Ryan Murphy has defended his latest show Monsters amid backlash from one of its subjects.
The TV writer and producer has responded to the criticism surrounding his latest Netflix series, Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, which has come under fire online for implying that the brothers had an incestuous relationship.
Monsters is a biographical drama series based on the 1989 murder of José and Kitty Menendez, who were killed by their sons Lyle and Erik after years of alleged abuse.
A day after the series was released on 19 September, Erik slammed Murphy in a statement, saying, “I believe Ryan Murphy cannot be this naive and inaccurate about the facts of our lives so as to do this without bad intent.”
The Glee creator responded to Erik’s comments in an interview with Entertainment Tonight on Monday.
“I think it’s interesting that he’s issued a statement without having seen the show,” the writer and producer said, before acknowledging, “It’s really, really hard – if it’s your life – to see your life up on screen.”
Murphy went on to say that “if you watch the show, I would say 60 to 65 per cent” of the show’s scripts “centre around the abuse and what they claim happened to them”. He insisted, “We do it very carefully and we give them their day in court and they talk openly about it.”
The producer added that “writing about all points of view can be controversial”, but stuck by his decision to show “the points of view and theories from so many people who were involved in the case”.
“There were four people involved in that. Two of them are dead,” he continued. “What about the parents? We had an obligation as storytellers to also try and put in their perspective based on our research.”
The Menendez brothers, played by Nicholas Alexander Chavez and Cooper Koch, claimed they murdered their parents, played by Javier Bardem and Chloë Sevigny, in self-defence after years of sexual abuse.
The brothers are serving life sentences at the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego, California.
