The first trailer for Netflix’s and Ryan Murphy’s second season of Monster explores claims by real-life brothers Lyle and Eric Menendez that they were subjected to years of sexual abuse at the hands of their father, José Menendez.
The teaser for Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story opens with a family portrait shoot and a smiling Kitty Menendez, played by Chloë Sevigny, asking her husband José (Javier Bardem) with a quiet aside, “I need to know what’s going on with you and the boys.”
Newcomers Nicholas Alexander Chavez and Cooper Koch, who portray brothers Lyle and Erik respectively, stand silently and with their own smiles over their parents’ shoulders in the background. “It is over. Stop. I’m going to fix this family,” José replies before he and his wife get up and leave the photo session.
During their original 1993 trial for the murder of their parents, the Menendez brothers claimed they shot José and Kitty Menendez in self-defense after suffering years of sexual abuse at the hands of their father and with the knowledge of their mother. The trailer ends with the Menendez brothers in an embrace.
“It’s just us now,” one of the brothers tells the other.
The second season of the Monsters series has a synopsis that reads: “While the prosecution argued they were seeking to inherit their family fortune, the brothers claimed — and remain adamant to this day, as they serve life sentences without the possibility of parole — that their actions stemmed out of fear from a lifetime of physical, emotional and sexual abuse at the hands of their parents. Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story dives into the historic case that took the world by storm, paved the way for audiences’ modern-day fascination with true crime and in return asks those audiences: Who are the real monsters?”
The second season cast includes Nathan Lane, playing the role of investigative journalist Dominick Dunne, and Ari Graynor as criminal defense attorney Leslie Abramson. The Menendez case was a media sensation in the early 1990s, and Monsters is the latest to adapt the story for the screen.
Fox and CBS aired TV movies about the murders in 1994, Lifetime ran Menendez: Blood Brothers in 2017 and Law & Order: True Crime on NBC also focused on the case, with Edie Falco starring as Abramson. Peacock’s 2023 doc Menendez + Menudo: Boys Betrayed featured Roy Rosselló, a former member of boy band Menudo, claiming José Menendez sexually assaulted him when he was a teenager.
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