric suffered,” Lyle noted in the rare tell-all interview. “Cooper Koch’s rendition of Eric and his trauma was pretty extraordinary. And so was Nicholas with this.”
He continued: “I feel like in the end a lot of people were educated about what can happen even in rich affluent homes. It opened a lot of people’s eyes and that’s always a good thing. Like my brother mentioned, abuse requires being in the shadows of society. Because once you bring a spotlight on it, the bullying and the trauma tends to find healing or find recourse. So I feel like shining a light on it — which Ryan Murphy did — and his project ended up doing that.”
Season 2 of the hit Netflix series, which debuted in September 2024, chronicled Lyle (Chavez) and Erik’s (Koch) 1990 arrest for the murder of their parents, José (Javier Bardem) and Kitty (Chloë Sevigny). Taking inspiration from footage of the trial and subsequent interviews, Monsters mirrored key moments from the siblings’ lives before and after they were sentenced to life without parole for shooting their mother and father.
Episodes 4 and 5 received critical and fan praise for how it approached Erik and Lyle’s claims that they killed their parents in self-defense following years of alleged physical, emotional and sexual abuse. However, the show received backlash for other inaccuracies about the Menéndez brothers, including the insinuation that they were in a sexual relationship.
“I believed we had moved beyond the lies and ruinous character portrayals of Lyle, creating a caricature of Lyle rooted in horrible and blatant lies rampant in the show,” read a statement from Erik that was shared via Lyle’s Facebook page in September 2024. “I can only believe they were done so on purpose. 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.”
Erik made it clear that he wasn’t thrilled about how he and Lyle were portrayed.
“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,” Erik’s statement continued. “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. 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?”
In response, Murphy, 59, has pointed out how his show created renewed interest in Erik and Lyle — despite their disapproval over how they were portrayed.
“They are now being talked about by millions of people all over the world. There’s a documentary coming out in two weeks about them, also on Netflix. And I think the interesting thing about it is it’s asking people to answer the questions, ‘Should they get a new trial? Should they be let out of jail? What happens in our society? Should people be locked away for life? Is there no chance ever at rehabilitation?’” he told Variety in September 2024. “I’m interested in that, and a lot of people are talking about it. We’re asking really difficult questions, and it’s giving these brothers another trial in the court of public opinion. From what I can tell, it’s really opened up the possibility that this evidence that they claim that they have, maybe that there is going to be a way forward for them.”
