098 Monsters Episode 5 The Hurt Man

It's a solo episode this week fellow daydreamers, and Charlie devotes all of it to The Hurt Man, the fifth episode of Ryan Murphy's Netflix series Monsters. The second season of this hit series focuses on the Menendez brothers and the murdering of their parents in 1989. The actor Cooper Koch plays Erik Menendez in the show with Ari Gaynor portraying his attorney Leslie Abramson. Cooper's work is an excellent example of stillness, ease, tremendous depth, and psychological nuance. Charlie breaks down this 35 minute episode shot in one take with no cuts and no edits. This is acting at its finest and Charlie explains why! You can follow CBP on Instagram @creatingbehavior, and Charlie's NYC acting conservatory, the Maggie Flanigan Studio @maggieflaniganstudio. Theme music by  https://www.thelawrencetrailer.com. To leave a voicemail on SpeakPipe, or contact Charlie for private coaching, check out https://www.creatingbehaviorpodcast.com and his NYC acting studio  https://www.maggieflaniganstudio.com.

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Every once in a while, something's going to come along that I watch that knocks me off my feet. It does not happen very often because honestly, most of the acting in this country is mediocre at best and hackish just as part of the course. Now, every once in a while you're going to see a great performance of a great episode of something, and it just reaffirms for me why I think acting is one of the most difficult and challenging art forms there are if you really know how to do it. So today we're going to take a look at episode five of Monsters, the Ryan Reynolds series this season that features The Lyle and Erik Menendez story. Episode five is called The Hurt Man. It features Ari Graynor and a young Cooper Koch who plays Erik Menendez. We are going to take a look at episode five and we're going to break it down beat by beat, moment by moment, and look at why this episode and this actor really crushed it. So put the phone back in your pocket, creating behavior starts now.

Well, hello, my fellow Daydreamers. Now listen, before you listen to the rest of this episode, you got to hit pause and you're going to have to go and watch episode five of Monsters. Now you can watch episode five by itself and come away back here and be able to appreciate what it is I'm going to talk about. I would also highly recommend that you watch all nine episodes. It is a phenomenally well-written show and the acting is across the board. Now, I have to admit, I was not going to watch this, Trish binged it like three weeks ago, and she kept saying to me, Charlie, I really think you should watch this. I said, okay. As you know, I'm not going to take acting notes or acting advice or acting recommendations from Trish. It's not in her wheelhouse. So I thought, this is some just pop culture garbage. I'm not interested.

And she just kept at me. She's like, Charlie, I'm serious. It's so good. Come on, will you watch it? I'll watch it with you. I'll watch it with you. And so finally I said, okay, all right, fine. And really the only reason why I did is because of the cast. The cast is, we're talking some heavy hitters here, Javier Bardem, Chloe Sevigny who play Erik and Lyle's parents, Ari Graynor, who plays Erik's lawyer, Leslie Abramson, Nathan Lane is in it, plays Dominic Dunne the Gossip Memoirists, who was very well-known, very popular in the nineties. And then these two kids, I can't say kids, young men, Nicholas Alexander Chavez, who plays Lyle, and Cooper Koch, who plays Erik, the younger brother, and that's the actor that's in episode five. Now, listen, I get to episode five and I am left speechless. It rocked me to my core. It actually broke me emotionally. I came to a full rich life, did not expect it.

Episode five is 35 minutes, one take, one shot. And the episode is Erik and his lawyer talking about the 12 years of horrific, and I mean horrific, awful abuse that he suffered at the hands of his father. This is real life. Erik and Lyle actually shot their parents back in, I believe 1989, in their Beverly Hills home. They ended up getting a hung jury the first time. They got tried again and ended up getting convicted of murder, and they were sentenced to life without parole, and this was their story. Now, episode five, like I said, it's one take, one shot. There are no cuts, there are no edits, and the show starts with a real wide shot. And over the course of the 35 minutes, slowly pans into a close-up of Erik. And all you see is Erik and the back of Ari Graynor who plays Leslie. The entire time it's on him, never leaves his face.

Now, what's interesting, of course I do a deep dive on this. I go down the rabbit hole because I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe what I saw. They shot this episode eight times. Now what's interesting is they started shooting the series in March, Cooper Koch got the script to episode five the previous June. So we're talking 10 months before they started shooting, and now this is episode five. So they've got four episodes to shoot before it. But in interviews, he was talking about how he had been working on that script since June. He carried it with him every day. He read it in the morning, he read it at night. He had the show completely memorized and off book before they even shot episode one. So they shot it eight times over two days, four on one day, came back the next day and shot it again four times. And so the episode that's in the show is take eight. Take eight. So I did, I went down a rabbit hole. I've watched this scene probably now 20 times.

And let me just shout out my assistant studio manager, Danielle Barrett. I came in last week. I said, listen, I need you to transcribe for me episode five of Monsters. And she did. She got it to me really quick. And so I have just been spending the week watching this episode and breaking the script down. So let's just start with it. Feel free to watch along with me because I'm going to start, stop. I'm sitting here with the script. I'm going to hit play and I'm going to stop and start. I'm going to point out to you and illuminate to you all of the nuance, the interesting choices that Cooper makes as an actor to catch the psychology of someone who has been viciously and unrelentingly abused by their father.

