Monsters stars Cooper Koch and Nicholas Chavez have weighed in on one of the biggest controversies surrounding the show.
Since it began streaming last month, the second season of Ryan Murphy’s true crime anthology series hasn’t budged from the top of Netflix’s most-watched list, and has been dominating the conversation on social media, though it hasn’t always been for the most positive reasons.
Most notably, scenes suggesting that Erik and Lyle Menéndez could have been at one point involved in a sexual relationship have been met with backlash, which the show’s lead actors have shared their thoughts on.
Cooper told Variety: “I knew that this was a very controversial story, and that people were going to be upset and affected by what they were seeing. I think, though, you do have to put it into context of the situation, and that we’re sort of painting a picture based on what somebody else’s perspective was.
“It’s not necessarily the truth of what happened. That’s just what Dominick Dunne [the journalist, portrayed in the show by Nathan Lane] thinks and there I think are other places in the story where it’s sort of planted to give people all of these different perspectives...”
He added: “I think the goal of the show is to put all those perspectives together and let the audience be the jury. And at the end of the show, you just make your decision on what you believe. And I think it’s a really interesting way of telling the story and just storytelling in general.”
Cooper – who recently made a visit to the Menéndez brothers in prison – also made it clear he personally doesn’t believe this particular theory put forward in the show.
“I do not think that’s true. And I don’t think it was intended by the show to make or break that truth,” he insisted. “I think that was just a theory that one person had and that got put into the show because that person was a character in the show.”
Asked about the “homoeroticism” depicted in Monsters, Nicholas added: “It’s a really interesting question, and it was something that we discussed quite a bit as part of this project, but ultimately this is a question that’s honestly best reserved for Ryan and the creators of the show.”
Last week, Ryan Murphy made headlines when he defended the divisive scenes in question, stating: “If you watch the show, what the show is doing is presenting the points of view and theories from so many people who were involved in the case. Dominick Dunne wrote several articles talking about that theory, and how he thought that theory had validity.
“What we do in the show is, he talks about that, we are presenting his point of view just as we present [defence attorney] Leslie Abramson’s point of view. The show presents over 10 points of view of different events.
“So when people watch that and they say that, that is somebody in our show having a narrative statement about, ‘this is what I believe really happened’. And we had an obligation to show all of that, and we did.”
Nathan Lane agreed with this, telling Variety: “It’s just [his character] theorising. He’s not saying that’s what happened. He says this is another reason why they might have killed them. But he’s just posing another theory. I guess we have to remind people that it’s a dramatisation and not a documentary.
“As Ryan has said, they’ve shown all different points of view about this cas [...] so I think you get many, many different opinions and points of view about what happened.
“Ultimately they’re the only ones who know for sure exactly what happened. But I just think it the show is extremely well written and beautifully acted by everybody.”
The first season of Monster focussed on the serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, and was similarly controversial upon its debut in 2022.
A third instalment is due to begin production later this month, this time focussing on a different murder from the 20th century.