Together with Kelly, Calvin Klein took his eponymous brand to the next level. She was the one who came up with the idea of adapting men’s underwear for women. From the casual comment “there’s something sexy about wearing your boyfriend’s underwear” came one of the brand’s best-sellers and iconic designs, generating $70 million in 1984. Kelly Rector became a true reflection of the Calvin Klein woman, one who encapsulated glamour and sophistication in a simple cashmere knit dress. The couple married in 1986 while on a business trip to Rome. She wore an ensemble of silk pencil skirt, matching blazer, and a lace bodice, designed by Calvin. They were married until 2006, when their divorce was made official, although the couple had separated 10 years earlier.
Ron Galella, Ltd./Getty Images
But beyond being Calvin Klein’s wife or his muse, Kelly now defines herself on her Instagram account’s bio as a “designer, photographer, interior designer, author, ceramacist, and mother.” She has edited seven photography books. The first one, Pools, launched in 1992 at a party in New York where all the personalities of the moment were present. In 2015, she published a retrospective of her own photographs, many of which have been published in magazines such as Vogue and Interview. In an interview with Equestrian Living, she credited her parents with helping her develop her aesthetic sensibility. “I think both of my parents were quite stylish,” admits Kelly. “My dad was a film director, so he was quite creative, and mom was an antique dealer who collected art and antiques. She’s had many stores, so I think I got a lot of my art background by growing up with ‘50s and ‘60s furniture in the house, and maybe that inspired me for my modernism background. I was surrounded by the arts growing up, so yes, they definitely had an influence on me.”
Onassis began receiving chemotherapy in January of 1994. She publicly disclosed her diagnosis, saying initially that the prognosis looked good. She even continued to work as an editor at Doubleday. But by March her cancer had spread to her spinal cord and brain. When the cancer spread to her liver in May of 1994, doctors deemed her condition terminal. As “America’s Widow” depicts, Onassis decided to leave New York Hospital of her own volition on May 18, choosing to spend her remaining time at her Upper East Side home. The next evening, at 10:15 p.m., Jackie O died in her sleep with her children by her side.
Love Story’s third episode eschews the fox-hunt accident, instead choosing to portray Jackie’s deteriorating condition at home. An early scene finds Watts as Onassis sitting by her lit fireplace, going through her old letters, rereading each one and then tossing them into the fire. “I don’t need my personal correspondence memorialized in The Smithsonian,” she says when Kelly’s John asks her why she is destroying her keepsakes. According to Jackie’s former lover, architect Jack Warnecke—whom she fell for while he designed JFK’s presidential grave memorial—Onassis really did make a habit of burning her old letters as her health declined.
John F. Kennedy Jr, Caroline Kennedy, and Jacquline Onassis Kennedy at the rededication for the John F. Kennedy President Library and Museum in Boston on Oct. 29, 1993.John Tlumacki/The Boston Globe/Getty Images
Journalist J. Randy Taraborrelli interviewed Warnecke in 1998 for his biography of the first lady, Jackie: Public, Private, Secret, which was released in 2023 and excerpted in People. Given Onassis’s fiercely private nature, Warnecke requested that Taraborrelli not publish their interview until 10 years after Warnecke’s own death, which occurred in 2010 when the architect was 91. “As I took my seat, Jackie handed me a stack of envelopes neatly tied together with yarn,” Warnecke told Taraborrelli. “My presence that evening was part of a ritual. Every night that week, she was inviting a trusted friend or family member to her home to take part in it.”
According to Jackie: Public, Private, Secret, Jackie read each letter before placing it into the fireplace. “There were letters from Jackie’s children, John and Caroline…. There were also letters from Jack Kennedy, Aristotle Onassis, her father, Jack Bouvier, and even a few from me,” Warnecke told Taraborrelli. “She held one of the photographs and stared at it. It was her and Jack [Kennedy] on the day of his inauguration. ‘Keep this for me, will you?’ she asked.”
Before she died, Jackie O wrote one final letter to her son. According to Us Weekly, in the three-episode CNN docuseries American Prince, family friend Gary Ginsberg revealed that Jackie O wrote a heartfelt letter full of words of encouragement to her then 33-year-old son. “I understand the pressure you’ll forever have to endure as a Kennedy, even though we brought you into this world as an innocent,” she wrote, repeated almost word for word in the Love Story episode. “You, especially, have a place in history. No matter what course in life you choose, all I can ask is that you…continue to make me, the Kennedy family, and yourself proud.”
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and John F. Kennedy Jr. attends a tribute on the anniversary of the birth of John F. Kennedy, May 24, 1993.Brooks Kraft LLC/Sygma/Getty Images
After horror, crime, and sports, Ryan Murphy is turning his attention to love. The producer’s next anthology series based on recent history, Love Story, begins with a season focused on the beautiful and damned John F. Kennedy Jr.—the only son of President John F. Kennedy—and his eventual wife, fashion publicist Carolyn Bessette. Their relationship made Kennedy Jr. and Bessette media stars in the 1990s, but it came to a tragic end when the two of them (and Carolyn’s sister Lauren) died in a private-plane crash off the coast of Massachusetts in 1999—less than three years after their wedding.
The show’s cast is filled with both A-listers and fresh faces, including Paul Anthony Kelly and Sarah Pidgeon as the doomed couple and Naomi Watts as Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Here, we place the stars of the show side by side with the characters they’re playing—so you can see just how they stack up to their real-life counterparts.
After a screening at Carnegie Hall, guests were bused over to The Pool, a storied event space and the former home of the Four Seasons restaurant located in Midtown’s historic Seagram Building. Designed by Philip Johnson and opened in 1959, The Pool’s mid-century modern aesthetic harkens back to the New York of the Mad Men age. It’s the birthplace of the “power lunch,” where notables like Barry Diller, Henry Kissinger, Barbara Walters, Nora Efron, Tom Wolfe, and yes, even Jackie O, were known to dine; it’s also where Love Story shot a pivotal scene for its second episode. (But more on that in a bit.)
Love Story star Sarah Pidgeon, who plays Carolyn, was locked in a deep conversation with costume designer Rudy Mance at the after-party. “We were just talking about all the hard work that went into it,” Pidgeon says, still clutching her colleague’s arm. “From cast to creatives and crew, there wasn’t a moment that our foot wasn’t on the gas.”
The team had to move quickly—especially Mance, who was brought on to the series after production had already begun. He was hired to fix Carolyn’s look after initial test shots of Pidgeon in character were torn apart on X and Instagram. “There’s no two other people, aside from her and I, that experienced what it was like to find this character through the clothes,” says Mance. “To really find who she was, and the story that we wanted to tell.”
It’s a family affair for Pidgeon, Gummer, Kelly, and Watts
Kicking Love Story off with Kennedy Jr. and Bessette was Murphy’s idea, though the series was created by Connor Hines, who serves as an executive producer and wrote six of the nine episodes. “There is no American crown. There isn’t a monarchy here. There’s not that culture,” Simpson explains. Unless, of course, you’re talking about the Kennedys. JFK Jr. “came the closest that we ever had to an American prince. We all saw him grow up. We saw him lose his father. We saw him go to college, go to law school. He had the same obsessive following that the princes in England did.” And who could resist telling the story of how America’s prince found his Cinderella?
Bessette wasn’t exactly toiling in obscurity before she met her Prince Charming; she grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut, after all. But through her own tenacity, talent, and, yes, effortless beauty—she was voted “Ultimate Beautiful Person” in high school—Bessette created a glamorous life for herself in New York. “She was somebody who had been a shopgirl in Boston, who’d risen her way up to the corporate suite at Calvin Klein and was living a ’90s New York female dream,” Simpson says. When Bessette met Kennedy Jr., her profile rose to heights for which she was not, perhaps, prepared. “It was dynamic and incredible,” Simpson says of the pair’s meeting. “They quickly became the most famous couple in America.”
Rather than looking to established stars to play Kennedy Jr. and Bessette, Simpson and Murphy sought to cast relative unknowns. Simpson had been “blown away” by Pidgeon’s Tony-nominated performance in the Broadway hit Stereophonic. “We had one day of reading Carolyns, and she got the job.”
Finding the right person to play Kennedy Jr. proved far trickier. “John had a very specific look that is old-school-movie-star handsome. We’re talking early Richard Gere,” Simpson says. “He was a broad-shouldered, masculine guy, a man who had hair on his chest.” They had some 3,000 people read for the role. “Anybody who was between the ages of, let’s say, 29 and 39.” Still, they kept coming up empty.
