When Netflix dropped the second season of Ryan Murphy’s Monster, everyone wondered who the relative unknowns were cast as Erik and Lyle Menendez. Supported by well-known players like Javier Bardem, Chloë Sevigny, Ari Graynor, and Leslie Grossman, stars Cooper Koch and Nicholas Alexander Chavez do earth-shattering work as two young men whose deep-seeded trauma led them to commit a heinous crime. Koch received a Golden Globe nomination for his performance, and he’s taking this world by storm.
Koch is not taking this moment for granted. Monsters debuted with a lot of buzz and chatter as it polarized audiences with how it revisited the violent murder of Jose and Kitty Menendez while it imagined Erik and Lyle’s time in that house. I admitted to Koch that I came to the limited series late because I wanted to wait for all the noise to die dow, and the actor admits how grateful he is for the sudden shift in his life and career.
“It’s just a new world now,” Koch says. “I think I’m a lot busier and there’s things that you get to do in terms of meetings and interviews and events happening, which is so fantastic. I think it’s really been about me juggling how to deal with this newness. Before I was just doing self-tapes and then I got Monsters, but now there’s a whole new, other side of the job which is about selling yourself and trying to build on the momentum. I’m honestly so grateful to be in the position that I’m in because of this show. I’m excited for what’s next.”
I joked by saying that he’s booked and blessed. “Booked and blessed, baby,” he says with a grin.
As viewers got acquaited to Erik and Lyle as both a brotherly unit and as separate young men, you will notice a lot of anger being expelled from both characters. Lyle is quick to launch into an angered tirade but Erik is more reserved. Being quieter, though, doesn’t mean that that anger is nonexistent. That frustration is deep and confusing, but anger is something that Erik–the character–felt very present with.
“There are definitely things that make him angry, but because of the way that he was raised and through the ages of 6 to 18–when his abuse and the sexual abuse was happening by his father–I think he’s not as hair-triggery and he’s more introspective,” Koch says. “Erik doesn’t jump down someone’s neck, and he takes things in–he’s more sensitive and emotional. It’s harder for him to express his needs or to be an alpha, because that’s just not in his nature. He was always the little brother and always being told what to be, how needs to act or that he’s a sissy and a coward. It’s sort of opposite for him to stand on his own two feel and stick up for himself. What makes his journey so compelling is that when he does start being honest about what happened to him, to Dr. VIckery and to Leslie [Abramson], he goes against what his brother wanted him to do. I think him being vulnerable and starting to talk about what happened was his sort of transformation of finding himself and understanding how he can stand on his own.”
I mentioned that when Erik was with Lyle, it felt like they had each other’s backs. Lyle wouldn’t ever leave his brother behind, and Erik felt protected by the mere presence of his brother by his side. Whenever Koch’s Erik was alone, I admitted that I felt more concerned about him.
“That was always my goal,” he says. “I always wanted the audience to be sympathizing with Erik and to feel worried forhim, because I think that was authentic to what the experience was. The whole show is asking, ‘Who are the monsters?’ In a thematic way, you were showing bnoth brothers in those two different lights to really show both points of view–and there are a lot of points of view.”
There is a moment when Lyle is on the stand, and Erik is watching him from the courtroom. His brother is detailing their shared experience to the world for the first time on a public level. Every time it cuts back to Koch, we see more and more emotion spill out of him as if we are watching, in real time, someone’s greatest fears being put on display for everyone to absord and form and opinion about it. Koch is incredible in the scene without uttering a single word, his face contorted by shame, fear, and terror. He’s desperate to hold it together, but he knows that he can’t. It’s a heartbreaking moment.
“When you’re in it and you get that organic reaction, those feelings are real,” he says. “It feels good, in a way, because you were in that moment truthfully, and, especially at that point, I was so immersed in them that I could just trust that whatever moment I was going to be in, I was going to react how he would react in the moment. Lyle’s testimony is basically taken directly from the real testimony, so I had watched that so many times. If you watch the real testimony, Erik’s vein is popping out of his head when Lyle is telling him that. I had an image of what it looks like, and I knew what it felt like to have Lyle confess that on the stand in front of everybody. When it came down to film it, it just comes out, because you are so in it. There was a time when I was going to be terrified going into this. Conjuring up those kinds of emotions are difficult and it’s weird and fickle, fickle, fickle. It’s like a magnetic set of wires have to connect in order to make it happen. You get worried if you’re going to feel something real. Is it going to be real for me? If I just trust myself and I am present and I’m open and I am listening and watching, then it’ll happen. It came out from my deep care and empathy and feelings for not just Erik but for both of them. Even just that passion and the things that I feel a Cooper for them, it hits me. It lives in me–it’s very alive, those feelings.
In that moment, there was anger there, too. There was shame, embarrassment, fear, anger, love, even. Lyle is not the first person who is going to come and apologize to you, so to have him up there apologizing for something that he did that’s a deep, deep secret in front of everybody…that’s just a whirlwind in his mind.”
Monsters: The Lyle & Erik Menendez Story is streaming now on Netflix.
