Ryan Murphy is no stranger to having to defend his works, especially when it comes down to real-life portrayals. With his latest venture, Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, taking some heat from Erik Menendez himself, Murphy has gone on the defensive yet again, saying the brothers should be thanking him for the series.
Speaking with The Hollywood Reporter amid Erik Menendez’s dismissal of the second season of Ryan Murphy’s anthology series, the creator stated, “I’ll tell you my thoughts about the Menendez brothers. The Menendez brothers should be sending me flowers. They haven’t had so much attention in 30 years. And it’s gotten the attention of not only this country, but all over the world. There’s sort of an outpouring of interest in their lives and in the case.” Murphy added that the outcome for the brothers has been nothing short of positive. “I know for a fact that many people have offered to help them because of the interest of my show and what we did. There is no world that we live in where the Menendez brothers or their wives or lawyers would say, ‘You know what, that was a wonderful, accurate depiction of our clients.’ That was never going to happen, and I wasn’t interested in that happening.”
Murphy would go on to say that critics – particularly the Menendez brothers and their team – are missing the point that the series isn’t just about them but also about the journalists and attorneys that played a key part in how the story was presented in the first place. With this, he said the brothers are yet again playing victim to the tune of “poor pitiful us.”
One of Erik Menendez’s key points in his take on Murphy’s series is that he is supporting a slanderous narrative that doesn’t properly take into account the abuse they went through. Reacting to this, Murphy stated, “I think they could have killed their parents, and also had been abused. They could have been of ambiguous moral character as young people, and be rehabilitated now. So I think that story is complicated…”
Do you think Ryan Murphy has misrepresented the Menendez brothers? How will he come out looking when all is said and done?