Acclaimed actor Javier Bardem is known for his incredible range, from portraying romantic and devoted poet Florentino Ariza in Love in the Time of Cholera to vengeance-seeking ghost captain Armando Salazar in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales. His ability to play complex characters has earned him praise, and the same can be said for one of his latest projects.
Bardem took on the challenging task of portraying José Menendez — the controversial father of the infamous Menendez brothers — in Ryan Murphy’s series Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, which premiered on Netflix in Sept. The brothers mercilessly shot their parents to death in their California mansion in 1989. Admittedly, it took the actor some time to accept the role due to the disturbing themes including emotional, physical, and sexual abuse. In an interview with LADbible, Bardem said that once he agreed to play José Menendez, he committed to giving it his best. “I didn’t think too much about it. I will just jump in, do the thing, and come out and don’t make a big thing about it,” he told the publication.
Actors approach preparing for roles differently, but for projects based on real-life events, they often want to connect with the actual people involved by conducting interviews or spending time with them. Lyle and Erik are each serving a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole for murdering their parents, but Bardem said he didn’t want to meet with them in preparation for playing José.
Javier Bardem didn’t know anything about the case
The Spanish actor revealed that he knew nothing about the Menendez brothers’ murder case before he took on the role of José. The case and murder trial gained national attention, but Bardem said it wasn’t big news in his home country of Spain. As preparation, he researched the patriarch of the Menendez family to better understand how to portray him, but there were little to no results. The only materials available were based on other people’s descriptions and experiences with José, which were subjective.
There was always the possibility of getting in touch with Lyle and Erik, but Bardem said he trusted the research the production did, and that was enough for him to get into the role, he told Variety. Moreover, there was a more personal reason why he didn’t want to meet with the Menendez brothers.
“It was all there in the writing. So I said, ‘I don’t need to talk to anybody.’ And also I was very, very… the word is not scared, but I never felt for a second that I would be able to sit down with the murderers.”
In fact, none of the other actors in the series reached out to the convicted murderers. Bardem talked to the actors playing the brothers — Nicholas Alexander Chavez (Lyle) and Cooper Kock (Erik) — and advised them not to get consumed by the darkness of their roles.
It has been 35 years since the murders of José and Kitty Menendez, and the case has seen a resurgence of public interest. In Oct. 2024, Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón filed a petition to resentence Lyle and Erik, in addition to the habeas corpus petition filed by the brothers’ lawyers in 2023 to allow the discovery of new evidence or vacate the Menendez brothers’ conviction and sentence. The decision will be made after newly-elected District Attorney Nathan Hochman is sworn in on Dec. 2.