Ryan Murphy Reacts to Erik Menendez’s Criticism of Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story

“I’m used to this,” Ryan Murphy told E! News about the backlash to his latest series, Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, which sat atop the Netflix charts after its release last week. “I write about provocative things and controversial things, and my motto is, ‘never complain and never explain.’”

After sparking controversy for the anthology series’ Jeffrey Dahmer–focused first season, the writer-producer is now facing backlash for his portrayal of the infamous Menendez case, in which Lyle (played by Nicholas Alexander Chavez) and Erik (Cooper Koch) were sentenced to life in prison for brutally murdering their parents, José (Javier Bardem) and Mary Louise “Kitty” Menendez (Chloë Sevigny) in 1989.

At their 1993 trial, which resulted in two hung juries, Erik and Lyle testified that their father had physically and sexually abused them. Their second trial limited the inclusion of sexual assault testimony, and the brothers were both found guilty of two counts of first-degree murder and conspiracy to murder in 1996.

Days after the show debuted, Erik slammed the series in a statement shared to social media by his wife, Tammi Menendez, and also posted on Lyle’s social media. “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,” Erik began. “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 do this without bad intent,” he continued, adding, “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.”

Murphy was asked about Erik’s statement by Entertainment Tonight at the premiere of his new FX show, Grotesquerie. “I think it’s interesting that he’s issued a statement without having seen the show,” the creator said. “It’s really, really hard, if it’s your life, to see your life up onscreen. The thing that I find interesting that he doesn’t mention in his quote is, if you watch the show, I would say 60 to 65 percent of our show in the scripts and in the film form center around the abuse and what they claim happened to them,” he added. “And we do it very carefully and we give them their day in court and they talk openly about it.”

Murphy, who has also produced series about the O.J. Simpson murder trial and Bill Clinton’s impeachment, said that “writing about all points of view” regarding sexual abuse “can be controversial.” He explained that the writers took “a Rashomon kind of approach, where there were four people involved in that. Two of them are dead. What about the parents? We had an obligation as storytellers to also try and put in their perspective based on our research, which we did.”

In the nine-episode limited series, Erik and Lyle also share an implied incestuous relationship, including scenes in which the brothers kiss and shower together. When asked about this element of Monsters, Murphy said: “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 [a Vanity Fair reporter played by Nathan Lane] wrote several articles talking about that theory. We are presenting his point of view, just as we present [Menendez defense attorney played by Ari Graynor] Leslie Abramson’s point of view. We had an obligation to show all of that, and we did.”

The brothers testified in their trial that they never had a sexual relationship with one another. Dunne, who covered the trial for this magazine, never expressed this theory in his coverage of the trial. He did, however, report that sources told him the brothers had been sexually abused in his 1990 VF piece, “Nightmare on Elm Drive.”

Erik concluded his statement on Monsters by writing, “So now Murphy shapes his horrible narrative through vile and appalling character portrayals of Lyle and of me and disheartening slander. Is the truth not enough?”

After the show’s release last week, Koch, the actor who played Erik, and Kim Kardashian, an advocate for criminal-justice reform who is now working in the Murphy TV universe, reportedly visited San Diego County’s Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility to speak to a group of some 40 inmates—including the Menendez brothers—about prison reform. Lyle and Erik are set to share their side of the story in an upcoming Netflix documentary titled The Menendez Brothers, which debuts on October 7.