Now, there are a lot of people that think they're full of shit, that they lied, that they were just trying to get off, and they made up this horrific story to get out of blowing their parents away. They shot them both with a shotgun, blew their heads off literally, shot many times in their living room. They had fallen asleep on the couch watching television, and they come in and blow them away. So anyway, he's in prison, they're awaiting trial. Ari Graynor who plays his lawyer, Leslie Abramson comes in, and we'll just take it from there. So what I find interesting about this episode is it starts with the sound of the prison gates opening and closing so you know exactly where you're at. And it opens up with Erik by himself waiting for Leslie to come in, and he's just sitting there staring off into space.

So the first question you got to ask yourself as an actor is, okay, what am I thinking about? What's going on inside of me? Where am I at the beginning of the scene? Because there's going to be a journey. You want to start one place and you want to be able to end somewhere else. You want to find the emotional line of the peace for your character. And so he's sitting there, he is lost in thought, but what could he be thinking about? When you hear the scene, you'll discover that he had a "friend" is this guy. And if you're watching the show, you understand this too. He met somebody in prison, another gentle soul like himself, and they formed a relationship. It doesn't go into very much detail in the show, in the series, but it was meaningful to him. And so this is probably a couple days later. So you're looking back on a Saturday, and this friend of his was either released, transferred, he's not sure, he's just gone.

Not only is he dealing with that, he's dealing with the fact that he knows that today he has to talk about the most horrific childhood you could possibly imagine. And so when you sit here watching him, you can see him lost in thought. There's some sadness there. He's very still the simplicity. This guy moves a handful of, I think four times in the entire 35 minutes. He scratches his neck twice, rubs his nose twice, and that's it. So there's stillness here, there's ease. So now Leslie comes in, he's smiling at her, he's affable. There's a little shyness, he's quiet. The first interesting moment for me is when Leslie gets out her cigarette, she's putting them on the table. She's saying, "Listen, do you smoke?" He says, "No, it's a disgusting habit. You shouldn't do it. Don't start." And he has this line. "Yeah, my dad smoked. It just all disgusted me." Leslie says, "Good." And then Erik says, "Just the smell of it." Leslie says, "I always try to chew a piece of gum first." And immediately Erik says, "No, it doesn't bother me with you."

Now, to me, that's very revealing. And he has the nuance to make that clear to the audience. Obviously, his father was a smoker. And with all of the sexual contact that happened between the two of them, the smell of those cigarettes, the cigarettes on his breath, on his fingers, on his body, on his clothes is going to be etched in. That is a sense memory. As soon as she was talking about it, his immediate response, and it was just matter of fact, oh, nope, it doesn't bother me with you. Great little moment. And it was a quick response. He was right on that impulse. So the first little beat change here is the line. So how are you doing here? It changes. So the first beat is her entrance and those niceties back and forth, she lights a cigarette, takes a deep breath, okay, how you doing in here?

And now we get a little more information. Now, these are clues for you as an actor when you're doing your homework. He has this line, he says, "I've been here in 7,000 by myself now. I found a friend who made being here easier, but on Saturday he was just gone." For an actor, you latch onto that. You go, okay, how would I feel if that were true? I would be really sad that it's a loss. Now, he's not emotionally heartbroken here at the top of the scene, but he's got a heavy heart. You can see the sadness in the way he sits, in the way his hands are resting in his lap, how he's tilted off to the side just a little bit, a little slouch. And there's just a quietness about him. And as the actor, that has to do with the loss of his friend. Okay.

Now, the next beat change. In case you don't know what a beat is, a beat is a section of text about one thing. So an entrance or an exit is a beat change. A change in topic is a beat change. And as an actor, you need to be able to know where those are, because oftentimes those are emotional. And there is some shift that happens because of the meaning of what's being said, the meaning of the beat, the meaning of the topic, all of this. So the next beat change is when Leslie says, "Well, I'm sorry about that. And Erik, I'm sorry about what we have to talk about now." Okay. Beat change. Now we're getting into the purpose of the meeting, which is the details of the sexual abuse. He has a little line in this beat where he says, "Yeah, I think I prefer this," meaning we're meeting without my brother. And he has a little bit of a smile and there's meaning there.

It's almost like he's saying, at least I can say what I want. I don't have to worry about how Lyle is going to react to what I'm saying. And it's a subtle little moment. It's a little smile, but it says something about this meeting. It also says a little something about his relationship to his brother. Very subtle but interesting moment. So this is a complicated character. This is a damage to human being. And so the choices that you make as an actor playing this part have to reveal this damage, have to reveal the brokenness of the character.

And the first real example of this is early on in this beat, Leslie has this line. She says, "I talked to Lyle about the things you told Dr. Vicary, the rough stuff with Lyle, with your dad too and the objects." As soon as he hears the objects, he bristles, he turns away. He gets a little tense. And you know immediately that that is a trigger. Very clear. It's a really nice little moment, but it starts to set up for us the meaning of Erik's past and how difficult this conversation is going to be for him. And you can just see he's getting a little defensive here in these moments with his responses just short, he's closed off a little bit now. Now what's interesting, it's a small little point that happens here. Erik says, "In the days leading up to that night," the murder, "that's what we talked about for the first time, like we were comparing notes."

This is very interesting. You're telling me now they've lived in this house for what? 15, 16, 17 years together. And it wasn't until a week or so before the murder, they actually talked about their abuse together, which means they had to carry this trauma, this pain in silence, unspoken. That says something about what their childhood was like. They didn't really even have the ability to talk about what happened to them. It was their own. It was like a known secret. Now, here's a really great interesting moment. You're going to get to the part where Leslie says, "And just to ask, just to say it out loud, you believe him? Yeah." He's talking about his brother, Lyle. You believe everything he said. And just watch how Erik behaves. He pauses. You can see him get suspicious, and you can tell that he's offended by that. And he comes to the immediate defense of his brother. That's what he's doing in this moment. He's defending Lyle.

