Cooper Koch got the opportunity to meet the real life Menendez brothers.
The 25-year-old actor, who plays Erik Menendez in Netflix's Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story , met the two brothers in person on September 21 when he went to the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility with Kim Kardashian to talk about criminal justice reform with a group of inmates. They were joined by Kardashian’s mother, Kris Jenner , and sister, Khloe Kardashian.
Erik and Lyle are currently serving life in prison with without the possibility of parole at Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility. They were convicted of two counts of first-degree murder in the killing of their parents in 1989. Cooper said when he walked into the prison gymnasium, Erik was the first person he saw and they "immediately embraced." He also hugged Lyle and called the brothers both "kind."
While that was the first time Cooper met Erik and Lyle, he told Variety it was not the first time he spoke with the 53-year-old brother he portrays in the series. He shared that he and Erik first talked the night before the limited series premiered on the streaming service on Thursday, September 19.
"I got to have a really good conversation with him and tell him that I believe him and I did everything I could as an actor to advocate for him and portray him as authentically as possible, and that I think the show does a really good job of representing him," Copper told the outlet.
He went on to say in their "really nice conversation" they discussed other things such as Cooper attending Calabasas High School where Erik also attended when the Menendez family moved to California. He also mentioned how his dad graduated from Beverly Hills High School the year before Erik arrived to the school. Cooper said they had "all these weird parallels."
After their phone call, Erik lambasted Ryan Murphy and the series for his "dishonest" and "vile" portrayal of him and his brother a couple days later. His scathing statement was shared by his wife Tammi Menendez on her X formerly Twitter account on September 19. Cooper shared that they two of them talked about Erik's concerns and criticisms during the prison visit.
"I told him that it makes sense that you would feel this way," he said. "I can’t imagine what it would be like to have the worst part of your life, such a traumatic and tragic thing, be televised for millions of people to see in a dramatized Hollywood TV way. I just said, 'I understand, I get it, and I stand with you.'"
Cooper also explained to the outlet how he became apart of the prison visit. His stylist Jamie Mizrahi introduced him to the SKIMS founder. He received a text from his stylist about Kim gushing about his performance. Kim called him and asked him questions about the brothers. She told him she was going to where they are incarcerated and asked him if he wanted to go.
"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 Greenspace project to improve the prison grounds. It was just amazing," the They/Them star said.
Cooper said he believes the brothers should get a retrial. He mentioned how they committed the crime at 18 and 21 and back then people didn't take "male-on-male sexual abuse" seriouslyl "especially with father and son."
“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," Cooper elaborated.
He added that he hopes they can get paroled and lives the rest their lives amazingly. Cooper told the outlet that while it sounds "insane" or might not make no sense, he knew he wanted to meet the duo and let them know he believed them and wanted to "advocate for them". He further explained how meeting them felt "weirdly normal" as if he was already acquainted with them since he had "watched them for so long."
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