The 2025 Golden Globes was a big night for Monsters — despite not winning any awards — after helping renew interest in Erik and Lyle Menéndez‘s murder case.
Monsters was nominated on Sunday, January 5, for Best Limited Series, Anthology Series or a Motion Picture Made for Television, Best Performance by a Male Actor in a Limited Series for Cooper Koch‘s performance as Erik and Best Male Supporting Actor — Television for Javier Bardem‘s performance as José Menendez. Bardem lost his category to Tadanobu Asano from Shōgun, Koch lost out to Colin Farrell for The Penguin and Baby Reindeer won over Monsters.
Season 2 of the hit Netflix series debuted in September and chronicled Lyle (Nicholas Alexander Chavez) and Erik’s (Koch) 1990 arrest for the murder of their parents, José (Bardem) and Kitty (Chloë Sevigny). Taking inspiration from footage of the trial and subsequent interviews, Monsters mirrored key moments from the siblings’ lives before and after they were sentenced to life without parole for shooting their mother and father.
“I got the audition and I watched the trial videos for the first time,” Koch, 28, told GQ Australia in December 2024 about his devotion to the role. “I was so moved and I believed them immediately. It was then that I found all the similarities and I became quite obsessed with the case and with their story.”
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Koch recalled auditioning to play Erik in two other high-profile projects before Monsters, adding, “I was taping and taping, auditioning and auditioning, for seven years. Then finally you get the one that is supposed to happen.”
Episodes 4 and 5 received critical and fan praise for how it approached Erik and Lyle’s claims that they killed their parents in self-defense following years of alleged physical, emotional and sexual abuse. However, the show received backlash for other inaccuracies about the Menéndez brothers, including the insinuation that they were in a sexual relationship.
“I believed we had moved beyond the lies and ruinous character portrayals of Lyle, creating a caricature of Lyle rooted in horrible and blatant lies rampant in the show,” read a statement from Erik, now 53, that was shared via Lyle’s Facebook page in September. “I can only believe they were done so on purpose. It is with a heavy heart that I say, I believe Ryan Murphy cannot be this naive and inaccurate about the facts of our lives so as to do this without bad intent.”
Erik wasn’t thrilled about how he and Lyle, now 56, were portrayed.
“It is sad for me to know that Netflix’s dishonest portrayal of the tragedies surrounding our crime have taken the painful truths several steps backward — back through time to an era when the prosecution built a narrative on a belief system that males were not sexually abused, and that males experienced rape trauma differently than women,” Erik’s statement continued. “Those awful lies have been disrupted and exposed by countless brave victims over the last two decades who have broken through their personal shame and bravely spoken out. So now Murphy shapes his horrible narrative through vile and appalling character portrayals of Lyle and of me and disheartening slander. Is the truth not enough?”
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While creator Ryan Murphy has stood by the scripted show’s vision, Koch has shown support for Erik.
“I’m very hopeful that we can correct that injustice and heal what has been such a long, devastating trauma,” Koch told GQ last month. “If I had anything to do with it, I’m so glad. But there are a lot of people who are working behind the scenes who are really helping.”
Erik and Lyle are currently awaiting their next court date after the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office recommended a resentencing following the renewed public interest from Monsters and Netflix’s documentary The Menéndez Brothers.