"Yeah, I know he is telling the truth." And then he says, "What am I supposed..." And he stops. He doesn't finish the line. Leslie cuts him off. "Yes. No. So I just want to keep underlining this for all of us." So what's interesting to me is he comes to the immediate defense of his brother, Lyle, who was also abusing him as a kid. He didn't know any better. It was just his life. This is what you did. But he comes to his defense and then he says, "What am I supposed..." And he stops. The question is, well, what did he want to say there? You as the actor, need to know what that thought is, because he doesn't finish it. What am I supposed... Okay, well, what's the rest of the thought? And why doesn't he finish it? Why doesn't he say it out loud?

Now, Leslie cuts him off. But I think the line really has to be something like, what am I supposed to say? I don't believe him? Am I supposed to say that my brother's lying? Am I supposed to go against my brother? And he's never going to do that. So right away, you see where his loyalty is, where really the only love left in his life resides, which is in his relationship to Lyle. And then you watch his behavior as she then begins to talk to him. She says that, "However much you love this man, he was a monster. And what he did was real." And he's staring at her a little bit. He's sizing her up. Can I really trust her? His head tilts back a little bit, and then he starts to look down because this is uncomfortable. He doesn't really know what to say. He's getting a little embarrassed. And she says to him there, "I really get this feeling from him," from Lyle. "He feels you had it worse." And he pauses. He looks down, he's listening.

And now he says this almost in a mumble, he looks down, he can't even look at her. He says, "Yeah, yeah, it was much worse." And you could just tell the heaviness, the embarrassment that is truth. And you can just see the self-consciousness in him. Now catching the psychology of somebody who's abused, there's a lot of different nuance there. And what I think makes this performance so good are all of the little subtle things that come up. And one of the big ones, and it's disturbing to watch, is even now, now we're talking after years and years of abuse. We're talking about after blowing your father's head off, he still supports and defends both of his parents at times in this scene. So Erik has this interesting line. He says, "I was always afraid of him." And Leslie asks, "Your dad or Lyle?" And his immediate response, it's quick, it's defensive. He says, "My dad. I was never afraid of Lyle."

And he makes it very clear that Lyle is not someone that he holds any animosity towards. And Lyle did abuse him as a kid, two children, one abusing the younger brother, but he defends his brother immediately. "I was never afraid of Lyle. I always felt like Lyle was my protector." Now, what's interesting here in this moment is that he laughs when he says it. "I always felt like Lyle was my protector." It's a little laugh. Well, why? Why is that funny to him? What's the joke? And I think it has to do with the fact that it's an odd thing to say about your brother who's, what? Three years older than you. Had to be your protector and not your dad. And he's aware of how funny that sounds. And so it's a little laugh. It's a little moment, but it's another color. It's another interesting moment. And after he says that Leslie has this line, "Even when he was abusing you?" And just watch his initial response.

The first word out of his mouth is, yeah. And you can tell he's irritated by that question. He's offended by that question. And he immediately goes to defending his brother. He takes a deep breath \because he is getting irritated. He's trying to calm himself down a little bit. He doesn't want to get upset. And so he just takes a deep breath there. And now he's got this first nice chunk of dialogue that he has where he is talking about running away and how futile it was. And it's just very matter-of-fact. So he's still, he is not emotionally alive right now. It's matter-of-fact, he's just basically talking about the futility of his life. It's almost Kafkaesque. Trying to run away. It's futile. You're always going to end up going back home. There was nowhere to go. There was nowhere to hide. Six minutes in, it's the first time he moves, he scratches his neck. That's it. So think about the stillness here. It's incredible.

He's removed emotionally during this period. It's just the details and he's thinking through it. And what's also interesting is this is also the farthest away that the shot is. It's such a slow zoom. It's imperceptible. And it's not really until we get closer up that you're going to see how alive he is. It's mapped out emotionally really well. Now what to me is disturbing to watch it when I was sitting there is that when he starts to talk about his abuse, he minimizes it. He's got this line. "It didn't start out bad, you know." Now we're talking about child molestation. And that's what he thinks about when he looks back, he says to himself, it wasn't that bad. And so he was minimizing it because it started out with massages. And to him that was nice. This is how you're groomed. It wasn't something that was awful for him. And as we go on here, you find out why.

And now he starts to get into a little bit of stuff about his dad. He said, he has a great line. He says, "Well, I knew that my dad didn't like me." And when you watch him say that, you can see him struggle to find the words. There's almost a sense of distance to it, some perspective. He's not emotional here. It's a matter of fact. It's just like, Hey, my dad, he didn't like me. Leslie is curious. She presses him. "How do you mean?" And he says, "Well, he was just always so mean. He loved Lyle, but he didn't love me." Now you've got to know as the actor that that is a core wound, a core issue. It's going to come up again and again in this scene. You've got to do homework on that, on what it means to have spent your entire life chasing your father's love and enduring the horrific abuse and violence and trying to rationalize that as proof that he did love you.

