‘Monsters’ Star Cooper Koch Says Filming Episode 5 Required ‘Having Two Brains’
When Ari Graynor first read “Monsters” Episode 5, her first reaction was to put the script away for as long as possible.
“I was sort of like shaking for 48 hours,” said the actor who plays Leslie Abramson in Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan’s series about Lyle and Erik Menendez. “I… felt nauseous, and was like, ‘I don’t know how I’m going to do this,’ and put it down for a really long time. I knew how special it was and I just felt intimidated by the weight of it, the responsibility of it.”
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Episode 5, “The Hurt Man” is one unbroken take of Erik (Cooper Koch) describing the physical and sexual abuse he endured at the hands of his father, José (Javier Bardem). The episode was written by Brennan and directed by Michael Uppendahl, and the focus of a recent conversation with IndieWire at the SAG-AFTRA foundation in New York.
When Koch read the script, he had the opposite reaction; he spent as much time with it as possible. He wrote out the dialogue by hand every day, taking out the punctuation so he could really sit with Brennan’s words. “I would try to think it before I was going to bed, if I wasn’t listening to testimony,” he said. “That’s really how it how I started, just kind of getting it all in my brain. There’s something also about writing your words over and over and over again and not saying them, because then when you go to say them, it will it comes out more organically.”
Koch especially has talked a lot about the episode since it premiered on Netflix in September; the sole but successful rehearsal, the eight takes over two days, the emotional response he had when it was done. The final product is almost exactly as Brennan scripted it, down to minor vocal ticks and overlapping dialogue. Graynor ad libbed one line, when Leslie tells Erik to look at her — which ended up being the key to unlocking Koch’s performance.
“I’m remembering now, I wasn’t looking at you as much in those first two takes,” Koch told her. “I was trying to sort of hide from her, because I was maybe trying to make the choice of ‘I don’t want her to see me. I don’t want to talk about these things. I don’t want to do this, so I’m not gonna look at her.’ And then in after the first two and then into the third take — when Michael told me to be open to her and to find light and to try to defend the parents — then I tried to look at her the whole time.”
Graynor also used the episode as fodder for creative dream work, which she does with teacher Kim Gillingham in Los Angeles. “It’s really about tapping into your unconscious and the well of creativity in there,” she said. “I used Episode 5 as a dream and walked through, which was so interesting to feel. You’re moving around like in weird shapes in the dark, traveling through your unconscious and swimming through and seeing different dynamics.”
“Trying to own my anger was a big thing that came up,” she added. “Part of why I put it down is I was just like, ‘How am I not going to cry through this and just want to comfort him in a me kind of way?’ Playing her was an enormous gift in embodying a different kind of ferocity, and an anger and a strength that I found to be incredibly loving and incredibly nurturing and caring — maybe even more so in a way than than some of my automatic responses. I felt like how she was holding space was so incredible.”
On set, the main challenge should have been the camera, attached to a machine that moved on its own with grip Charles Ehrlinger supervising it. The script was laid out on the ground, with script pages on the ground so he could track where they were in the scene. As much as Graynor and Koch drew on their theatrical training for the Episode, it forced Koch in particular to “have two brains” and also remember to act for camera.
“The first day I went and looked at the stills — which maybe you’re not supposed to do, they don’t really like when you do that,” he said. “But I’m happy that I looked at it, because… the end shot was almost profile, and I was like, ‘That is not cinematic looking.’ So then the second day, I made sure that at the end moment that my head was angled toward the camera, and my eyes were just looking at her so that it looked more cinematic.”
Koch got in touch with Erik Menendez before the series premiered (before the family issued a statement denouncing the show), the two of them bonding over spirituality and a shared Los Angels upbringing. Later in September, he joined Kim Kardashian on a visit to the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility, where the brothers currently reside and where Menendez greeted him with a hug.
“It just felt really normal,” Koch said of meeting his character in person. “We were gonna go sit in this circle with all the other incarcerated individuals, and they were gonna share their stories, and he’s like, ‘Come, you’re sitting next to me’ … They’re both amazing people, and they’re both really charming and kind and funny — very funny. They cracked a lot of jokes. I care for them a lot and I hope that they get out soon, so we can play tennis.”
“Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story” is now streaming on Netflix.
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