Incest Innuendo in ‘Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story’ Is Pure Fiction, Says Trial Expert
The latest installment in Ryan Murphy’s Monster series, Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, shot immediately to the top of the streamer’s most watched list after its release last week. Yet the true-crime series also swiftly faced criticism over innuendo made in the show that the two convicted murderers had more than a brotherly bond, and developed a sexual relationship.
Backlash against the series — landing just as a new Menendez brothers Netflix docuseries, in which the two participated, was announced — came fast on Friday, the day after the nine-episode fictionalization of the 1989 killing of José and Kitty Menendez and its aftermath premiered on the streamer. First, a wave of comments from the Menendez supporters community, which has grown lately on TikTok and Instagram, flooded social media as viewers took issue with suggestions in Murphy and co-creator Ian Brennan’s script that the brothers were also lovers. Then, Erik Menendez himself chimed in to denounce the series as “lies and ruinous character portrayals.”
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Instances of Murphy’s show alluding to possible incest occur a few times in a series that is as much about the path of generational trauma as it is about American obsession with material wealth and spoofing the more questionable trends of early 1990s L.A. (Milli Vanilli permeates the show’s soundtrack.)
In the second episode, this includes the brothers briefly kissing after Lyle has placed his hands on Erik’s neck; later in the same sequence, Lyle is seen cutting in on Erik while he’s dancing with a woman at a party in their room at the Hotel Bel-Air, then wiping cocaine from his nose and sticking his thumb in his brother’s mouth. Later, in an episode six sequence that is pretty clearly telegraphed as a moment of fantasy, mother Kitty Menendez ascends a staircase to find her sons showering together.
Lyle testified at his trial that he never had a sexual relationship with his brother. Robert Rand, who wrote the definitive 2018 book on the brothers’ crime, The Menendez Murders, which is the culmination of closely covering their case as a reporter since the day after the murders, told The Hollywood Reporter the same by phone this weekend, describing the brothers as traditional jocks who did not do drugs.
Rand explained that the show’s depiction of the brothers’ relationship as likely incestuous is false and that the show portrayed the idea of the relationship the brothers were having that lived in the minds of those around them.
“I don’t believe that Erik and Lyle Menendez were ever lovers. I think that’s a fantasy that was in the mind of Dominick Dunne [the reporter portrayed in the series by Nathan Lane],” Rand explained. “Rumors were going around the trial that maybe there was some sort of weird relationship between Erik and Lyle themselves. But 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.”
Testimony from Lyle Menendez at trial was just as explosive in the courtroom as it was portrayed in the series, Rand indicated. The seasoned journalist told THR that in the courtroom that day, reporters and jurors alike were in tears as the accused murderer explained how the abuse he suffered at the hands of his father was then inflicted by him on Erik.
In the series, Lyle, played by Nicholas Alexander Chavez, confesses to this during a private conversation with his attorney, Leslie Abramson, played by Ari Graynor, while he recounts the abuse both he and his brother suffered at the hands of their father, José.
The Menendez brothers are currently incarcerated in Donovan Correctional Facility in California, and don’t have Netflix access in prison. Erik Menendez was likely given a description of the series by his wife as to how he and Lyle are depicted. And while his Friday statement didn’t mention the decision to include the incestuous innuendo, he seemed appalled by the overall portrayal of him and his brother. While the show presents the brothers as victims of abuse, he said it also condemns them as the justice system did when they were found guilty by a jury of premeditated first-degree murder with the special circumstances of lying in wait and multiple murders.
In his statement, which was posted by his wife, Tammi Menendez, on social media, Erik said: “I believed we had moved beyond the lies and ruinous character portrayals of Lyle, creating a caricature of Lyle rooted in horrible and blatant likes [sic] rampant in the show. 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 [sic] do this without bad intent.
“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 Menendez 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.”
Neither Murphy nor Netflix have yet to publicly respond to the statement from Menendez on Friday regarding the series, which is now streaming all episodes and is the No. 1 series in the U.S. on the platform. The Hollywood Reporter did not immediately hear back from Murphy or Netflix when seeking comment on Monday.
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