As it got dangerously close to the start of production, Murphy instructed Simpson and the casting team to go back into the “slush pile” of contenders and see whom they might have overlooked. They ultimately found three people to look at more closely, having them do an old-fashioned screen test opposite Pidgeon in New York, complete with cameras and makeup. There, a Canadian model turned actor, who’d flown in from Portland, Oregon, won over the room. “We sat there, and crew members kept coming up to me going, ‘You have to cast this guy,’ over and over,” Simpson says. “‘Please make it this guy.’” And just like that, Paul Anthony Kelly clinched the part.
“I walked into the chemistry read, and it was myself and several other gentlemen also reading for the role. But there was something about Sarah,” Kelly says. “We had chemistry, obviously, but there was an unspoken sense of support for each other. Like, ‘Okay, I’m here for you.’” Pidgeon felt it too. “We both went to the airport right after the final screen test, and I just remember the beautiful messages you sent me, like, ‘I’m so ready to do this. I’m ready to jump in,’” she tells Kelly. “It was so reassuring to hear from a stranger this genuine willingness to support each other—this understanding, I think immediately, that this is something that we were doing together.”
The Beauty is based on the eponymous 2015 comic book series by Jeremy Haun and Jason A. Hurley. Murphy and series cocreator Matthew Hodgson optioned the rights nearly a decade ago, long before the release of 2024’s similarly themed body-horror film, The Substance—starring Kutcher’s ex-wife, Demi Moore, in a performance that earned the actor her first Oscar nomination. But Kutcher can’t really speak to any similarities between the two projects. When asked about comparisons between the two, Kutcher shies away from his Zoom camera, lowering his voice to a whisper: “I haven’t seen that film,” he says sheepishly.
But he does have another comp in mind for The Beauty. “There was a movie that Bradley Cooper did where a drug made him hyperproductive, Limitless. I read that script, wanted to do it—but they hired Bradley instead. Good choice, he’s great.” His new show has a similar premise. “I love this notion of giving people some superhuman capability that is not 10 steps removed from today, but two steps removed from today. I think that’s always more fun because you’re not in outer space. You can imagine this actually happening.”
It’s a topic Kutcher and his wife, Mila Kunis, had been discussing even before he got the script for The Beauty. “My wife actually said to me, ‘Somebody walks around with braces or Invisalign, and that’s totally fine. But the minute someone gets a rhinoplasty, that’s viewed differently.’ They’re both cosmetic enhancements,” he says. “One’s to your teeth and one’s to your nose. And nobody’s ever going to be judgey about getting braces, or about how your teeth turn out from the braces. But they will for rhinoplasty or lipo or a hair transplant. She and I have had a lot of conversations about this. It depends on what body part it is. That’s a really weird thing.”
Kim Kardashian recently took to social media to respond to criticism of the legal drama All’s Fair in hilarious fashion.
What did Kim Kardashian say about the All’s Fair reviews?
In a recent post on Instagram, Kardashian shared a collage of photos to promote the ongoing show. In a caption, she told fans to tune in for the “most critically acclaimed show of the year,” and then proceeded to share a number of mixed reviews in a tongue-in-cheek manner.
While some of Kardashian’s photos were of her in the show, others contained screenshotted images of fans talking about the show. They ranged from positive to more sarcastic reviews of the show, which still praised it, including one that called the show “some of the worst acting I’ve ever seen,” but needing “14 seasons” of it nonetheless.
All’s Fair comes from creator Ryan Murphy, and follows the story of a successful divorce laywer and owner of an all-female law firm in Los Angeles. Alongside Kardashian, the show also features a star-studded cast, including Naomi Watts, Niecy Nash-Betts, Teyana Taylor, Matthew Noszka, Sarah Paulson, Glenn Close, Judith Light, Ed O’Neill, O-T Fagbenle, Armani Barrett, Jamarcus Kilgore, Joshua Suiter, and Hari Nef.
Despite its star-studded cast, the show has received fairly negative reviews upon its premiere. The series debuted to an almost 0% score on Rotten Tomatoes, and as of this writing has just a 5% critical score on the site, although the audience rating is high at 67%.
All’s Fair is available to stream now on Hulu, with three of its nine episodes having already aired.
The earnest superhero team-up tale “The Fantastic Four: First Steps” and Tracy Morgan returning to TV with a new comedy called “Crutch” are some of the new television, films, music and games headed to a device near you.
Also among the streaming offerings worth your time this week, as selected by The Associated Press’ entertainment journalists: The upstairs-downstairs drama “Downton Abbey” bids farewell in a final movie, Kim Kardashian plays a divorce attorney in Hulu’s “All’s Fair” and Willie Nelson continues to demonstrate his prolific output with the release of yet another new album this year.
New movies to stream from Nov. 3-9
— Guillermo del Toro realizes his long-held dream of a sumptuous Mary Shelley adaptation in “Frankenstein” (Friday Nov. 7 on Netflix). Del Toro’s film, starring Oscar Isaac as Victor Frankenstein and Jacob Elordi as his monster, uses all the trappings of handmade movie craft to give Shelley’s classic an epic sweep. In her review, AP Film Writer Lindsey Bahr wrote: “Everything about ‘Frankenstein’ is larger than life, from the runtime to the emotions on display.”
— Matt Shakman’s endearingly earnest superhero team-up tale “The Fantastic Four: First Steps” (Wednesday on Disney+) helps alleviate a checkered-at-best history of big-screen adaptations of the classic Stan Lee-Jack Kirby comic. Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Ebon Moss-Bachrach and Joseph Quinn play Mister Fantastic, Invisible Woman, the Thing and the Human Torch, respectively. In 1964, they work to defend Earth from its imminent destruction by Galactus. In my review, I praised “First Steps” as “a spiffy ’60s-era romp, bathed in retrofuturism and bygone American optimism.”
— “Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale” (Friday, Nov. 7 on Peacock) bids goodbye to the Crawleys 15 years after Julian Fellowes first debuted his upstairs-downstairs drama. The cast of the third and final film, directed by Simon Curtis, includes Hugh Bonneville, Michelle Dockery and Paul Giamatti. In her review, AP’s Jocelyn Noveck wrote that the film gives “loyal Downton fans what they want: a satisfying bit of closure and the sense that the future, though a bit scary, may look kindly on Downton Abbey.” Peacock is also streaming the two previous movies and all six seasons of “Downton Abbey.”
— “The Materialists” (Friday, Nov. 7 on HBO Max), Celine Song’s follow-up to her Oscar-nominated 2023 breakthrough “Past Lives,” stars Dakota Johnson, Pedro Pascal and Chris Evans in a romantic triangle. The New York-set film adds a dose of economic reality to a romantic comedy plot in what was, for A24, a modest summer hit. In her review, AP’s Jocelyn Noveck called it “a smart rom-com that tries to be honest about life and still leaves us smiling.”
— The legendary Willie Nelson continues to demonstrate his prolific output with the release of yet another new album this year. “Workin’ Man: Willie Sings Merle,” out Friday, Nov. 7, is exactly what it sounds like: Nelson offering new interpretations of 11 classic songs written by Merle Haggard. And we mean classics: Check out Nelson’s latest take on “Okie From Muskogee,” “Mama Tried,” “I Think I’ll Just Stay Here And Drink” and more.
— Where’s the future of the global music industry? All over, surely, but it would be more than just a little wise to look to Brazil. Not too dissimilar to how Anitta brought her country’s funk genre to an international mainstream through diverse collaborations and genre meddling, so too is Ludmilla. On Thursday, she will release a new album, “Fragmentos,” fresh off the heels of her sultry, bilingual collaboration with Grammy winner Victoria Monét, “Cam Girl.” It’s a combination of R&B, funk and then some.
— Tracy Morgan returns to TV with a new comedy called “Crutch.” Morgan plays a widowed empty-nester whose world is turned around when his adult children move home with his grandkids in tow. The Paramount+ series debuts Monday.
— Kim Kardashian says she will soon learn whether she passed the bar exam to become a lawyer, but she plays a sought-after divorce attorney in “All’s Fair,” her new TV series for Hulu. Kardashian stars alongside Glenn Close, Sarah Paulson, Niecy Nash-Betts, Naomi Watts and Teyana Taylor in the show about an all-female law firm. Ryan Murphy created the show with Kardashian in mind after she acted in “American Horror Story: Delicate.” It premieres Tuesday on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+.