He talks about how his dad was calling him names. "He'd call me these names." "What kind of names?" Leslie says, "Just stuff you shouldn't say to a kid like stupid and faggot." And now watch his behavior here. It's matter of fact. But when he says the words stupid and faggot, his head tilts down. He gets a little quieter because it's a little embarrassing to say, it's a little bit shameful. Still matter of fact, but it's subtle in how he responds there. And then he says, "you're always trying to impress him and not make him mad." This is some really great psychological work here. He has this bit of text where he's talking about being thrown into a closet because he was scared of the closet or thrown in the basement. And when you hear him talk about this, it's almost like he's trying to make sense of it. And to him, it seems reasonable. "Well, I was scared of the closet, so they put me in the closet so that I wouldn't be scared anymore. I was scared of the basement, so they threw me in the basement."

It's almost like he's curious as to like, God, why would they do it? And he looks at her and smiles when he says, so he sees what his parents are doing, he's able to look back at it, but he's not in the trauma of it. In some odd fucked up way it actually makes sense to him. That is interesting. He gets this line, she says to him, "They'd lock you in the basement?" She's taking these notes. So she says they locked you in the basement. And his response is, "Yeah, because I was scared of it. It was to toughen me up." Matter of fact, this adds to the tapestry of the damage that this abuse has had on him. In the midst of it, she has this line, "that's awful." He doesn't even acknowledge that, doesn't even hear that. He goes right into the next thing he has to say. So anyways, when you know your dad thinks you're weak or I don't know, too scared. He doesn't even hear that's awful. Can't even take that in.

And now this is where it gets interesting. He starts to talk about when he was scared or something, not tough enough when you first start to think, "well, I guess I'm not tough enough. And he's always mad at you. And then the times he's not, the times he takes you upstairs when he says, let's take a shower," this little beat here, watch how he says it. It's almost as if he's sharing a secret that he doesn't want anybody to know. He gets quieter, it gets more intimate. And there's something about that memory that is actually fond for him because those early years of abuse, his father was grooming him. It was tender, it was alone time, it was private time, it was time with his father when he wasn't yelling, wasn't being mean, wasn't mad. And so to look back on your early molestation with fondness, that's what an excellent choice. What an interesting way to go with it.

Now, I'm always interested in the unfinished thought. Why does the character not finish what they want to say? What is the reasoning for not finishing the thought? And he's talking here. Leslie is listening, and we get to this moment here in the script where he says, "Well, he could stop being mad when no one else was there, but around everyone else, even when family was over, he would just call you those names and hit you and everyone saw it, but then it was just you and him and that's when he would..." He doesn't finish the thought. He looks down. You can see now the shame and the embarrassment of even saying this. He doesn't want to say it. Leslie presses him, "What?" And Erik says, "That's when he would tell me that he loved me." And that you can see is something that fills him with shame and embarrassment because I think deep down he knows that that's not love, that that wasn't it. And it's a very painful thing for him to say, excellent moment.

Now this is what's interesting. In her next moment, she says, "When he was abusing you?" And he says, "Yeah, it wasn't..." He takes a deep sigh, he exhales, and then he says, "it was just the massages at first." The question as the actor you have to ask yourself is it wasn't what? What are you going to say there? What is that thought? And why don't you say it? These are things that you have to actually work out when you're looking at material. When I watch that, what it says to me is the thought was it wasn't that bad. It was just the massages at first. But he can say, it wasn't that bad because that sounds awful, as a fucking 18-year-old kid, he knows that that is a fucked up thing to say. Doesn't want to say it. It's really embarrassing. So he stops himself. So he says, "Yeah, it wasn't... It was just the massages at first." And he finishes the line, "With oil and he'd have his shirt off and I was in my shorts or something and it was..." He can't finish the thought.

What's he going to say there? It was nice? It felt good? He can't say that, it's too embarrassing, but that's what that memory evokes in him are those good feelings. This is the kind of detailed work, this is the kind of nuance work that starts to make a performance really compelling. And after she says, "What?" His line is, "All the other stuff hadn't started yet." And we're talking about the horrible shit, the objects, the rapes, the blowjobs, you name it, hadn't started yet. So of course he's going to look back on that with fondness. And he has this line coming up here where he says, "those were my favorite memories because" he says, "I felt like he cared about me. It was just me and him and that was good." Those were my favorite memories. This is where he starts to come to life a little bit and you can see the deep sadness, the pain starts to come to the surface that that was the only way that his father could show him love.

And he looks back at that and you can start to see now the depth of that pain and that sadness. And now we get to another beat change. The beat changes and "then the massages changed." New question. We're going to go into another beat. "What happened after the massages?" Like I said, beat changes are emotional. They oftentimes are emotional. Watch how he responds to the question. He takes a really big inhale. He looks down in his lap and it's almost as if he's beginning a confession by the way he says this, it's just a little matter of fact. You're talking about something really horrific here and you're just saying it as if you're talking about what you had for breakfast. And he has this really interesting line where he said "We'd fondle each other, but it still wasn't..." Doesn't finish a thought. "We'd fondle each other, but it still wasn't..." It still wasn't bad? It still wasn't awful? He's still trying to rationalize it, make sense of it, justify it. This is somebody who's seriously damaged.

