‘Monsters: The Lyle And Erik Menendez Story' Star Cooper Koch On First Emmy Nom & Having An Effect On Events In 'Real-Time Before Our Eyes'
Monsters: The Lyle And Erik Menendez Story is the second season of Ryan Murphy's Monster anthology series for Netflix, centering on the 1989 murders of José (Javier Bardem) and Kitty Menendez (Chloë Sevigny), who were killed by their sons Lyle (Nicholas Alexander Chavez) and Erik (Koch). The season was nominated for 11 Emmys, including Outstanding Limited or Anthology Series.
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The role was a 'dream come true' for Koch, as someone who was invested in the ongoing case. 'I found out about the story when I was auditioning for the Law & Order series and the Lifetime movie back in 2017,' he says. 'Since then, I've always had this deep care and passion for the brothers and sort of believing their side of the story.'
A chance to show that care and passion came about with the fifth episode of the season, 'The Hurt Man' – a one-shot episode where Erik speaks about the abuse he suffered from his parents as a child. 'It's such a testament to Ian Brennan's work on writing the script,' says Koch. 'He really captured the way that both Erik and Leslie (Ari Graynor) sound and behave, and just the entire circumference of what it means to have experienced a form of sexual abuse… I don't know if I will ever get a script that is better than that, and I don't know if I'll ever do work that I feel as passionate about or proud of.'
Something that makes the recognition even more meaningful for Koch is that the actual Menendez brothers are still in the midst of trials. 'For the past year, this is still something that's happening live, and in real-time before our eyes,' he says. 'If I, or the show and everybody who worked on the show, has had anything to do to sort of move the needle and impact the real-life events that are happening in front of our eyes, then that just means the world… If I had the ability to change the outcome of someone's life for the better, there's nothing better than that.'
Of course, there's no rest for Koch who is already gearing up for Luca Guadagnino's AI-themed film Artificial. 'I'm going to be shooting that in August, and I have a couple of plays that I've been circulating that are still sort of in early development,' he says. 'But the thing I'm going to do next is Artificial.'
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