Much has been made of the incestuous portrayal of the Menendez brothers in “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story.” But the actors behind the widely discussed Netflix original want viewers to know this element of the series isn’t necessarily based on fact.
“To be honest with you, I don’t remember reading any of that in my research. So if he did suggest that, it was a suggestion as it is at this dinner party where he talks for 20 pages,” Nathan Lane told TheWrap of Vanity Fair reporter Dominick Dunne.
During the dinner party in question, Dunne (Lane) entertains his guests with an onslaught of questions and theories about the case, questioning why the brothers didn’t bring up their alleged abuse sooner.
“Then he suggests maybe this is a possible scenario, and they cut away to Kitty walking in on them in the shower,” Lane explained. “That happens several times in the show where somebody is suggesting, ‘This is how I see it.’ I walk through the Menendez house and I say, ‘Oh, they came in through the back doors, not through the front door,’ and then you see it happen.”
“That’s not what the show is saying, that they were having an incestuous relationship,” Lane continued. “It’s part of a dramatization, not a documentary.”
Cooper Koch, who plays Erik Menendez, also emphasized that the shower scene — as well as the rumors about the brothers’ relationship — are supposed to represent Dunne’s point of view.
“To kind of debunk the whole thing, it’s from Dominick Dunne’s perspective. I think people are taking that a little bit out of context,” Koch said. “If you really watch the mise-en-scène of it, Dominick goes through this story and is talking to all of his friends at the table. After the story’s done, it cuts to this shot behind him and his friends are gone, the lights are out and the candles are burning. I think that’s supposed to represent his theory is whack and that’s not what happened.”
Series co-creator Ryan Murphy has also given a similar explanation for the portrayal. “It’s a ‘Rashomon’ kind of approach, where there were four people involved in that,” he said in an interview this week with Entertainment Tonight. “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 reality, the idea that the Menendez brothers were in a romantic relationship was little more than a niche theory. For a period of time, the jury for the first trial thought this was a possible explanation for why the brothers killed their parents, but that was soon dismissed after reviewing court transcripts. The biggest proponent of this theory seemed to have been Dunne, who did not mention the idea in his reporting but allegedly spread it privately.
This theory is just one of the many examples of Dunne’s complexities. A closeted gay man throughout “his entire life,” as Lane says, Dunne was originally a producer for cult films such as “The Boys in the Band” and “The Panic in Needle Park.” He first became a contributor for Vanity Fair following the death of his daughter, “Poltergeist” star Dominique Dunne. In 1982, she was murdered by her ex-boyfriend, who was charged with voluntary manslaughter for his crimes and released after two and a half years. For Dunne, the injustice launched a career of standing up for murder victims.
That case appears in “Monsters” as does a recreation of when Dunne spoke out against the voluntary manslaughter ruling. “There was a lot of reading about him, that kind of research, looking at these interviews of him on YouTube, trying to capture his cadence and tone,” Lane said. “It was the opportunity of a lifetime. I’m so grateful to Ryan [Murphy] for this and for specifically saying we’re going to write this episode that will focus on him and giving me all these emotional scenes.”
Dunne’s biases truly came to a head during the Menendez trial. “Publicly, his stance was that I don’t believe they were molested. But privately, I think he was very affected by the testimony of Erik and Lyle and expressed it to other reporters there, saying, ‘I think I may have gotten this wrong,’” Lane shared. “But then he would go on Court TV and say, ‘No, I don’t buy it.’”
“I think the saddest thing about him was he finally became the celebrity he always wanted to be through his writing,” he concluded, “and the same people in Hollywood who had shunned him at a certain point welcomed him back with open arms to their dinner parties to hear about the O.J. Simpson trial or the Menendez trial and get the inside scoop.”
“Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story” is now streaming on Netflix.