— The old saying about truth being stranger than fiction applies to Netflix’s new four-episode limited-series “Death by Lightning.” It’s a historical dramatization (with some comedy thrown in) about how James Garfield became the 20th president of the United States. He was shot four months later by a man named Charles Guiteau (Matthew Macfadyen), who was desperate for Garfield’s attention. Two months after that, Garfield died from complications of his injuries. It’s a wild story that also features Betty Gilpin, Nick Offerman, Bradley Whitford and Shea Whigham. The series premieres Thursday.
— HBO offers up a new docuseries about the life of retired baseball superstar Alex Rodriguez. “Alex Vs. A-Rod” features intimate interviews with people who are related to and know Rodriguez, as well as the man himself. The three-part series premieres Thursday.
— The next installment of “Wicked,” called “Wicked: For Good,” flies into theaters Nov. 21 and NBC has created a musical special to pump up the release. Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande lead “Wicked: One Wonderful Night,” a concert event that premieres Thursday on NBC and streams on Peacock Friday, Nov. 7. Additional film cast members like Michelle Yeoh, Bowen Yang, Marissa Bode and Ethan Slater appear as well.
— It’s going to be a while until the next Legend of Zelda game, but if you’re craving some time with the princess, check out Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment. In this spinoff, a prequel to 2023’s Tears of the Kingdom, Zelda travels back in time to join forces with the Six Sages in a war against the invader Ganondorf. You can also drag another human into battle with split-screen or the GameShare feature on Nintendo’s new console. Like the previous collaborations between Nintendo and Koei Tecmo, it’s more hack-and-slash action than exploration and discovery. It arrives Thursday on Switch 2.
It’s one of the most eagerly awaited series of the year, with a trailer that boasts 44 million views. All’s Fair and its high-flying female cast will soon be arriving on Disney+. To celebrate, lead actors Kim Kardashian, Glenn Close, Naomi Watts, Teyana Taylor, Sarah Paulson, and Niecy Nash have embarked on a promotional marathon that began in Los Angeles and recently came to Paris, for a screening at La Maison de la Chimie on Kardashian’s 45th birthday. On the pink carpet, a veritable parade of fashion and icons unfolded in front of an audience of journalists, photographers, and a lucky few fans.
Between a photocall and an interview, the show’s six stars gathered on a lobby staircase for an exclusive photo session with Vanity Fair France. Paulson, dressed in a white Schiaparelli ensemble, was the first to lend herself to a few light tests, followed by Nash, Taylor, Close, and Watts. Last to arrive on the pink carpet was Kardashian, sculptural in a vintage Dior piece by John Galliano, accompanied by her mother, Kris Jenner. The shoot ended with applause and a round of “Happy Birthday” initiated by Nash.
After presenting Monster: The Ed Gein Story earlier this fall, the hyperproductive Ryan Murphy is also behind this new series for Disney+, in collaboration with Jon Robin Baitz and Joe Baken. The show follows the day-to-day doings in a divorce law firm run by Allura Grant (Kardashian), Liberty Ronson (Watts), and Emerald Greene (Nash). In the manner of a procedural drama, each episode shifts focus between new business and long-running intrigue set against a backdrop of rivalries and betrayals. “In a world where money is king and love is a battlefield, [they] will change the game,” reads the synopsis.
Led by Kardashian, the cast of All’s Fair is made up of many of Murphy’s regular collaborators. They include Paulson, seen in several seasons of American Horror Story and in American Crime Story: The People vs. O.J. Simpson; Watts, seen in season two of Feud; and Nash, who won an Emmy Award for her role in Dahmer. Long-time icon Close and Taylor, a breakout in the recent film One Battle After Another, are the only newcomers to this universe. In addition to the main cast, the series will feature choice guest stars like Brooke Shields, Judith Light, Elizabeth Berkley, and Jessica Simpson.
One of my biggest problems with shows that explore serial killers from a fictional place is that we sensationalize what these people did. Often, their victims are a second thought. Despite many pushing back at this idea, Ryan Murphy is keeping that disappointing trend alive.
I am someone who feels a dedication to Murphy’s work. I have been here for 23 years and there doesn’t seem to be anything that will stop me from watching his shows. But, that being said, it means I am incredibly critical of what he does. One of those things being the Monster series. The Netflix anthology series began with Evan Peters as Jeffrey Dahmer and my main complaint was that we didn’t focus enough on Dahmer’s actual victims. We had one episode and that was only because Murphy insinuated that Dahmer and his victim, Tony Hughes, had a flirtatious relationship.
The follow-up season about Erik and Lyle Menendez was a bit different as many have pushed back on the idea that their parents are the “victims” in the situation. So you can, in theory, give that season a “pass” for this one thing. Not for insinuating that the brothers were romantically linked but for the victim situation, the show had an interesting advantage.
Now, I have had to deal with Monster: The Ed Gein Story. Ed Gein himself was an “interesting” choice of subject given the fact that Gein was confirmed to have killed two women and most of his “infamous” nature came from his obsession with his mother and furniture made of skin. Cinema loves Gein and that’s kind of what Murphy did with this season with Ian Brennan. But he also somehow made victims a secondary thought in a disgusting way.
Why did I have to see a bunch of women dying?
(Netflix)
The end of The Ed Gein Story felt like Murphy heard our complaints about how he handled victims and said “time to make it worse.” The last episode features a series of serial killers who were all inspired by Gein having their time to shine. Ted Bundy kills two women in the woods and then later, when Richard “Birdman” Speck is talking about his own influence, we see Bundy kill two women from his infamous sorority house killing spree.
Why was that necessary? Did we need to see more of how Gein influenced people? I understand that the use of movie scenes and the finale were Murphy and Brennan’s way of showing that Gein may not have been the most prolific of serial killers but he did usher in a lot of destruction with his crimes. I get that. What I don’t need to see if the senseless violence against women that these men committed to without having anything else “real” to say about it.
These were nameless women on Monster and it was unnecessary. And for what? So Ryan Murphy and company could show that they know how serial killers act? If you’re not going to actually give the victims of these men the time they deserve, then stop making these shows.
Rachel Leishman (She/Her) is an Assistant Editor at the Mary Sue. She’s been a writer professionally since 2016 but was always obsessed with movies and television and writing about them growing up. A lover of Spider-Man and Wanda Maximoff’s biggest defender, she has interests in all things nerdy and a cat named Benjamin Wyatt the cat. If you want to talk classic rock music or all things Harrison Ford, she’s your girl but her interests span far and wide. Yes, she knows she looks like Florence Pugh. She has multiple podcasts, normally has opinions on any bit of pop culture, and can tell you can actors entire filmography off the top of her head. Her current obsession is Glen Powell’s dog, Brisket.
Her work at the Mary Sue often includes Star Wars, Marvel, DC, movie reviews, and interviews.
As is the way with Ryan Murphy’s Monster series, fans flock to Netflix to watch his latest season. Based on infamous murder cases, the show has tackled Jeffrey Dahmer, Erik and Lyle Menendez, and now season 3 is centered on Ed Gein.
Gein is the kind of serial killer that many forget. But he is infamous for a reason. After all, his story did inspire creatives to make Psycho and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre after learning of what this man did. So if you want to head into the Ryan Murphy universe with a little bit of knowledge of Gein, here is what you need to know about the man.
Gein grew up in Plainfield, Wisconsin, where his crimes took place. He was known as the Butcher of Plainfield and the Plainfield Ghoul. When Gein was 48 years old, he claims to have killed his first victim, Mary Hogan and then said he killed hardware store owner Bernice Worden when he was 51 years old. Worden was Gein’s victim who got him caught.
If you’re wondering how this man is tied to stories like Psycho and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, it is because he was a twisted man who was not only a serial killer but a body snatcher as well. He would create things out of human skin (the Leatherface of it all) and his deep love for his mother would go on to be the inspiration for Norman Bates.
While Gein was only found guilty of Worden’s murder and pled insanity so he spent the rest of his life in a mental institution. He was accused of at least 5 other murders as well as a string of missing people cases in Wisconsin. But his more deranged methods made him the infamous serial killer he’s known to be.
Why do we keep telling stories of these men?
