The first trailer for the second season of Netflix and Ryan Murphy Monster examines the claims made by real-life brothers Lyle and Eric Menendez that they were sexually abused for years by their father, José Menendez.
The teaser for Monster: The Story of Lyle and Erik Menendez begins 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, portraying brothers Lyle and Erik, stand silently in the background, smiling over their parents’ shoulders. “It’s over. Stop. I’m going to fix this family,” José replies before he and his wife stand up and leave the photo session.
During their original 1993 trial for the murder of their parents, the Menendez brothers claimed they shot Jose and Kitty Menendez in self-defense after years of sexual abuse by their father and with their mother’s knowledge. The trailer ends with the Menendez brothers embracing.
“Now it’s just us,” one of the brothers says to the other.
The second season of the Monster The series synopsis reads: “While prosecutors argued they wanted to inherit their family’s fortune, the brothers maintained – and continue to maintain to this day, as they serve life sentences without the possibility of parole – that their actions were based on fear of a lifetime of physical, emotional and sexual abuse at the hands of their parents. Monster: The Story of Lyle and Erik Menendez delves into the historic case that took the world by storm, paving the way for today’s audiences’ fascination with true crime, and asks the audience in turn: “Who are the real monsters?”
The cast of the second season includes Nathan Lane in the role of investigative journalist Dominick Dunne and Ari Graynor as defense attorney Leslie Abramson. The Menendez case was a media sensation in the early 1990s and Monster is the last to adapt the story for the screen.
Fox and CBS aired television films about the murders in 1994, Lifetime aired Menendez: Blood Brothers in 2017 and Law & Order: True Crime on NBC also focused on the case, starring Edie Falco as Abramson. Peacock’s 2023 documentary Menendez + Menudo: Betrayed Boys In the film, Roy Rosselló, a former member of the boy band Menudo, claimed that José Menendez sexually abused him when he was a teenager.
