Monsters' Ari Graynor Says It Was 'Beautiful and Surreal' Talking to Lyle Menendez After Playing His Lawyer (Exclusive)

Mar. 15, 2025

Ari Graynor attends the 2024 Women In Film Annual Gala at The Beverly Hilton on October 24, 2024 in Beverly Hills, California.Photo:Robin L Marshall/WireImage

Robin L Marshall/WireImage

Monstersstar Ari Graynor recently got the chance to talk toLyle Menendez, and after playing his brother’s lawyerLeslie Abramson, she was finding the lines between fiction and reality a little blurry.

Graynor, 41, tells PEOPLE it was “beautiful and surreal” to speak to Lyle, 56, after playingErik Menendez’s lawyer onRyan Murphy’s Netflix series.

“We kept joking because I had to remind myself that I wasn’t actually his lawyer, because I was still sort of talking to him like his lawyer,” Graynor shares. The lines were so blurred that “at one point I referred to Cooper as Erik, which is the first time I’d ever actually done that,” she reveals.

The mix-up “speaks to the power of storytelling” in her mind, as it goes to show just how invested the cast ofMonsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Storywas in telling Erik and Lyle’s story. She shared, “We have been living with them and in their story for the last year.”

Nicholas Chavez as Lyle Menendez, Ari Graynor as Leslie Abramson and Cooper Koch as Erik Menendez in ‘Monsters: The Lyle And Erik Menendez Story’.Netflix

Netflix

Hours earlier,the Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón recommended the brothers be resentencednearly 35 years afterthey killed their parents Jose and Kittyin their L.A. home, and Graynor says that the decision was “particularly moving.”

She and Koch, 28, who played Erik, “looked at each other with tears in our eyes and said, ‘Oh my God, can you believe this?'” after hearing the news, which she says is “so crazy and overwhelming.”

She also attributes the resentencing decision in part to Abramson, who was “so ahead of her time” as she tried to get the jury and the public “to understand abuse and the psychology of trauma and male sexual abuse at a time where no one was listening.”

“To watch that press conference today and to see how much things have changed and to see the power of storytelling and to see [Abramson’s] power as the woman and defense attorney [she] was that, though that didn’t happen 35 years ago, this is happening today because of her, because she got their story out there, because she believed them.”

Ari Graynor as Leslie Abramson in ‘Monsters: The Menendez Brothers Story’.Miles Crist/Netflix

Miles Crist/Netflix

Graynor adds, “I pray that the rest of this process for them moves quickly and positively. There’s a few more steps, but I watched and cried and called Cooper and just felt so close to Leslie — this is what she’s been trying to do.”

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Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Storycan be streamed in full on Netflix.

source: people.com