Oscar winner Javier Bardem stars in his first television series as Jose Menendez, an abusive father who was brutally murdered by his sons in Netflix’s “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story.” The Spanish actor hadn’t heard about the crime when it took over American media in 1989, but he accepted the part sight unseen because of showrunner Ryan Murphy‘s involvement, who had directed him in the 2010 film “Eat Pray Love.”
“Ryan was explaining to me what the case was about, and then he encouraged me to read about it,” Bardem reveals. “When I read it, I went ‘Oh, wow. This is very delicate,’ because of the issues that it touches. Sexual abuse, but also physical, emotional, psychological abuse, and the brutal murder of those parents.” Both Jose and his wife Kitty (played by Chloë Sevigny) were gunned down in their Beverly Hills home by Lyle (played by Nicholas Alexander Chavez) and Erik (played by Cooper Koch). Watch the video interview above.
Bardem explains that the show “gives room to the conversation” about cyclical abuse and how it impacts families for generations. “I felt safe,” he says. “This is an important show because of the things it speaks about. Also, being 55-years-old, the 80s and 90s was my time. I lived through those times and I know that kind of man. The education that the men, back then, were raised by. This idea of what a man is supposed to be and become, and how to behave and act, which is wrong. We present it as something that is absolutely wrong and how much we still have to do in order to overcome it. I don’t think we are there yet.”
As an actor, Bardem enjoyed the challenge of playing someone he wasn’t sure was capable of doing the things he was accused. “We don’t know,” he asserts. “Nobody knows. You have to play him in that place where the audience can wonder. I like that because you are not playing one hundred percent of one color or the other, but a mix of both. That’s the challenging part of playing Jose.”
“I’m so scared of acting,” Bardem laughs. “I’m scared when it comes to a moment when you have to really dig into heavy stuff because there’s no way you can escape out of it. It doesn’t matter if you are ‘method’ or not method, call it whatever you want. When you have to play a scene where you have to dig into heavy issues, you have to go there, otherwise the audience is going to feel that you are faking it. How do you do that? I don’t know. It’s a mystery still for me. But there’s always this magical moment where you have to jump in and see what happened.”
One of those “heavy” moments comes as Jose calls his mother to confront her about his own childhood abuse. “Thank God I haven’t been abused,” he says. “Thank God the relationship with my mother is a great relationship. I love my mother with all my heart. But, we’re always holding something within us that has to do with rage, with fear towards somebody that we love because of something they have done to us or have not done to us. That’s the thing that you call to. In the scene, I didn’t know who I was talking to, but I was taken by a rage. It happened in one take and that’s the take that is in the show. It’s magical. It’s not something you prepare.”
The actor goes on to describe that his life has become “beyond my imagination, wishes or hopes.” He also discusses his appreciation for his wife, Penélope Cruz, who he married 20 years after first meeting, and where they keep their Oscars.
