You love it or you hate it – and the answers run the gamut — “Monsters: The Story of Lyle and Erik Menéndez” was one of the largest and liveliest TV 2024 shows.

The second installment of Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan’s “Monster” anthology (after the first season about Jeffrey Dahmer) dives deep into the story of brothers Lyle and Erik Menendez (played by Nicholas Alexander Chavez and Cooper Koch), who shot and killed their parents in 1989 and told the jury they were protecting themselves after years of abuse.

Following the screening of episode 1 “Blame it on the Rain” on November 10 in New York City, cast members Chávez, Koch, Javier BardemChloë Sevigny, Nathan Lane and Ari Graynor sat down to discuss their roles and bringing this complex story to life.

“I came into this with what I believe was the truth of the situation, which is that they killed their parents out of fear,” Koch said. “They had to be prepared to protect themselves in case their parents were going to do the same thing.” The same thing happened to them, which I don’t think was ever going to happen, but in their minds they believed it was going to happen.”

For Bardem, decades of film experience prepared him not to rehearse too much.

“When you prepare a movie, you’re on your own,” he said. “You’re home. You are imagining things for yourself. You’re completely alone… and it can get very unpleasant, because then you go to the set with everything done and the set is something else. Everyone brings their own homework and you have to say, ‘Wait, wait, but I thought it was going to be like this,’ it’s alive. “It’s something you have to be prepared for.”

Koch said he learned from that spontaneity, which gave him more freedom to go with the flow on set and see what each day’s work would bring. Bardem praised both Koch and Chávez for “their commitment, their preparation, their vulnerability, their willingness to go as deep as necessary… what awaits them is going to be amazing, because they deserve it. They are great actors, but above all they are great human beings, and that is why they are (such) good actors. And I am very proud to be one of their first steps in this.”

Chávez said he saw Lyle Menéndez as “a masked character,” almost like a child pretending to be an adult.

“He starts the series with the need to emulate almost all of his father’s behavior,” he explained. “It’s really hard when, developmentally, you feel like a 10-year-old kid, and then you feel like you need to present yourself as a big, successful record label executive, despite not having the education to do it.” it. “It’s interesting to see the mask slip over the course of Episodes 1, 2, 3, and 4, and then finally you see the boy underneath.”

A primary visual symbol of that was the toupee that Lyle is revealed to have worn since Episode 1, violently torn from his head by his mother Kitty (Sevigny). Later, a flashback shows Father José (Bardem) taking Lyle to have it fitted, insisting that his son wear the hairpiece even though he has doubts.

“I always thought that was like the last bit of his authentic individuality that died that day,” Chavez said. “And then what do you do after that? What do you make of yourself?

Bardem and Sevigny’s investigation looked different from the others, as their characters had disappeared long before the famous trial, sentencing and all the drama that unfolded around the Menendez brothers.

“There wasn’t much to look for, to learn from José Menéndez,” Bardem said, referring to how his co-stars were able to pore over hours of footage from the trial. “There was no audio, there was no video, there was nothing. So I really trust the material… I have to play José in a way that is ambivalent. We know for sure that he did certain things and we don’t know others. “It’s a really fun place to be as an actor, not being able to go to one side or the other, but being in the middle.”

Bardem described José Menéndez as “sexist”; posed with an image of masculinity that many now recognize as toxic and harmful, and with which Bardem is familiar. “I was raised on it and it’s something I fight every day of my life,” he said. “My father was a product of that upbringing. And I don’t know here, but in Spain there are murders every month of men who kill their wives because they are super sexist men, and that’s what they do, and it’s fucking disgusting. “We are still prisoners of that education and we have a lot to learn.”

Graynor, who plays Erik’s lawyer Leslie Abramson, joined the project without reading the scripts: just her two audition scenes.

“That’s when you met Leslie for the first time at the adoption agency, and when she met Erik for the first time,” he recalled, noticing the thread of compassion in both of them. “The show asks a question about nature and nurture that I think, as an actor, you’re always asking yourself and trying to construct your own sense of story around that person.”

Graynor and Koch are the only two to appear in episode 5, “The Hurt Man,” a 33-minute one-shot that has been making waves at the Emmys since the day it aired. the episode put immense pressure on Koch as the camera gets closer and closer to his face, but the actor complies, although he had problems at first.

“We did a rehearsal and it couldn’t have gone better,” Koch said. “Okay, we’re going to get into this, and we’re going to do it, and it’s going to be great, and I’m going to do the first take, and then we’re going to stop, and then I won’t have to do it anymore. And the first two takes were just… “Oh, I felt really bad for them. I’m sure they weren’t that bad, but I just felt like I didn’t understand.”

Koch spoke to director Michael Uppendahl during the lunch break, who told him to stop “chasing the dragon,” recreating the magic of that rehearsal and the feeling it gave him. Uppendahl encouraged Koch to be open, stand up for parents, and find light in a script with no shortage of darkness.

“Then that third take was really explosive and surprising,” Koch said. “They didn’t choose that one.”

Graynor’s face is never visible as she sits across from Koch at a table, but Leslie regularly asks questions, interjects, and offers kind words and validation for her client. Graynor said his theater background helped ground his acting even when it goes outside the box.

“I think the most offensive thing a director can say to an actor is ‘Save it for the close-up,'” he said. “It drives me crazy because it suggests that you are doing something just for yourself and just for the camera, which to me takes away the magic of what we can do, which is being together, creating something and being there. for each other.”

Ultimately, she said, she was grateful to witness Koch doing “the most difficult job I’ve ever been a part of or seen.”

“There was so much trust, so much love and so much preparation, and then seeing what he did every time we did it, and we never stopped, we never broke,” Graynor added. “It was an extraordinary experience and, in some ways, one of the purest artistic experiences I’ve ever had, maybe because there was no camera, so it was just about inhabiting the space together.”

As Koch said: “I was your camera.”

“Monsters: The Story of Lyle and Erik Menéndez” is now streaming netflix.