Now that you know more about Gein, we have to ask ourselves an important question: Why do we constantly go back to the serial killers and not their victims? This is a common criticism of fictionalized tellings of these stories and it still is a problem. If anything, I need to spend no time at all with the killer themselves.
And yet time and time again, we are telling the story through their eyes and that’s not really something I think we need in 2025. Gein’s legacy has been documented in cinema for years. Thanks to Alfred Hitchcock, Tobe Hooper, and Kim Henke took Gein’s crimes and made them part of cinema history forever. And yet that isn’t enough? We still have to watch things through his eyes?
Arguably, I’m still working through the show and maybe I will change my tune but it is a criticism I have of the Monster series as a whole. It is very much on the side of those accused of murder and the only one it worked to help was the Menendez brothers and there were plenty of flaws with season 2 as well.
Ed Gein is not someone you should become fascinated by. I watch murder documentaries and learn about serial killers to keep myself safe because that is sadly the world we live in. At the end of the day, Ed Gein was confirmed to have murdered two women who had their lives cut short because of his actions. And let’s not get into the basket made of skin.
Rachel Leishman (She/Her) is an Assistant Editor at the Mary Sue. She’s been a writer professionally since 2016 but was always obsessed with movies and television and writing about them growing up. A lover of Spider-Man and Wanda Maximoff’s biggest defender, she has interests in all things nerdy and a cat named Benjamin Wyatt the cat. If you want to talk classic rock music or all things Harrison Ford, she’s your girl but her interests span far and wide. Yes, she knows she looks like Florence Pugh. She has multiple podcasts, normally has opinions on any bit of pop culture, and can tell you can actors entire filmography off the top of her head. Her current obsession is Glen Powell’s dog, Brisket.
Her work at the Mary Sue often includes Star Wars, Marvel, DC, movie reviews, and interviews.
Even if you don’t know his name, you know the macabre legacy of Ed Gein. In 1957, the reclusive farmer from Plainfield, Wisconsin, was unmasked as the most crazed and disturbing serial killer America had ever seen—and arguably has ever seen since. So gruesome and grotesque were the crimes of the so-called Butcher of Plainfield, Plainfield Ghoul, or Grandfather of Gore that more than 65 years of filmmaking haven’t yet imagined much worse.
“You can understand why moviemakers gravitate toward Gein,” says Christopher Berry-Dee, author of Serial Killers at the Movies. “He’s unique, creative, enterprising, and imaginative. We don’t get many killers like Ed anymore.” As yet another version of Gein rears its ugly head into the zeitgeist—this time on Ryan Murphy’s new season of Monster, starring Charlie Hunnam as Gein and Laurie Metcalf as his overbearing mother—here’s a look back at Hollywood’s long and lurid history of borrowing from Gein for the big screen.
Psycho, 1960: “A boy’s best friend is his mother”
Alfred Hitchcock based Psycho on the eponymous 1959 novel by Robert Bloch, who lived just about 35 miles from Gein’s infamous Plainfield farm. According to Ed Gein: Psycho! author Paul Anthony Woods, Bloch penned his novel in a feverish seven weeks, and he was surrounded by sensational press (one headline from The Milwaukee Journal: “Obsessive Love for His Mother Drove Gein to Slay, Rob Graves”), but Bloch always denied his murderous neighbor was the inspiration for Norman Bates.
But viewers couldn’t ignore their parallel psychologies. Edward Theodore Gein (rhymes with “bean”) was born in 1906 to Augusta Gein, a fervently religious mother who taught her boys that modern women were evil seductresses. Augusta favored her second son, Ed—who became, according to Woods, “a mama’s boy from day one.” An avid reader who might have excelled, young Ed dropped out after the eighth grade after being bullied for his speech impediment and lazy eye. Gein lived on their 275-acre farm and did odd jobs for locals—including babysitting—who considered him strange but mild-mannered and nonthreatening.
In five short years, Gein’s father, brother, and mother all died, leaving the then 39-year-old bereft (if only for his mother’s loss) and isolated. Like Norman Bates, Gein kept rooms that his mother used to frequent untouched, boarding up their windows and doors. Gein’s rooms, meanwhile, grew increasingly squalid and crowded, and featured the results of both Bates’s and Gein’s preferred hobby: taxidermy.
Three on a Meathook, 1972: “I ain’t havin’ no trash in your ma’s home”
While Norman Bates is proprietor of the Bates Motel, young moviemaker William Girdler relocated his Gein-like killer to the backwoods fields of Girdler’s own hometown in Louisville, Kentucky. In Three on a Meathook, handsome farmboy Billy Townsend brings oft-topless young women home to his secluded farm, where they meet their gruesome fate at the hands of his fanatically religious father.
A curse of mine that refuses to be lifted is that I am cursed with the need to watch everything Ryan Murphy puts his hands on. Whenever I think I am free, he drags me back into it.
The show that I have struggled the most with is, arguably, his Monsters franchise. I am a woman who watches a lot of true crime documentaries because I exist in this world as a single woman. And I don’t want to end up in a murder doc. But it means that I often know a lot about the serial killers in questions and I yearn to know more about the people who lost their lives.
We talk often about the victims and learning more about them instead of the monsters who killed them and yet the Netflix series still spotlights the person in question. Dahmer had moments where we learned more about the victims but they were short-lived. The Erik and Lyle Menendez Story is more complicated because part of the issue was how the show depicted the brothers and not necessarily the victims themselves. But that’s also because that isn’t a cut and dry story.
Now, we have Ed Gein. Charlie Hunnam is playing Gein, a serial killer who the FBI used to help profile serial killers. He was brutal, disgusting, and confirmed to have killed two women. But his actions inspired both Psycho and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre because of what he would do to his victims. Which brings me to my issue with Murphy: I’m going to watch but how made is this going to make me? Is Gein’s story going to change things and focus on the victims instead?
What is this hold that Ryan Murphy holds over me?
My connection to Murphy’s work started with Nip/Tuck when I was young. My mother and I watched it together and the rest was unfortunate history. I stuck through Glee, Scream Queens, American Horror Story, and beyond. So that is why I will end up watching Monster: The Ed Gein Story. But I also know that I can’t really go into the show trusting it.
Ed Gein is just too “ripe” of a story for someone like Murphy to ignore. Gein famously has mommy issues, was theatrical and weird, and on paper, it looks like a perfect fit for how Murphy likes to work. Which is what makes me fear for the women that Gein hurt.
Is this going to be their time to shine or is this going to more of a showcase on this deranged individual? Frankly, we don’t need more of a look at real life people who are killing for the “thrill” of it. Especially when victims are continually ignored in these fictionalized worlds.
Now, we know that Gein killed at least two women and I hope that the show gives them their time to shine but I do fear that we’re going to see Gein’s more famous qualities get more of a spotlight. And, unfortunately, I will watch because Murphy’s choices always end up baffling me.
Rachel Leishman (She/Her) is an Assistant Editor at the Mary Sue. She’s been a writer professionally since 2016 but was always obsessed with movies and television and writing about them growing up. A lover of Spider-Man and Wanda Maximoff’s biggest defender, she has interests in all things nerdy and a cat named Benjamin Wyatt the cat. If you want to talk classic rock music or all things Harrison Ford, she’s your girl but her interests span far and wide. Yes, she knows she looks like Florence Pugh. She has multiple podcasts, normally has opinions on any bit of pop culture, and can tell you can actors entire filmography off the top of her head. Her current obsession is Glen Powell’s dog, Brisket.
Her work at the Mary Sue often includes Star Wars, Marvel, DC, movie reviews, and interviews.
Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan are returning to the true-crime well. After courting controversy with their takes on Jeffrey Dahmer and the Menendez brothers, the pair are digging up one of the first true-crime sensations in America: Ed Gein. And would you believe there’s already a long history of problematic adaptations of the grim material? Below, the teaser trailer, release date, and everything else we know about Monster season three starring Charlie Hunnam, coming to Netflix on October 3.
The third season of Monster will cover one of the most dramatized serial killers in history: Ed Gein. Gein is perhaps more famous for his DIY projects than for murder. He killed at least two people and was suspected of killing seven more. Police discovered several mutilated corpses in his house when he was arrested. “You’re the one who can’t look away,” Hunnam’s Gein ends the trailer dancing in a full skin suit and mask.
In real life, Gein upholstered chairs and a trash can with human skin and made bowls out of skulls. He also made a corset out of a woman’s torso and a belt out of women’s nipples. “You’re working too fast!” his mother, played by Laurie Metcalf, yells into the dark work room where a bald Hunnam hammers away at a human face. “Just go slow and steady. Take your time, sweet boy.”
The corset Gein made seemed to stick in certain authors’ minds, as the case has been fictionalized and used to demonize the trans community multiple times. Robert Bloch turned Gein into the crossdressing and mommy-obsessed Norman Bates in the original Psychonovel. Thomas Harris drew from Gein to create sewist serial killer Buffalo Bill in The Silence of the Lambs. Gein was also a reference point for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, House of 1000 Corpses,and even AHS: Asylum’s Bloody Face.
Tom Hollander and Suzanna Son will star. This is also Metcalf’s second time she’s playing the mom of a serial killer.
Monster: The Ed Gein Story comes to Netflix at the start of spooky season, dropping on October 3.
Lyle and Erik Menendez, in the 1990s and the 2020s. Photo-Illustration: Intelligencer; Photos: AP Photos, Mega
On Thursday, Erik Menendez will be escorted from his cell inside the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility outside San Diego to meet with a commissioner and deputy commissioner from the California parole board. The next day, his olderbrother, Lyle, will do the same. During what the board euphemistically refers to as a “conversation,” the Menendezes will be questioned under oath in the most deeply personal way possible about why, exactly, they shot their parents to death 36 years ago nearly to the day. “No court has ever heard the full story in this case, the depth and depravity of the abuse suffered by Lyle and Erik, and their remarkable journal of personal transformation,” their lawyers wrote in a recent court filing. The parole board will.
Originally condemned to life without parole, the brothers took a major step toward freedom in the spring when, over the furious objection of prosecutors, a Los Angeles judge resentenced them, clearing the way for this week’s hearings. Advocates for the brothers view them as the sort of trial that they never had, happening in an era when credible claims of sexual assault are taken more seriously than in the 1990s, when popular culture mocked the pair as a couple of spoiled narcissists who concocted fake abuse claims to get away with murder.
More recently, the brothers have gotten a second, more favorable look from the public after their lives were dramatized in an Emmy-nominated scripted series from Ryan Murphy and a documentary, both on Netflix. Today, Lyle and Erik’s story of victimization has created an outpouring of compassion. They have legions of TikTok fans as well as the support of nearly 30 extended family members and high-profile advocates, such as Kim Kardashian, arguing passionately for their release.
Getting parole isn’t a simple matter of demonstrating good behavior behind bars. While Lyle, 57, and Erik, 54, have both amassed impressive records of achievements during their incarceration, it won’t be enough; if the parole board does not believe they are radically honest in their account of the murders, they will almost certainly lose. The outcome of the proceedings may hinge on their ability to demonstrate sufficient “insight” into their crimes. This slippery, subjective test requires them to give an exhaustive account of what they did and what the parole board will accept as truthful and reliable evidence that they pose no risk to the public.
Their story that they acted because they believed that their parents were going to kill them after Lyle supposedly threatened to expose their father’s yearslong sexual abuse of Erik will be pitted against the Los Angeles district attorney’s argument that they killed their parents in cold blood to inherit a multimillion-dollar fortune, which proved successful with the jury that convicted them of first-degree murder in 1996.
Over a series of interviews this summer, lawyers for the Menendezes previewed for me how the brothers will testify before the parole board. They will admit that they told extensive lies to cover up acts that the lawyers have characterized in court filings as “heinous, cruel, and criminal” but will continue to insist that they believed they were in a life-or-death situation with no way out. In assessing the key question of their present risk, what matters is how much they have grown and changed, says attorney Cliff Gardner, a member of their defense team. “Thirty-five years of really extraordinary conduct speaks louder than the lies they told to avoid culpability at the ages of 18 and 21,” he says. “That is what maturity is.”
Exhaustive and invasive, a parole hearing is akin to an MRI of the soul. In addition to the hourslong interrogations of Lyle and Erik, the board will review tens of thousands of pages of transcripts, medical and psychological records, risk-assessment reports, expert declarations, commendations, letters of support, and the arguments of the brothers’ lawyers and the district attorney’s office, which is determined to keep them behind bars until they die. Critically, the parole board will have evidence that the jury did not. This includes dramatic new revelations that tend to corroborate Erik’s sexual-abuse allegations against his father and point to another alleged victim.
A group takes a selfie outside the mansion where Jose and Kitty Menendez were murdered on August 20, 1989, in Beverly Hills, California. Photo: David Swanson/AFP/Getty Images
“As much as the crime repels, it attracts enormous interest,” says Kathleen Heide, a distinguished professor at the University of South Florida and one of the country’s foremost experts in parricide. Children who kill their parents generally fall into one of four categories, according to Heide: those who are in fear of their lives and desperate to end the abuse; those who are enraged with their parents, sometimes due to past abuse; those who are severely mentally ill and have lost contact with reality; and those who are dangerously antisocial, possibly psychopathic, and kill to get something they want, such as money or freedom. Where the Menendez brothers fall on that spectrum is a perennial subject of fascination and fierce debate. “What is going on that these boys who from the outside had everything — money, looks, opportunities — would do such an abhorrent thing?” as she puts it.
How the parole board answers that question and whether it believes that Lyle and Erik have taken complete accountability and have shown genuine remorse will play an important role in the decision. If the board finds them suitable for release, they could walk free as soon as October.
Such a previously unthinkable scenario has been made possible by major changes in the legal system over the past two decades. Beginning with the tough-on-crime era in the late 1970s, California prisoners serving life sentences had next to no chance of getting released. Even in the rare cases in which the board would issue a favorable decision, the governor was likely to reverse it.
The first change came in 2008, when the California Supreme Court held in a case called In re Lawrence that the heinousness of the offense, standing alone, was not a sufficient basis to deny parole. Following that decision, parole grants increased significantly. In 1979, only a single person was granted parole, but by 2019, the number had risen to 1,184. The period from 2013 through 2021 saw the release of 10,000 people sentenced to serve life terms, with a recidivism rate of less than 3 percent.
The brothers also benefit from a series of U.S. Supreme Court decisions requiring special consideration for juvenile offenders. In 2012, the Court issued a landmark ruling that outlawed mandatory life-without-parole sentences for juveniles and required that states provide them with “a meaningful opportunity to obtain release based on demonstrated maturity and rehabilitation.” Several years later, California fashioned a more lenient standard for “youthful offenders,” defined as anyone under the age of 26 at the time of the crime. In these cases, the parole board must assign “great weight” to the “hallmark features of youth” and take into account their diminished culpability. Ironically, given their current ages, they are also entitled to special consideration as elderly prisoners, requiring the parole board to assess how their ages, the amount of time served, and any physical health problems may reduce their risk of future violence.
But hurdles remain. On the same day that the California Supreme Court decided Lawrence, it held in a different case that a lack of insight was a sufficient basis to justify continued incarceration, citing a “rational nexus” between a failure to tell the full truth, atone, and accept responsibility with a risk of future dangerousness. Subsequently, demonstrating insight has taken on a central role in hearings and the board uses this reason to regularly reject otherwise compelling applicants. Even when the board grants parole, it’s up to the governor to allow it to happen. In the year following the decision, the governor invoked lack of insight a whopping 78 percent of times denying parole.
Gavin Newsom, the current governor, consistently invokes an offender’s lack of insight to explain his decisions reversing the board. The Menendez brothers may have reason to fear they are vulnerable on this front. The lies that they told after the murders were jaw-dropping. While the brothers plan to admit to many of those, prosecutors will argue that they continue to lie about why they killed their parents, a fabrication the state maintains is so fundamental it goes to the core of who they really are: dangerous, unrepentant killers.
The 911 call came at 11:47 p.m. on Sunday, August 20, 1989. Breaking down as Erik sobbed in the background, Lyle told the operator, “Someone killed my parents.” Police arrived at their Beverly Hills mansion to find Jose and Kitty dead in the family room, their bodies torn apart by more than a dozen shotgun blasts fired at close range. Lyle and Erik claimed that they discovered their parents after returning home from a night out and theorized it was a hit job related to their father’s work as a Hollywood entertainment executive. They were setting up an alibi. As an appellate court later wrote, “The gory scene of slaughter of Jose and Kitty Menendez is consistent with the notion that the killings were carried out with the false Mafia story already in mind.”
