In 1993 there was a very high-profile case in the United States. The brothers Lyle and Erik Menéndez were in the dock after there was reliable evidence that they were the murderers of José and Mary Louise, their parents, who had been found shot multiple times in the family home. They are the central characters of the second season of Monster, whose first season we met under the title Dahmer, and producer Ryan Murphy is assembling an all-star cast to cover the case.
Javier Bardem will be José Menéndez, the father of the suspects, in what will mean a fundamental change in the record with respect to the role that gave him an Oscar for best supporting actor: after being the psychopath in No Country for Old Men, he will now find himself in the skin of a murder victim.
It will be his second role under Murphy, who directed him in 2010 in Eat, Pray, Love, the romantic film with Julia Roberts. His wife Penélope Cruz had also worked with the all-powerful director, screenwriter and producer, in his case in The Assassination of Gianni Versace where she played Donatella, the designer’s sister.
As Mary Louise, his wife in fiction, he will star Chloë Sevigny, the actress who became known in 1999 with Boys Don’t Cry, a film for which she was nominated for an Oscar, and with a most stimulating career. She worked under Lars Von Trier in Dogville, in 2010 she won the Golden Globe for her work in the series Big Love and, more recently, she could be seen in an episode of Poker Face. She is also a regular with Murphy: she participated in the second and fifth seasons of American horror story and will be in Feud: Capote vs the swans, the ambitious biopic about the friendships of Truman Capote.
Less well known are the series’ killers. Nicholas Alexander Chavez, who so far has his most prominent role in the soap opera General Hospital, will play Lyle, the older brother, who was 21 years old at the time of the crime. Cooper Koch, who worked alongside Kevin Bacon in the horror film They/them, will be Erik, the younger brother, who was barely 18 years old when the events occurred.
And finally, the latest signing announced this week: Nathan Lane will play Dominick Dunne, the investigative journalist who covered the case for Vanity Fair magazine. It should be remembered that Dunne was not just any journalist: he is also the author of novels such as An Inopportune Woman, A Season in Purgatory or The Two Mrs. Grenville, in which he fictionalized some of the most notorious crimes with ingenuity and an exhaustive look at the American elite. country’s media.
For those who don’t know the story, Lyle Menendez called the Beverly Hills police on August 20, 1989 while crying, “Someone killed my parents.” When authorities arrived at the crime scene, they found the bodies of José and Mary Louise, who had been shot multiple times. Soon the police began to question the children’s involvement in the case when they saw that they led a life of luxury after the double murder: they used their fortune to buy Rolex watches, luxury cars and travel.
The series, produced by Netflix, will premiere as Monster: The Story of Lyle and Erik Menendez, taking advantage of the epigraph that Murphy placed in Dahmer, which was released with the confusing title of Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story. And, while waiting for the new anthology season to be filmed, the public has another project based on real events to look forward to, although it is not exactly about murders:
