Ryan Murphy is now responding to Erik Menendez‘s statement about Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story.
If you don’t know, the new iteration of Monsters dropped on Netflix last week, and it follows the real life story of Lyle and Erik Menendez, two brothers who fatally shot their parents in their Beverly Hills home in 1989. Ryan is the co-creator, writer, and executive producer on the series.
Recently, Erik called out the show, saying it’s full of lies and suggested Ryan couldn’t be so naive and inaccurate about the facts.
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Ryan told ET, “I think it’s interesting that he’s issued a statement without having seen the show. It’s really, really hard — if it’s your life — to see your life up on screen.”
“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. And we do it very carefully and we give them their day in court and they talk openly about it,” Ryan added.
He said that looking at sexual abuse through a TV lens “can be controversial,” and shared, “It’s a ‘Rashomon’ kind of approach, where there were 4 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.”
He also spoke to any undertones of incest between the brothers that might have been seen on screen.
“If you watch the show, what the show is doing is presenting the points of view and theories from so many people who were involved in the case,” he added. “Dominick Dunne [a Vanity Fair journalist] wrote several articles talking about that theory. We are presenting his point of view. And we had an obligation to show all of that and we did.”
Netflix will soon be releasing a documentary with the Menendez brothers telling their full story.