For months, they played the role of grieving, terror-stricken survivors. Lyle eulogized his father at the funeral, and he and Erik even hired a bodyguard for protection from the hit men they claimed were responsible for the murders. Meanwhile they used the $650,000 payouts from their parents’ life-insurance policies to buy Rolexes, luxury cars, and real estate. The brothers’ involvement might never have been uncovered — they collected all the shell casings, threw away their bloody clothes and shoes, and tossed their shotguns over a cliff — but for Erik’s guilt-ridden confession to his psychotherapist.In one of a series of morally and ethically questionable decisions, Dr. Jerome Oziel brought in Lyle and recorded the brothers admitting to the murders. Lyle said that their father’s relentless domineering ways made him “impossible to live with,” and Erik said that their mother could not survive without him. Neither mentioned abuse.
It was while they were in jail awaiting trial that the brothers began describing their father’s predations, first to defense experts and then to their lawyers. Their claims were stomach-turning. Lyle stated that beginning when he was 6-years-old, Jose groomed him with massages and then began to fondle him, force objects inside of him, and eventually to rape him. The abuse stopped when Lyle was 8, and, he said, his father turned to his younger brother who recounted similar sadistic behavior over a longer span of time. They said the abuse continued for a decade, with the last assault approximately ten days before the murders. Both brothers described their mother, Kitty, as unstable, violent, and complicit in their father’s crimes.
Though the double murder of two Beverly Hills parents made headlines, the story became an international sensation after their children were charged. Before it was eclipsed by O.J. Simpson’s legal odyssey a few years later, the case was called “the trial of the century.” These were the early days of Court TV, and it was one of the first major trials to be televised. The wealthy, handsome brothers and their story of hidden, horrific abuse riveted the more than 1 million people who tuned in each day. Much of the coverage in 1993 was unsympathetic. Reporters, TV anchors, talk-show hosts, and comedians treated Lyle and Erik’s claims of abuse as rich fodder for ridicule. In a now-infamous Saturday Night Livesketch, John Malkovich, playing a tearful Lyle, and Rob Schneider, playing a puppyish and equally sniffly Erik, say that the murder was committed by fictitious identical twin siblings Danny and Jose Jr., who were never allowed to have their existence officially recognized because Jose decided that “they were weak and not good tennis players.” As the brothers break down in crocodile tears, the chyron reads “They stood to inherit the sum of $14 million.”
Saturday Night Live, 1993. Photo: Al Levine/NBCUniversal/Getty Images
Presiding over the trial was Judge Stanley Weisberg, who had overseen the embarrassing across-the-board acquittals of the four LAPD officers who beat Rodney King nearly to death several years earlier. The Menendez jury heard extensively from the brothers as well as from their cousin Diane VanderMolen, who testified that Lyle told her when he was 8 that Jose was sexually abusing him. Another cousin, Andy Cano, testified that Erik told him that his dad was touching his penis and about the ominous “hallway rule,” which Kitty strictly enforced to bar anyone from being on the same floor with Jose when he was alone with one of his sons. Multiple experts testified that the sex abuse had a deleterious effect on the boys’ psyches, turning them into fearful, disempowered, battered children.
The brothers’ team never claimed innocence, only lesser culpability, arguing that their clients’ trauma-scarred psyches made them sincerely believe their lives were in grave danger. During a case in which the prosecutors sought the death penalty, the defense urged the jurors to embrace a jury instruction on “imperfect self-defense.” Leslie Abramson, Erik’s attorney, distilled the outcome to two stark choices in her closing argument: Either “everything we have told you is not true,” or the murders were “done in a state of fear. And if that is true, there is no malice, and it can only be manslaughter.” After a month of deliberation, Judge Weisberg was forced to declare a mistrial. The brothers had separate juries and both had deadlocked, essentially split down the middle on their options.
The second trial beginning in 1995 was markedly different. Jury selection began eight days after Simpson’s jaw-dropping not-guilty verdict, and the pressure to lock up the perpetrators in at least one L.A. “trial of the century” had ratcheted up. This time, Judge Weisberg kept out much of the evidence of sexual abuse and physical violence and refused to allow the jury to consider imperfect self-defense. He also excluded VanderMolen’s testimony about Lyle’s confiding his abuse to her and barred most of the experts’ evidence. Cano testified again, but without supporting testimony, the prosecution easily dismissed him as a liar. A decade later, a federal judge assigned to one of the brothers’ failed appeals called the second trial “distasteful,” filled with rulings reverse-engineered to “jimmy things and see if we can get a conviction some other way.” Gardner, who was appointed to represent Lyle for his appeal in 1996, says, “They basically had no defense in the second trial.”
Los Angeles district attorney Nathan Hochman is convinced the second trial was fair and the brothers’ confessions to Dr. Oziel, which did not claim self-defense or sexual abuse, should be believed. Recent court filings by the prosecution emphasize that the allegations of abuse and imminent peril arose only after they had been charged, jailed, and were grasping for a lifeline. “The true mind-set of the Menendez brothers would have gotten them the death penalty, and if they wanted to get off, they had to come up with something a lot better,” Hochman tells me.
But when I ask him if he believes that the Menendezes were lying about having been sexually abused, Hochman responds immediately: “I never said that.” His position is that the abuse and the murders are unconnected. The brothers’ insistence that they acted in self-defense of imminent harm is “a total lie,” he says, because their actions beforehand — buying guns, learning to fire them, and creating an alibi — pointed clearly to calculated, deliberative planning.
“Nonsense on stilts. You cannot decouple the sexual-abuse claims from the imperfect self-defense claims,” Gardner says, adding that Hochman’s attempt to pull them apart “betrays a lack of insight” into the case. He takes issue with the prosecution’s extensive efforts to challenge the veracity of the Menendezes’ story of abuse, pointing out that victims often tell their stories with imperfect recall and in piecemeal fashion after years of silence or denial. “That is something that the DA’s office absolutely knows from their years of handling these cases. Victims don’t spill their secrets immediately; it takes time for them to open up and be that vulnerable.”
The battle over the brothers’ culpability boils down to a willingness to understand their conduct through the prism of severe and chronic childhood sexual abuse and what experts say is its distorting effects on brain development and the ability to think and behave rationally, particularly when the victims are still relatively young and dependent on their abusers. More than the specificity of the allegations, it is this fundamental contradiction that has made the Menendez case so compelling for the past four decades: How could two brothers annihilate their family and then argue convincingly that they are victims, too?
After Andy Cano died in 2018, a photocopy of an undated letter handwritten by Erik was found among his possessions, which his lawyers claim was clearly written months before the murders. Addressing his father’s sexual abuse, Erik wrote to his cousin, “It’s still happening, Andy, but it’s worse for me now than before.” Tortured by sleeplessness and anxiety, Erik confided, “I never know when it is going to happen and it’s driving me crazy. Every night I stay up thinking he might come in.” He added that he was too afraid of his father to tell anyone: “He’s crazy! He’s warned me a hundred times about telling anyone especially Lyle.”
The evidence could be crucial at their parole hearings, because it corroborates the brothers’ story of abuse and fear for their lives. Already, their lawyers have fashioned the letter into a separate pleading, called a habeas corpus petition, to void the murder convictions entirely.
That’s not all. In 2023, Roy Rosselló came forward to say that Jose had drugged and raped him in 1984, when he was a member of the popular boy band Menudo and Jose was an executive at RCA Records. In a sworn declaration that the Menendezes’ attorneys submitted to the court in the habeas petition, Rosselló recounted an evening when he met Jose in his limousine in New York City, was taken back to a house in New Jersey, plied with alcohol, and raped. Rosselló said he lost consciousness and woke up bleeding from his rectum.
Had the jury heard this evidence, the defense says, it would have severely undercut the prosecution’s dismissal of Cano as a liar. More fundamentally, Erik’s letter and Rosselló’s declaration cast into grave doubt the state’s argument that the brothers provided “no corroboration of sexual abuse” and no reason to fear their father because Jose was “not a violent or brutal man.”
Last month, the brothers won an incremental victory when the judge hearing the habeas petition ordered the prosecution to file a formal response to justify leaving their convictions intact. On August 7, the district attorney’s office filed a 132-page response, arguing that the newly proffered evidence is of suspect origin, untimely, and “in full alignment with Petitioners’ documented history of deceit, lies, fabricating evidence, and suborning perjury in this case.” A ruling from the court as to whether the brothers receive an evidentiary hearing — with the possibility that their convictions could be wiped away if their claims hold up — could come any day.
But first, they will face the parole board and the force of the DA’s argument that their continued insistence that they acted in imperfect self-defense is the very definition of a lack of insight given the extensive evidence pointing to premeditation. This includes the confessions to Dr. Oziel, in which, according to the prosecution, Lyle and Erik were “unspeakably callous in describing their decision-making and their state of mind.” By maintaining that they were driven to kill by a sincere if misguided belief that they were in imminent danger from Jose and Kitty, the brothers were proving their unsuitability for release, Hochman says. The heart of Lyle and Erik’s stories is more than a lie, he tells me, it is proof of “a ticking time bomb in their personalities that has not been diffused or eliminated.”
Demonstrating insight and acceptance of responsibility for parole do not require parroting the state’s version of the crime though. Under California law, only an “implausible” account of one’s crimes can be used as a basis to deny parole, and Gardner says that “there is nothing implausible about a theory that half of both juries accepted at the first trial.”
Hochman also disputes that Lyle and Erik’s conduct in prison has been extraordinary. While conceding that they have made “great strides,” he also points to the recent comprehensive risk assessment prepared by prison psychologists, which found that both brothers pose a “moderate” risk of violence rather than the coveted low-risk categorization. He lists their history of rule violations, which include Erik’s unlawful possession of a cell phone and what Hochman says were his attempts to induce other prisoners to take the fall for it as well as Lyle repeatedly failing to report for a work assignment.
“They broke the rules, and they know that they broke the rules,” says Michael Romano, who directs Stanford Law School’s Three Strikes Project and is a member of the Menendezes’ defense team “That was a mistake. But Lyle not showing up for work or Erik having a cell phone? That doesn’t mean that they are dangerous.”
A double parricide involving two biological siblings is so abnormal that it happens only very rarely in the U.S. The singularity of the crime makes it hard to compare Lyle and Erik meaningfully with other offenders because so few children who experience sexual abuse go to the extreme of killing their parents. When I spoke with Carlos Cuevas, a psychologist and professor of criminology at Northeastern University who has written about the Menendez brothers, he acknowledged as much. But he added that “just because they did this really horrible thing does not mean that they weren’t victims. Many perpetrators are abuse victims — these two things often coexist within a single person, and that is the next level of awareness that we as a society need to reach. We have to accept that victims and perpetrators are a highly overlapping group.”
A parole hearing is like a trial in certain fundamental ways. Both the defense and the prosecution will get to ask pointed questions of the Menendez brothers when the commissioners are finished with theirs. There will also be closing arguments. The state’s argument is likely to employ much of the rhetoric that succeeded in the second trial, arguing that the brothers are, in Hochman’s words, “lying murderers” still unwilling to admit that they shot their parents to death for money and for no other reason. The defense will stress that the brothers worked hard to better themselves during the bleak, decades-long period when they had no chance of ever getting out of prison. “Somehow, they were able to find some dignity, hope, positivity, and purpose to better themselves,” Romano tells me. “I find that completely remarkable and admirable.”
If TikTok had a vote, the brothers would have been released months ago as victims who have served more than enough time. But the legal system is more rigid and sclerotic, historically hostile to such a characterization of offenders who commit crimes as shocking and brutal as theirs. Cuevas tells me that the case creates “cognitive dissonance” in a system that reflexively sorts people into categories: good/bad, law-abiding/criminal. Their lawyers believe that the parole board will reject the state’s black-and-white narrative and offer these middle-aged men a second chance by accepting that the truth exists in shades of gray. It is by telling a no-holds-barred story of what they say really happened inside their home and of their lives since — painful, ugly, tragic, and, in the end, redemptive — that the defense believes Lyle and Erik Menendez can finally win their freedom. Their success may depend on whether the legal system has transformed as radically as the brothers insist that they have.
While one door has been closed with the 9-1-1: Lone Star cancellation, another one will be axed down soon enough. Franchise co-creator Ryan Murphy confirmed that a new 9-1-1 spin-off is in the works.
Created by Murphy, Brad Falchuk, and Tim Minear, the procedural drama first premiered on Fox in 2018 before it moved to ABC during its seventh season. It then spawned a spin-off in 2020 — titled Lone Star — and ran for four seasons, with Season 5 having recently arrived.
Unfortunately, the fifth season of Lone Star will be its final season.
What did Ryan Murphy say about the planned 9-1-1 expansion?
“Tim Minear and I are working on a new spinoff that we’re actually writing, and that we hope to get on the air next fall,” Murphy told Variety.
On the Lone Star cancellation, Murphy said: “Sadly, we all love ‘Lone Star,’ but the financials just didn’t work. It’s a Disney company that was on a Fox network, and it just was never going to work. And we had a long run of it. So now we’re going to launch a new show in a new city that I can’t name, but it’s fun. And ‘9-1-1’ moved to ABC and suddenly became, I think, the biggest show on Thursday night. They obviously have an appetite for that, so we’re going to give them another one that I really love.”
Other details about the new spin-off have yet to be announced.
9-1-1 chronicles the lives of LA’s first responders, including dispatchers, police officers, paramedics, and firefighters. The franchise features the likes of Angela Bassett, Peter Krause, Oliver Stark, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Rob Lowe, Brian Michael Smith, and more.
The eighth season of 9-1-1 airs on Thursdays on ABC. Lone Star, on the other hand, airs on Mondays on Fox.
SPOILER ALERT! This post contains details from the first two episodes of FX’s Grotesquerie.
Niecy Nash-Betts leads Ryan Murphy‘s Grotesquerie as a seasoned detective who, while battling her own addiction, must throw herself into perhaps the most disturbing case of her entire career.
The first two episodes of the FX series, which launched on September 25, establish Lois Tryon as a once-revered investigator whose alcoholism has begun to affect both her work and home life. But, when she begins investigating a series of gruesome killings with religious undertones, she’s determined to solve the case at all costs.
She enlists the help of a journalist nun named Sister Megan, who helps provide some context about the Biblical connections to each of the crime scenes — until the end of the second episode, when the police discover a scene that needs no explanation. The killer, who Lois is starting to feel is taunting her, recreates a bloody version of The Last Supper at a church’s altar with the corpses of multiple unhoused people.
“The Last Supper. But, for whom? You? Me? All of us?” Nash-Betts’ Lois wonders as she stares at the scene laid out before her, stunned.
It leaves audiences with an eery feeling that things will only get worse from here.
Nash-Betts is coming off of her acclaimed turn in Murphy’s Dahmer as Glenda Cleveland, Jeffrey Dahmer’s nosy neighbor who tries to warn police about him to no avail. She tells Deadline that, at this point, she’ll never say no when Murphy comes knocking.
“I’m happy that I graduated in Ryan’s world to a leading lady. I really wanted my peers to know that they could trust me with whatever caliber of work there is for me to do, and I think that this hopefully will confirm that,” she said. “I can make them laugh and I can make them cry.”
In the interview below, Nash-Betts spoke with Deadline about the first two episodes of Grotesquerie and teased what’s in store for the rest of the season — including the introduction of Travis Kelce’s character in his much-anticipated scripted TV debut.
DEADLINE: How is Lois’ addiction going to impact her ability to solve this case, and her career in law enforcement more generally?
NIECY NASH-BETTS: Lois has a very, very long career in law enforcement, and she has been a big deal for many of them. She is the master of her game. So even in her addiction, she is better with context clues than anyone on their best day. Som because she’s very passionate about what she does, she is going to seek to unravel the thread, no matter where she is in her addiction.
DEADLINE: She’s a very layered character. How did you start to peel back some of those layers to figure out who she is at her core?
NASH-BETTS: Detailed conversations with Ryan Murphy. We really talked for hours about this woman, about her backstory, about what makes her tick, about where she is in her marriage versus where she is in her career. Originally, she was more of a public success and a private failure. And then, because of her addiction, it started to seep over into her work life.
DEADLINE: So she’s no longer a different person at home than she is at work?
NASH-BETTS: At this point, I don’t think that she is trying to hide it. Yes, this is where I am in my personal life. But also, yes, I am going to catch the serial killer. She’s too far gone.
DEADLINE: I really enjoy the dynamic between Lois and Sister Megan. First, how is it working with Micaela Diamond?