And then we get to this line. "It wasn't scary yet what we were doing, except I didn't want to. I try not to do it." He's still justifyiing. He's still trying to rationalize why it was okay. I wasn't scared yet, so it didn't bother me the fact that I was being massaged with baby oil by my father and he was massaging my penis. But he has this interesting line here. He says, "Except I didn't want, I try not to do it." And you can just start to see in him a little change. He almost looks like a child whose done something bad and he's got this line. He just drops this line here, and it's just so matter of fact. He goes, "And just then the mouth massages as I got older, like Lyle said, with the objects and the toothbrush." And it's interesting that he's referring to giving his father a blowjob as mouth massages. This is how he was conditioned. This was what his father called it, and he still calls it to this day. It's that childhood indoctrination, the grooming.

The next big beat change is when we get to this moment when Erik says, "And so there were four different kinds of sex with my dad." Beat change. Now we're going to be going into another bit of new territory with regards to the abuse. This is what's interesting, he says, "And so there were four different kinds of sex with my dad. There was the nice, which was the, well..." And he doesn't finish the thought. He goes on to say, "The massages came before." And what that looks like to me is really what he's saying there is when my father would mouth massage me. The things that my father did to me that actually felt good, that felt nice, but he can't say that because he knows how fucked up that would be. So he just says, "The massages came before." And he just skips over. But it's a subtle moment, but it says so much. It's these little moments of not completing the thought, of being clear as the actor, like what's going on there? Excellent.

And I think what really troubles him and what comes up in this little section here is the fact that he's so embarrassed and ashamed at that the abuse, some of it actually felt good. It was pleasurable. So this is what happens with most abused victims. You're caught up in the guilt and the shame of knowing that there was something pleasurable about the abuse that was perpetrated on you. And then he gets into a nice chunk of text here. He has this line, "But he would say, you did good. Good boy. And it was just the only time I felt like I had a real relationship with my dad, where I felt that he did love me." This is the most important thing to him. This was the most important thing in the world. And you can just see in his eyes the validation, the love that those moments gave him and bonded him to his dad, bonded him to his tormentor, to his abuser.

He has a great line, and at this little chunk where he says, "I was the center of the world for once. It also felt..." And Leslie says, "Nice," and he nods in shame. He can't even look at her because it's embarrassing. And then we get right into the next beat change where he says, "The objects were to get me ready." Okay, now we're talking about some seriously fucked up shit. Being fucked with a toothbrush and all these other things that were done to him. So this is a beat change. And now you can start to see the emotional line coming clear here. He has the next moment where he says, "Yeah, and he was preparing our bodies for something bigger." But when you look at that line, he says, "Yeah, and that he was..." And before he says, preparing our bodies, he takes a pause. He can't even say it. Now you know that this is difficult. This is really hard to say.

He looks like a child staring at the boogeyman. When you just look at his eyes, he looks so scared. You could see him getting upset. It has the feel of a child's confession, and you start to see the emotional trauma come to the surface, and we're getting into some of the really embarrassing parts of what he has to say. He's talking about having to fuck his dad, and he says, "In order to do that, you have to be..." Can't even fucking say it. Leslie says it for him, "Erect." He nods, and then he has this line. "That's what was so weird about it, and that I could ever..." He takes a deep breath, watch him lean back. He takes a really deep sigh. He looks down, look at the shame, the embarrassment. He starts to choke up. He's trying to keep it together. Just to say the word orgasm, it's really hard to say that word, that I'm having an orgasm fucking my father. Are you kidding me? Can you think of anything more horrific than that?

So he says the word orgasm. You can see how difficult it is to say, and then he says, "That was really confusing to me at that age." Fuck, of course, of course it would be. That was Leslie's immediate response, of course. "And then he started to rape me." And now you can see him getting more upset. It's more upsetting. And what's really interesting, this is another great revelation for the character. He has this chunk of text he says, "and I would cry and it hurt, and he'd say, 'why can't you be like Lyle, be a Menendez and get used to it.'" You're watching this section now. He gets softer here, he gets quieter. We're getting to the wound, a real deep wound, and this is really the most upset he's been at this point in the scene because it has to do with comparing him to Lyle when his dad would do that.

He says, "I remember feeling so disappointed because he was comparing us again, Lyle and me, and I wasn't good enough again." This little section, and he says, "All the stuff he'd said about loving me that was just gone." And this is the most upset he's been to this point. This is the homework you've got to do on this relationship with your father is so deep, so complex, so that when you live it out, these meanings come to the surface. And just look at him. He's not forcing anything out. Look how soft his face is. Look how still his face is. He has not fucking moved. His arms are there in front of his lap. It's all with this softness in his face. It's just an excellent example of real ease, real simplicity, not pushing, not forcing anything. And she asks him, "How often did this happen?" He says, "The rough sex. Two or three times a month."

And he just looks like a kid caught doing something he shouldn't have done, like he's been brought to the principal's office and he's forced to confess and account to what he did wrong. And it's just, you can see the childishness in him, because there is repression through much of this episode. You just can get a sense of the wounded child because it's operating in him, and this is one place where you can see that. You can just see he's quiet here through this beat. His voice is soft. There's something very childish about the way he's responding. And then Leslie responds to all this and says, "Erik, you were raped hundreds of times by your father." And his response is, "Well, it's what my life was like." It's just matter of fact. And then it gets to a nice interesting passage here where he says, "Yeah, you just survive, I guess." He says, "And you live for those times when it's not happening."

