After spending 4 episodes unpacking the troubled lives of Lyle and Erik Menendez, Netflix’s “Monsters” undergoes an intense shift in style in its fifth episode.
Titled “The Hurt Man,” the 33-minute installment plays out in a single take as Erik (Cooper Koch) gives an in depth, emotional account of the childhood abuse that he suffered. Erik’s speech comes after he and his brother have been detained for the murder of their parents Jose and Kitty (Javier Bardem and Chloe Sevigny), during a conversation together with his lawyer Leslie Abramson (Ari Graynor).
It’s a striking divergence for the series, bifurcating its nine-episode season with a conspicuously shorter episode that offers Erik an uninterrupted highlight to articulate the darkness at the center of the story — but additionally strands him from the support of his older brother, Lyle (Nicholas Chavez). In her review of the series, Variety TV critic Aramide Tinubu called “The Hurt Man” a “standout” of the series, and the culmination of an “excellent” first half of the story.
With no cuts or edits within the episode, and the character of Abramson only seen from behind, “Monsters” rests on Koch’s shoulders for those 36 minutes.
“We shot it eight times — 4 times a day for 2 days,” Graynor said. “We were scheduled to have a bunch of rehearsal. Cooper and I had run it a just a few times on our own, simply to do it out loud, after which we did it in rehearsal. I believe we had each spent a lot time preparing and cared so deeply about it that we got within the room and we did it once and Michael Uppendahl, our incredible director, said, ‘Let’s not rehearse it, let’s just shoot it.’”
Koch recalled the rehearsal: “It was so beautiful. It went higher than I could have imagined.”
Nevertheless, he wasn’t feeling the identical after they shot the primary two takes. “I went over to Michael and said, ‘I want some help. I got to determine why I’m not unlocking it, or what I’m not gettin,’” Koch remembers. “And he says, ‘You’re chasing the dragon, you’re chasing the dragon of that first rehearsal. So go into the following one and just be open to Ari. Be open to what she’s gonna say. Find light in all the things which you could and check out to defend your parents.’ That actually just opened all the things up. I felt amazing after the third take.”
The eighth and final take is the one featured within the episode. “Watching [Cooper] try this was extraordinary, and we got through it each time. We never stopped, there weren’t mess-ups,” Graynor said. “It was totally different each time. I believe we each knew what an incredible gift it was as actors, and likewise that episode was a lot larger than us. We just really desired to hold the space for Erik’s story and for me, as Leslie, to model that type of listening and love that I believe she gives to him.”
Koch became emotional talking about working with Graynor. “The incontrovertible fact that you don’t see her face, you only hear her voice, and he or she carries him through the entire thing and holds space for him, Ari is just so generous along with her performances,” he said, wiping tears from his face.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “This happens each time I discuss her.”
Murphy said he and co-creator Ian Brennan were committed to letting Erik tell his side of the story. “Every part he does say in there was either based on things that he had said, written, talked about, wrote transcripts, et cetera, so it was very true to his perspective,” he explained. “After we were writing it, I assumed that probably the most powerful solution to do this could give you the chance to do it in a single shot in order that you may not look away. You simply couldn’t look away.”
Murphy said “you may hear a pin drop” while they were shooting the takes. He praised Graynor’s performance as “incredible back acting.”
“They were each so committed to what they were talking about and giving victims of sexual abuse their day in court, so to talk,” he said.
Shortly after the series premiered on Netflix, Erik blasted “Monsters” and Murphy for the show’s “ruinous character portrayals” of himself and his brother. The siblings are currently serving life sentences on the RJ Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego, Calif., after being convicted in 1996 for the murder of their parents.
In his interview with Variety, Murphy defended the series, saying that the show is “the most effective thing that has happened” to the brothers in “30 years.”
Koch met the brothers after the series premiered during a jail visit with Kim Kardashian. He believes the brothers deserve a retrial: “I actually do hope that they’re able to get paroled and have an incredible remainder of their lives.”
