Actor Cooper Koch shared on Sept. 26 how he was able to meet Erik Menendez, the convicted murderer he portrayed in "Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story," and his older brother Lyle Menendez, all thanks to an invite from Kim Kardashian.
Koch said on TODAY he met Erik and Lyle Menendez after the series premiered on Sept. 19 when he went to the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility outside of San Diego, where the brothers are serving life sentences for killing their parents in 1989.
Kardashian and film producer Scott Budnick arranged the meeting, Koch said.
“They were going down for this meeting to hear about this green space project that Lyle and Erik are spearheading, basically to help make prisons more of a like, college campus environment,” Koch explained. “That’s actually how they do it in Norway, and it just helps to establish more rehabilitation.”
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“Kim called me, and then invited me to go down, and of course, I said yes,” he continued. “Basically we went to this gymnasium and sat with 30 or so incarcerated individuals, and they basically all shared their stories. It was very emotional, and they were all so vulnerable and so kind. And I got to meet Erik and Lyle.”
Koch said he was also able to speak with Erik Menendez on the phone the night before the show premiered, and that they had a "really nice conversation."
"I got to basically just tell him that I believe him, and I did everything that I could in my power as an actor to portray him as accurately and as authentically as possible," Koch said.
Koch spoke about the moment he first saw Erik Menendez in the prison's gymnasium in an interview with Variety published on Sept. 26.
“We just looked at each other, and immediately embraced. He was so kind. Lyle, too, I got to hug both of them and just be in their presence,” he said. “They’re such upstanding individuals. They’ve done so much work in their prison. Erik teaches meditation and speech classes, and they’re doing this green space project to improve the prison grounds. It was just amazing.”
The actor explained why he hopes the Menendez brothers one day are able to be freed.
“They committed the crime when they were 18 and 21 years old, and at the time, it was really hard for people to believe that male-on-male sexual abuse could occur, especially with father and son,” Koch said. “It was really hard for people to understand that the story that they were telling was true, and this theory that they killed their parents for money is just bonkers. But it was easier for people at the time to sort of swallow that story. But now, after 35 years, we have so much more evidence of child sexual abuse and male-on-male sexual abuse that I think they do deserve to be retried. And everything that happened in that second trial too, they weren’t allowed to use their sexual abuse claims.”
He added: “I really do hope that they are able to get paroled and have an amazing rest of their lives.”
Koch said he connected with Erik Menendez over spirituality.
“I always knew I wanted to meet them," he said. I always knew I wanted to tell them that I believe them and that I want to be an advocate for them. So then when it happened, it felt weirdly normal, like I already did know them because I’ve watched them for so long, and I’ve seen and heard them talk for hours and hours and hours."
Kardashian’s mother, Kris Jenner, and sister, Khloé Kardashian, also attended the meeting, Koch told Variety.
After the show premiered, controversy ensued from viewers, especially over content that implied the brothers were lovers. Erik Menendez also criticized the show. He said the show was "rooted in horrible blatant lies," and called the show a "dishonest portrayal" in a statement posted on X by his wife, Tammi Menendez.
"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," Menendez said, referring to the show's creator.
Erik and Lyle Menendez shot and killed their parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez, in Beverly Hills, California, in August 1989. The brothers were charged with their parents' murders about seven months after the slayings.
During their first trial, the brothers' defense team argued they were sexually abused by their parents. The trial ended in two hung juries, and in their second trial, a judge ruled evidence of their parents' alleged sexual abuse would be inadmissible.
Lyle and Erik Menendez were convicted in 1996 of their parents' murders, and were sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
“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,” Erik Menendez said in the statement posted by Tammi Menendez.
“How demoralizing is it to know that one man with power can undermine decades of progress in shedding light on childhood trauma,” the statement continued. “Violence is never an answer, never a solution, and is always tragic. As such, I hope it is never forgotten that violence against a child creates a hundred horrendous and silent crime scenes darkly shadowed behind glitter and glamor and rarely exposed until tragedy penetrates everyone involved.”
Representatives for Murphy and Netflix did not respond to a request for comment from TODAY.com, but Murphy did respond to Erik Menendez's criticism in an interview with E! News on Sept. 23, saying he found it "curious" because he knew Erik Menendez had not seen the show.
“We show many, many, many, many perspectives. That’s what the show does. In every episode, you are given a new theory based on people who were either involved or covered the case,” Murphy said. “Some of the controversy seems to be people thinking for example, that the brothers are having an incestuous relationship. There are people who say that never happened. There were people who said it did happen.”
“We know how it ended,” he added. “We know two people were brutally shot. Our view and what we wanted to do was present you all the facts and have you do two things: make up your own mind about who’s innocent, who’s guilty, and who’s the monster, and also have a conversation about something that’s never talked about in our culture, which is male sexual abuse, which we do responsibly.”
Koch spoke about Erik Menendez's statement about the show on TODAY.
"I understand how he feels, and I get that it's so difficult to have your life, and not even just your life, but the worst part of your life, be televised in a sort of dramatized, Hollywood TV version of it," Koch said. "So I just get how difficult that would be. And, you know, I stand with him, and I understand it must be really hard."
Koch appeared on TODAY alongside two of his castmates, Javier Bardem, who portrayed Jose Menendez in the series, and Nicholas Chavez, who played Lyle Menendez.
When asked if he had plans to connect with Lyle Menendez one day, Chavez said, "You take on these jobs as an actor, and then I think a big part of that job, at least for myself, is letting it go gracefully and then moving on to the next thing."
Chavez, who along with Koch, was both born after the Menendez brothers were convicted, described the process of researching the brothers for their roles.
"Your performance sits at the nexus of a great many things. First and foremost, it is the research that you do — which should be extensive — you feel an obligation to do so playing a real character, but then you’re also assimilating the creative desires of directors as well as showrunners. It’s a complicated and multifaceted process," Chavez explained.
Bardem, also an executive producer on the series, said he hadn't heard much about the Menendez brothers' case while living in Spain, but he was excited at the thought of working with Murphy again after he starred in the 2010 film "Eat, Pray, Love," which Murphy co-wrote and directed.
"I knew how great of a person and loving guy (Murphy) is, and then I didn't know about the story, because it was not that popular in Spain," Bardem said. "And once I (dug) in, I was like, 'Wow, this is very heavy stuff, but (it is) very important to talk about.'"
"I mean, the idea of opening a discussion about abuse in childhood, it's an important issue to deal with," Bardem added.
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