And he smiles a little bit. He inhales, and he's thinking back to those times where a real weight is lifted just for a moment. The few times where he wasn't being abused, it's like Christmas morning, he inhales, he takes a deep breath. He's like, oh my God, I did it. I got through it. Interesting little moment, " because this time it was knees or maybe next time." And so knees, she hears that. She stops him. She says, "Sorry, knees?" Beat change. And now he gets into describing the different kinds of sex. He has another really tough line here. He can't say it. He takes a deep inhale. It's when he says, "He would finish in my mouth." What a line to have to say that talking about your father, but just watch him. He takes that deep breath in. He gets real quiet. He's gazing down. He can't even barely say it. He has to extract the words from his mouth. And so now there's homework on this coming up here.

He eventually says, "I never wanted it to be the rough sex." Now this is where things start to change. "I never wanted it to be the rough sex." You can see in his mind's eye, the image, the memory of what that rough sex is playing out inside of him. Now, as an actor, what you have to do is you have to be able to pin that down. You have to make that as vivid and as graphic for yourself as possible. You've got to really tether yourself to that. And you could just see it in his eyes and she has, here's the beat change. "And what was the rough sex like?" Beat change. Now we're going to get into the rough sex. And you can just tell he doesn't want this question. He doesn't want to answer this question. He pauses and then he says, "Just hitting." But you can tell he doesn't want to talk about it. And he gets almost childlike in his description. You'll see some sighs in this next little section, big sighs. And then, "But the rough sex was..." He just can't even say it.

And then he starts to describe it. "I'd have to kneel on the headboard at the end of the bed," and this whole section here, these thoughts come quick. He starts to really come to life, the vulnerability. It's almost like a child's reasoning as he works through this part of the script. He says, "At one point here, I have a scar on my leg because he'd be doing the stuff while I'd be doing the mouth massages to him to toughen me up." It's very difficult for him here. Well, look how hard it is for him to communicate. This is really good homework for an actor. This is meaning, meaning loaded in. It's right there. It is tethered to him. It's happening to him. It happened to him. Excellent acting. Now, what's interesting here is as we get deeper into this scene now, and we get into the emotional, real emotional parts of it for him, Leslie will start to disappear slowly here from the frame, and we just continue to creep in now, creep in.

And it's interesting here. He says, "Sometimes it's what he would say that would hurt even more', that was even more damaging, being called a faggot, being called horrible names. And this is what Erik's trying to figure out and rationalize. It's almost like a childlike confusion. And he's upset about it. He says, "If I'm such a faggot, then why are you asking me to fuck you in the ass?" He can't wrap his mind around that. And he can't really finish the thought. Leslie presses him here. "Yeah, what?" "I don't know." She says, "No, what were you going to say?" "No, I don't know. I don't know." And I think what's going on there internally, you can see it what he wants to really say to his dad is, who's the faggot dad? Who's gay? I'm a child and you are the one that wants to be fucked in the ass. You are the one that wants to fuck your son. Who's fucked up? And he's trying to grapple with that.

And he doesn't want to talk about it. That's why he says, "I don't know. No, I don't know. I don't know." He doesn't want to deal with it. In some way, he still will not disrespect his father. He can't say it. And this is how the writing is really good. You could tell he's not going to disrespect his dad. And then he goes immediately into complimenting his dad. "My dad was an amazing man and I loved him so much. I still love him so much." Look at how he says that. It's the truth and it's committed. He's speaking from a very committed place. He believes that. He believes that deeply. And it upsets him because he knows it's up fucked to say because you're supposed to look up to your dad. That's what a healthy relationship should be between a son and a father, a child and a parent.

And then he gets very introspective. He has this line where he says, "I don't want to be in here for the rest of my life, because to have that thought laying alone in a cell at night, all cooped up in here, and to have that be the thought you are left thinking..." He can't even finish it. She says, "What thought?" "That I love my dad." And just look at him. He's staring off, he's lost in this realization that this is the real torture, that this is what he has to grapple with. The way he says the line, my dad was an amazing man. He says it with such conviction. It's such a compliment. To be able to compliment your father. This is the psychological new ones that makes this performance so interesting, these little moments. And then he starts processing these thoughts that "he'd be looking down from heaven and say, thank you, Erik, Lyle, you did what you had to do to me because what I did to you that was really wrong and I love you."

It's really the only way to get an apology from him, is to imagine it, to fantasize about it. And the thoughts there come really quick. So in some way, they're trying to create for themselves or he is anyway, an apology from his dad. And what's interesting now, we're 20 minutes, 54 seconds in, he scratches his neck. So it's really like the second time he's moved, he uses his hand actually to make a point here. My God, the stillness. I tell my students, actors move when they need to. They do only what they have to do, no less, no more. And you are getting a clinic here on stillness and simplicity. Now, the next, I think interesting moment for me, Erik has this line. He says, "So that's why I don't want to be here alone, with that thought banging around in my head, not without Lyle or with my friend gone now."

And then there's a pause. He's looking at her. He gets something from her and he starts to smile because she's looking at him in a certain way. It's a really interesting moment, that grin that comes over his face. And he says, "What?" And it leads right into the beat change. "I'm just blown away by you, Erik Menendez." And he can't accept it. He can't hear this, his response, "No, you don't. You shouldn't say that." He doesn't want to hear that. He doesn't think that. Now this beat is really Leslie championing him and complementing him. She says at one point, "You are just an incredible person, and I have to say it." Look at his response there to that. I tell actors, you've got to be continually responding in every moment. And this is what this guy is doing in this entire piece, is responding in every single moment. She says, "You're just an incredible person." Watch, he looks away, shakes his head no, he can't hear that. But he says, thank you anyway.

And then it takes us into another beat change. She says, "I'm not going to make this about me, but my father was a son of a bitch." Now, this beat is about her trying to relate to him in some way. She's talking about her relationship with her father. Now this is really great. Watch how he listens to her and takes her in. She says, "my father was a son of a bitch." Look at his response. He says, "Really?" Curious. He laughs because, oh my God, we have something in common. Really? Your father was an asshole too. And then watch him listen. She says, "Yeah, he abandoned me, my brother, this man I loved." She says, "I haven't heard from him in 34 years." Watch how his face changes as he listens. He has tremendous empathy here. So when he says, "I'm so sorry," he was fully able in that moment to give over it to her, to listen to her story, to listen to her pain, take that in and be moved by it, to be sensitized by it. It's a great moment.

And we're getting closer and closer to the tight close-up. Leslie is slowly disappearing here by this point. The camera work is just so subtle. It's excellent. It's a lot of listening here for him now. And she's really giving her two cents here. You'll see at 23 minutes in, he wipes his nose. It's like the third time he's moved in this entire episode, and you can really see the camera work now. She's really disappearing here. And it leads us to, I think, what is the major beat change of the script and the way it's shot and the way it's written. This is what's I think so brilliant about it is because we're getting to the most crucial part of the scene, his relationship to his mom. And as this happens, Leslie is slowly disappearing out of the frame completely. And we are just left with Erik getting tighter and tighter and tighter on him. And I think it's the most pivotal moment in the entire scene. And you can see her outrage. You can hear her outrage here as she leads into this.

She says, "because hearing all of this, I just have to keep asking myself and asking you, where was your mother in all of this?" Beat change. And immediately, immediately he starts to defend her. "Well see, because -", and she cuts him off. "Let's not make excuses." And he is defending her. "He cheated on her. And Lyle said he walked in on them one time and my dad was raping her." He's defending her. And at this point right here, Leslie says, "Okay, well that's still-" And he says, "My dad ruined her life." She's completely out of the frame. So we're 23 minutes, 51 seconds in. She's completely out of the frame now, and it's just him. And he says, "My dad ruined her life." And then this is where it gets interesting. He says, "And she would sometimes say, which well wasn't even, she would..." And Leslie says, "What?"

He doesn't want to say this. He doesn't want to say what he needs to say here because he doesn't want to disparage his mom. He knows that what he's going to say sounds fucked up. And he's trying to grapple with the fact that she was abusive as well, to the fact that she loved him and that they had a close relationship, and it was probably the only source of love he had next to his brother in his life. And she gets it out of him. He says, "With Lyle, she would sometimes get naked." And just look at his expression when he says it, he says it as if he's embarrassed for her. He's embarrassed for her that he has to say this. It's such an interesting moment, the complexities of the relationship between him and his parents. This is such a nuanced work in acting. This is what's making this performance so good. There are all of these little things that he does that convey meaning, that convey subtext.

And he continues justifying and defending her. "Yes, but it wasn't like it was with my dad. She just wanted us to think she had a nice body and she liked ours, but it was just looking or... Well, yeah, it was just looking." Now, to me, this is a loaded moment. He says, "But it was just looking or... Well, yeah, it was just looking." What's he saying there? As the actor, you have to ask yourself, okay, well, the writer has put those words or... Well, yeah, it was just looking. But was it really? This is what he's revealing here. Not really. You can tell that there were definitely moments where it was physical, physical sexual abuse. It might not have touched anywhere close to what his father did to him in any way, but it was still fucked up.

And he can't say it, he can't admit it, and it never really comes up. But you can just tell there that he's covering something up. He is lying for his mom. Do you understand that? That's what's so fascinating. He's lying for his mom. And then he has to go into this next little beat change where he starts to talk about the fact that she would inspect his penis. And then now we're 24 minutes in a little bit, and he wipes his nose. It's the fourth time he's actually moved in this scene, and now we're tight on him now. Now we're creeping in on this close up, and we're getting here deeper into the relationship between him and his mom. He has this moment. He says, "Dad would have these girlfriends. And so I think she also thought that I was too." And he doesn't say anything. "That what?" "That I was sleeping with dad, that I was coming between them."

And this really goes to his mother's character and the jealousy that she had, that these two kids were taking her husband away from her. This is how fucked up it was. And he's still defending her, defending his mom. Well, she was jealous. She felt that we were coming between them because I was sleeping with dad. And in this little beat here where he says," It was just something you knew but didn't talk about, that was our family." He's therapizing his mom here in this little beat. This little section of text is very interesting. He's trying to rationalize and justify why his mom was behaving the way she did and how he could justify her inspecting his penis for blisters, looking for AIDS. It's so fucked up. And so when Erik mentions here that she was terrified of AIDS, this is a beat change.

And so this next section of text is about Leslie pressing Erik to answer her question, why would your mother think you have AIDS? Why? He doesn't want to answer this? And he starts to push back on her. "Let's just drop it." That's really what he's saying. Actually, "It's not important. Forget that. Just forget it." He's really pushing back here now. He does not want to go there, and he's got some strong actions and you can just tell, no, I'm not doing this. And so the question is why? Why is he pushing back on this? Why doesn't he want to talk about it? And it's going to get revealed here in the remaining 10 minutes of this episode. It has to do with his own sexuality and not knowing who he is or what he's about. Is he gay? Is he straight?

