When Ari Graynor first read “Monsters” Episode 5, her first reaction was to put the script away for as long as possible. “I was sort of like shaking for 48 hours,” said the actor who plays Leslie Abramson in Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan’s series about Lyle and Erik Menendez. “I.
.. felt nauseous, and was like, ‘I don’t know how I’m going to do this,’ and put it down for a really long time.
I knew how special it was and I just felt intimidated by the weight of it, the responsibility of it.” Episode 5, “The Hurt Man” is one unbroken take of Erik ( Cooper Koch ) describing the physical and sexual abuse he endured at the hands of his father, José (Javier Bardem). The episode was written by Brennan and directed by Michael Uppendahl, and the focus of a recent conversation with IndieWire at the SAG-AFTRA foundation in New York.
When Koch read the script, he had the opposite reaction; he spent as much time with it as possible. He wrote out the dialogue by hand every day, taking out the punctuation so he could really sit with Brennan’s words. “I would try to think it before I was going to bed, if I wasn’t listening to testimony,” he said.
“That’s really how it how I started, just kind of getting it all in my brain. There’s something also about writing your words over and over and over again and not saying them, because then when you go to say them, it will it comes out more organically.” Koch especially has talked a lot about the episode since.