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Television megaproducer Ryan Murphy has once again responded to the controversy surrounding his hit Netflix series Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menéndez Story in a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter.
Murphy was asked whether, after hearing about the criticism of he series, he still felt that it “delivered on what [he] set out to do.” The American Horror Story creator said that it “100%” achieved his goals before speaking about the real-life brothers at the center of the show, who were convicted of killing their parents in 1996.
“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.” Murphy also said that he knew “for a fact” that the show had spurred people to reach out to them to offer help on their case.
Murphy maintained that he had no expectation that Erik or Lyle would be happy with the series’ portrayal of them. “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,” he said.
Since the release of Monsters, Murphy and the show’s creators have received significant backlash for representing the brothers as involved in an incestuous relationship. Robert Rand, who covered the trial at the time and wrote the 2018 book The Menéndez Murders, called the depiction a “fantasy” invented by journalist Dominick Dunne in an interview with THR published four days after the Netflix show’s release.
Monsters’ suggestion of a sexual or erotic relationship between the brothers is complicated even further by their own testimony alleging sexual abuse from both their mother and father.
“I don’t believe that Erik and Lyle Menéndez were ever lovers,” Rand said. “I believe the only physical contact they might have had is what Lyle testified, that when Lyle was 8 years old, he took Erik out in the woods and played with him with a toothbrush — which is what [their father] José had done with him. And so I certainly wouldn’t call that a sexual relationship of any sort. It’s a response to trauma.”
On September 19, the same day the show was released on Netflix, Erik’s wife Tammi Menéndez shared a statement from her husband on social media slamming the “dishonest portrayal” on Monsters.
“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,” the statement reads. “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 naïve and inaccurate about the facts of our lives so as to do this without bad intent.”
In his interview with THR, Murphy said that he was not solely telling a story about the Mendéndez brothers from their perspective; he wanted to tell a multi-faceted tale with various perspectives.
“We were telling a story that was a very broad canvas,” he said. “We were telling the story of Dominick Dunne, of Leslie Abramson. We were also telling the story of the parents, who they blew their heads off; we were also telling their story. We had an obligation to so many people, not just to Erik and Lyle.”
Murphy also accused the brothers of playing the “victim card” which he called “reprehensible and disgusting.”
Murphy went on to say that there was “room for all points of view” in creating the series. “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.”
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