So he completely just refuses to answer this. And she's really setting him straight here about his mom and saying some very harsh things about her. "That's not a mother, Erik. Okay. And I am a mother, wasn't the perfect one, I'm sure." And then he says, "We were really close." And then she says, "I know you loved her." And he says immediately, "I do. We were really close. Lyle and her weren't." Now, see, here we go. This is another little jewel for an actor. This was why this relationship was so important to him is because Lyle and her weren't close. It was something that was his, that he had that was separate from him. Lyle may have had dad's love and dad's support, but I had moms and he clung to that. He's still clinging to that today, despite all the up she did to him. It's the only thing he has. And you can see it in the way he responds, and the meaning that starts to come to the surface there for him as he defends her.

And now we're on a full close up here, and she is going at him and she says, "Let me just say this and we can go back, because there were a lot of avenues that she could have taken there, okay, where she could have gone to the authorities, where she could have said, no, not my sons. You will not abuse my sons." He's getting closer and closer to accepting the truth and the reality about his mom. And you can just see as he listens and he processes, she says to him, "Right? Am I right?" And he can't even say it on full voice. He has to whisper it because it's so difficult to say. He says, "Yes," and it's a whisper. And then she continues on and she says, "That's a pretty low bar. Okay. She didn't do any of that." And listen to the rest of this. She says in this little section, "You deserved better than her." What a line. You deserved better than her.

In this close up, the truth finally piercing through, and now he's becoming shattered. This is a dagger into his fucking heart. And you can just watch the life, the tears coming down his face. This is the climax of the episode, these last few minutes, and it's done with such ease. Do you see him strained at all? There's not an ounce of tension. There's not an ounce of strain. He's not working for emotion. He's not trying to feel. He is just being and doing and listening. And all of this homework is so loaded in that it is just coming to the surface. It's operating. And what's so fucking amazing about this, is this is take eight. This is the eighth time he's lived this fucking thing through, over the course of 48 hours and the nine months that he's been working on this, it's so good.

And now she returns back to the question that he didn't answer. "Can you tell me why she thought you had AIDS? Can you just tell me." Now we're on a full close-up here, full close-up. And he says, he whispers, he can't even say it on a full voice. "This is what's so hard." And you can see the pain. He is fully alive now. Fully alive. She says, "What?" He says, "About... Because I don't know." About... Well, what are you saying there? About being raped by my dad, about being molested, about having a sexuality forced upon me as a child? And this is it. He's fully alive. He doesn't know. This is what's so hard. And we get to the core of it, the absolute core of the damage that was done to him. And he recounts this moment here about his mom screaming at him and Lyle, calling them sociopaths.

And he says, "Well, maybe we are sociopaths. Can you blame us if we are? Am I gay or am I straight? Who am I? What am I? What was my dad?" He says, "So the feelings I have of sex stuff or..." And he can't finish the thought. And Leslie says, "Orientation." "Yeah, or of dad's." Grappling with the fact that your dad was a child molester, a homosexual, these feelings that he has or the way when he has all these stops and starts, and he says, "I don't know if it's me or how I was supposed to be." And he comes back to the inspections of his mom and his penis, and he pauses, pauses, can't say anything. And then we get to, I think the real heartbreak for him, childhood heartbreak was being in love with this boy. So just watch this moment here.

Erik says, "I don't want to say who it was, but..." Sighs, deep breath. You can see the heartbreak. I was kind of in love with a boy, a teenager like me, who was a boy. But then he is trying to rationalize the homosexual and homoerotic feelings, he says, "But it was because I was having sex with my dad. That's not normal. And that made me not normal." And so his whole sexuality, his whole sexual identity is completely fucking trashed, and he's lost, and who this boy was and what happened between them, you don't really get into, but you can start to daydream as an actor. You're starting to say to yourself, well, did my mom walk in on this boy and I? Did my mom see that? Did my mom see me having sex with this other teenage kid? Well, of course she's going to be worried about having AIDS. She knows that I'm sleeping with my father. She's seen me now sleeping with this young boy. And, of course, now she's going to be scared shitless, thinking she has AIDS.

This is where it all starts to make sense, and he has this really important line. He says, "I was in love with someone." And I think it was the only time in his entire life where he loved somebody. He says, "It wasn't like with dad, it was..." He can't finish it. She says, "Nice." And I love when a character has to say the same thing twice. He says, "It was really nice. It was really nice." Now, what I tell my students is, anytime you repeat something as an actor, that's not arbitrary, you need to say it again. There's a reason why you need to say it again. And both those moments should be different, and they are here and you could just see the meaning of that relationship and the impact it had on him.

And now we're getting really tight on him, and he starts to set her straight on a few things. He says, "Okay, but I'm just saying, I don't know. Okay. I don't know what I am. I can't tell what I am and I never will be able to tell, is what I'm saying." And this is the hard truth. These are the harsh facts. This is what he's doing here right now. He's laying all that out to her and he says, "He broke me. I'm a broken person." We're the tightest, we've been on him on this shot. He's fully alive. She tries to convince him that that's not true, and he has to really set her straight. "Yes, I am. He broke me in two, he cracked me in half." And from here on it is just a fine, exquisite piece of fully realized human behavior, and it's the payoff of the entire episode. He's trying to get her to understand what's going on. It takes us to one of the best moments right here, the payoff.

Leslie says, "You are real." And he says, "Stop saying that. Just stop. I am the hurt man." "What is the hurt man?" Watch him take this deep inhale and say, "It's me." He's just so alive here. He's looking off in the distance. "Just stop. