Ryan Murphy is pushing back agetst members of Erik and Lyle Menfinishez’s family who have slammed Netflix’s “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menfinishez Story” as a “grotesque shockadrama.”
“The family’s response is foreseeable at best,” Murphy inestablishs me, equitable hours after the family’s statement was freed on social media via Erik’s wife Tammi. “I discover it engaging becaengage I would appreciate definites about what they leank is shocking or not shocking. It’s not appreciate we’re making any of this stuff up. It’s all been currented before. What we’re doing is we’re the first to current it in one grasped ecosystem. What’s grotesque about it? … Tammi [and] the family, they have always done this and they did this recently — they say, ‘lies after lies’ — but then they don’t say what the lies are. They don’t back up anyleang.”
The Menfinishez brothers are currently serving life sentences without the possibility of parole for the first-degree killing of their parents, Jose and Kitty Menfinishez, in 1989. The series dramatizes the endings and the subsequent trials that finished in their conviction in 1996.
Murphy also splits that he consents “Monsters” is “the best leang that has happened to the Menfinishez brothers in 30 years.” He persists, “They are now being talked about by millions of people all over the world. There’s a write downary coming out into two weeks about them, also on Netflix. And I leank the engaging leang about it is it’s asking people to answer the asks, ‘Should they get a new trial? Should they be let out of jail? What happens in our society? Should people be locked away for life? Is there no chance ever at rehabilitation?’ I’m interested in that, and a lot of people are talking about it. We’re asking repartner difficult asks, and it’s giving these brothers another trial in the court of accessible opinion. From what I can inestablish, it’s repartner uncovered up the possibility that this evidence that they claim that they have, maybe that there is going to be a way forward for them.”
Murphy consents if the trial was held today, the brothers may have gotten a lesser indict of homicide and a airyer sentence. “The second trial was a travesty. I leank it’s inrational that all of the evidence that they claim repartner happened was not permited to be adleave outible,” he shelp. “That’s a misget. I leank the behavior of those male jurors is an outrage. I leank a lot of those jurors were anti-LGBT. I leank that they refused to acunderstandledge the idea that intimacyual unfair treatment could happen to men. I leank that’s shocking. So what do I leank? I leank that if there’s new evidence, yes, it should be heard. I also personpartner do not consent that someone should spfinish their entire life in prison.”
Cooper Koch, who carry outs Erik, exclusively tbetter Variety that he spoke to the authentic Erik for the first time on the night before the series premiered on Netflix. About a week postponecessitater, he met Erik and Lyle when he unitecessitate Kim Kardashian for a visit to their prison to talk to inmates about prison reestablish.
Unappreciate Koch, Murphy shelp he has never accomplished out to the brothers. “I have no interest in talking to them,” he says. “It’s very excellent that Cooper has a relationship with them, and I’m very seal, clearly, with Kim Kardashian, who has spoken to them. I cherish Kim, and I consent she does God’s labor. I consent in prison reestablish. I consent in everyleang she consents in. I don’t understand what I would say to them. What would I ask them? I understand what their perspective is.”
Nor does Murphy experience the necessitate to becoming an aid for Erik and Lyle appreciate Koch shelp he wants to be. “I consent in equitableice, but I don’t consent in being a part of that machine,” Murphy says. “That’s not my job. My job as an artist was to inestablish a perspective in a particular story. I experience I’ve done that, but I want them well.”