NASH-BETTS: Oh, first of all, I love Michaela diamond. She is visually stunning. The camera loves her. You can’t take your eyes off this girl. I told her, I said, ‘Baby, you are a star.’ She had mainly been living in the theater world, and this is her first entry into being a series regular on television, and I felt like she did it seamlessly. I think she is so talented, and she’s gonna be one of the greats.
DEADLINE: Why do you think Lois began giving that information to Sister Megan that she really shouldn’t have?
NASH-BETTS: Well, because these crimes are not typical. They all have a religious overtone, and because of that, there may be things that Lois doesn’t know, and she may be able to track it faster, get to it faster, with more insight in the religious and spiritual world.
DEADLINE: Ryan Murphy often explores the intersection of horror and religion. How was that experience, for you, on this show in particular?
NASH-BETTS: Well, you know, there is horror and evil everywhere. He could have picked anything. I think there are enough stories in the world where people could identify. It just so happens that this one is Catholicism.
DEADLINE: Some of the murders are very horrific. The Last Supper scene at the end of the second episode was really jarring. How were those set pieces?
NASH-BETTS: Yeah, the first time, it’s jarring, because you read it in the script and you’re like, ‘Oh, okay.’ And then when you actually see the wonderful job that the crew has created in building the world, it takes your breath for a second. Then I go into comedy mode, because I don’t want this whole set to be down for the rest of the shooting day. So you got to find the levity in the day, even though you’re facing this horrific scene.
DEADLINE: Lois has this confrontation with Nurse Redd, accusing her of being a sexual predator. It’s hard to tell if Nurse Redd’s actions are real or not, and I feel like the series is leaning into that intersection of reality and fantasy. What can you say about that?
NASH-BETTS: Ryan Murphy has a brilliant way of telling a story. All I can say is, maybe the things you think aren’t real are and vice versa. You just got to stay tuned.
DEADLINE: What are you looking forward to that will unfold for audiences this season?
NASH-BETTS: I’m looking forward to audiences meeting Travis Kelce’s character. I’m looking forward to a deeper connection with Lois and sister Megan, and I’m looking forward to the twists and the turns that people may not see coming.
DEADLINE: Have you spoken to Travis recently, since he’s about to make his TV debut?
NASH-BETTS: Yes, because at the premiere, we actually showed the first episode that he’s in. It went over really well. Audiences really liked him. And so, yes, we spoke about it, and I just gave him his props, and I told him, ‘You’re gonna be so happy with your work in this.’ He was very, very appreciative. I got to spend time with his mom at the premiere. It’s like, these are my folks now.
DEADLINE: It’s been great to see how supportive everyone has been of him.
NASH-BETTS: You gotta support people. Football life has a short period…and finding other things and other interests and other places you can be equally as great, I’m a champion of it.
DEADLINE: Your turn in Dahmer was critically acclaimed. You won an Emmy for it. It’s a different role, of course, but is there anything you took from that experience and that role that you brought to this one?
NASH-BETTS: Ryan constantly is offering me something that allows me to tap into a new part of my art, a new part of my instrument. So I’m very appreciative for that. But then he doesn’t just offer it up and leave you there. He offers it up and then walks you through it to get the best performance out of you. So because of that, he will always have me at ‘Hello.’
HOLLYWOOD — Niecy Nash-Betts hit gold…as in Emmy gold…when she teamed up with Ryan Murphy in 2022 for a limited series about serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer. She’s back with Murphy again for a new drama…and again, there’s a serial killer at large.
This one’s called “Grotesquerie.” And in this series, it falls on an alcoholic detective, played by Nash-Betts, to solve an especially creepy case.
“There are several murders that this serial killer has committed, and my unlikely partner in crime in all of this, ends up being a nun named Sister Megan,” said Nash-Betts. “Normally my character is a one-man band, but because of the faith-based aspect of these crimes, she ends up kind of the Cagney to my Lacey.”
“Grotesquerie” marks the acting debut for football star Travis Kelce.
“People are going to be pleasantly surprised,” said Nash-Betts. “He’s charming. Comes to work well-prepared, is professional and is open to learn. Takes notes very well. His fans are going to be very satiated by his performance.”
Is “Grotesquerie” the kind of show that would make viewers want to cover their eyes?
“Maybe a little,” she laughed. “I don’t know about a lot, but there may be a little. You might turn it off and want to go lock the doors and the windows just to make sure, you know.”
“Grotesquerie” airs Wednesday nights on FX, then will play on Hulu.
Disney is the parent company of Hulu, FX and this ABC station.
The reviews are in for Ryan Murphy‘s latest true crime outing, and one critic is certainly not pleased.
After Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menéndez Story debuted Thursday on Netflix, Erik Menéndez called out the series’ “naive and inaccurate” depiction of his and brother Lyle’s 1989 murder of their parents José and Mary Louise ‘Kitty’ Menéndez.
“I believed we had moved beyond the lies and ruinous character portrayals of Lyle, creating a caricature of Lyle rooted in horrible and blatant likes rampant in the show,” said Erik in a statement shared on Lyle’s Facebook page. “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.
“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. 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,” he continued. “So now Murphy shapes his horrible narrative through vile and appalling character portrayals of Lyle and of me and disheartening slander.”
Erik added in part, “Is the truth not enough?”
Nicholas Chavez as Lyle Menéndez, Chloë Sevigny as Kitty Menéndez, Javier Bardem as José Menéndez and Cooper Koch as Erik Menéndez in Monsters: The Lyle And Erik Menendez Story
Courtesy of Netflix
After José was shot six times and Kitty 10 times on Aug. 20, 1989, police initially investigated several mob leads. The brothers were arrested in March 1990 after Erik confessed to his psychologist, and they alleged in trial that they killed their parents out of fear for their lives after a lifetime of abuse, including sexual abuse from their father.
Although Erik and Lyle were convicted of first-degree murder in 1996 and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, their attorney Mark Geragos told People he’s “cautiously optimistic” that new family testimonies will help get the case reduced to voluntary manslaughter,
According to the show’s official Netflix logline, Monsters “dives into the historic case that took the world by storm, paved the way for audiences’ modern-day fascination with true crime, and in return asks those audiences: Who are the real monsters?”
Ryan Murphy is back with a new anthology series that explores the inner workings of one of America’s most hallowed institutions via a tragic and true story. In the inaugural season of American Sports Story, Murphy dives into the rise and fall of Aaron Hernandez, the New England Patriots star who battled inner demons and was accused of multiple murders; he was convicted of one of them, the 2013 murder of Odin Lloyd.
On a new episode of Still Watching, hosts Hillary Busis, Richard Lawson, and Chris Murphy unpack the first two episodes of American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez and chat with Josh Rivera, who portrays Hernandez, about getting into professional-athlete shape—and how making the series changed his feelings about football.
In his review of American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez, Lawson calls the new series “a worthwhile examination of a murderer’s motivations” and praises Rivera’s performance. “It is, in many ways, the role of a lifetime, an opportunity to explore extremes of the human experience that Rivera seizes with controlled gusto,” writes Lawson. In conversation with Busis, Rivera, who was part of the first national tour of Hamilton and starred in Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story remake, reveals that he actually played high school football, though he ditched it as his passion for musical theater grew.
“I thought about it really seriously for a little while,” he says in regard to sticking with football. “It’s just a monumental time commitment that made it really difficult to do anything else, and at that time I was starting to get really into singing and performing. I had performed in front of an audience for the first time, like, my sophomore year of high school…. It was something I started to pursue a little bit more seriously, and it just conflicted with football a little bit.”
Getting back into shape was easier said than done for Rivera. He had just three months to transform his body into that of a star NFL tight end after booking the role. “It was just like, you just gotta get as big as you can by April,” he says. With the help of a personal trainer, he was able to pack on the pounds. “I was 185 pounds, and I gained about 30 pounds, which was crazy,” Rivera continues. “I didn’t know that that was naturally possible. It was, like, five days a week in the gym, and I was just eating as much as I could possibly eat.”
Even more arduous than the physical toll was the mental toll of playing someone as notorious as Hernandez. Rivera shares that he had anxiety about taking on the part and found the task at hand “very daunting in the beginning.”
“I’m very motivated by not making a fool of myself,” Rivera says. “I don’t consider myself, like, a controversial person. I don’t want anybody to be offended or feel insulted in any way…. I want it to be truthful, and ultimately my job is to take all the information that I’m given and the resources that are available and paint a picture with that.”
