Out actor Cooper Koch responds to ‘Monsters’ controversy, says he “stands with” Erik Menéndez
Ryan Murphy and Netflix’s Monsters: The Lyle And Erik Menéndez Story means that suddenly everybody’s weighing in on decades-old trials that caused a media frenzy and ended in a pretty decisive verdict: Guilty.But, this time, it’s not the fact that the Menéndez Brothers murdered their own parents in 1989 that’s up for questioning—it’s whether or not Lyle and Erik had an incestuous relationship.Since its homoerotic first teaser, Monsters‘ approach to this unsubstantiated rumor has been controversial, to say the least.
Multiple scenes in the series depict varying levels of sexual intimacy between Lyle (played by Nicholas Alexander Chavez) and his younger brother Erik (Cooper Koch), from kissing to sensual dancing to handsy foreplay in the shower.Subscribe to our newsletter for your front-row seat to all things entertainment with a sprinkle of everything else queer.While there is no verifiable proof that this was ever the nature of the brothers’ relationship, these moments are largely drawn from theories circulated by Vanity Fair journalist Dominick Dunne (played by Nathan Lane), who believed the Menéndezes killed their parents as a means of covering up their love affair.The choice to include these imagined scenes—based on conjecture—alongside other moments adapted directly from public records and media footage certainly muddies the truth.
It sure seems like Monsters wants us to take these rumored acts of incest at face value, as part of this story as it actually happened, and that’s precisely what’s upset so many viewers.Murphy’s latest show, ‘Monsters’, drops on Thursday, but he’s already planning his next project.
makerBut Murphy stands behind it, maintaining he had “an obligation” to present multiple “points of view” of the events, while acknowledging that doing so very much “can be controversial.”Among the many dissenters, is the Menéndez brothers’ extended family who recently released a joint statement calling out the series as a “phobic, gross, anachronistic,.
