Ryan Murphy hits back at Erik Menendez criticism of his Netflix Monsters crime thriller

Producer Ryan Murphy has defended his series Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story against criticisms levelled by their real-life subjects.

The series covers the 1989 violent double murder of Jose and Kitty Menendez by their sons, Lyle and Erik. The Menendez’s subsequent trials in the mid-1990s were sensationally covered and broadcast on Court TV and was a cultural moment of the era.

In the first trial, the brothers claimed their father sexually, physically and emotionally abused them and they had killed their parents out of fear for their lives. Two juries, one for each brother, couldn’t agree on a verdict. A second trial omitted the abuse claims and ended up in a conviction.

The Menendezes are serving life sentences without the possibility of parole.

The nine-episode Netflix miniseries debuted on Thursday and has clocked up 12.3 million views in its first four days.

Over the weekend, Erik issued a statement via his wife’s social media page that the series engaged in “vile and appalling character portrayals” of them and that it was “slanderous”.

Murphy, who created the show with Ian Brennan, hit back at Menendez while on the red carpet at the premiere of his latest series, Grotesquerie. He told Entertainment Tonight, “I think it’s interesting that he’s issued a statement without having seen the show.”

But he conceded that, “It’s really, really hard, if it’s your life, to see your life up on screen.”

Murphy drew attention to Monsters portraying the brothers’ abuse claims as fact. “The thing that I find interesting that (Erik) doesn’t mention in his quote is, if you watch the show, I would say 60 to 65 per cent of our show in the scripts, and in the film form, centre around the abuse and what they claim happened to them.

“And we do it very carefully, and we give them their day in court, and they talk openly about it. In this age, where people can really talk about sexual abuse, talking about it and writing about it and writing about all points of view can be controversial.”

Murphy added that the series is structured around multiple points of view told by different characters, including that of the Menendez parents, writer Dominick Dunne and defence lawyer Leslie Abrahamson.

“We had an obligation to show all of that, and we did.”

Erik Menendez’s full statement was scathing of Murphy’s show, which is the second season of an anthology collection that started with a dramatisation of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer’s crimes.

The Dahmer show also attracted criticism from the families of his victims, including that the production never contacted them.

Erik said, “I believe 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. 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.

“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.

“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?”

Despite calling out Netflix specifically in his condemnation, Erik along with Lyle will participate in a documentary for the streamer called The Menendez Brothers.

Both Menendezes are expected to do audio interviews from prison, alongside lawyers, journalists, family and other observers from the case. The documentary will be directed by Alejandro Hartmann.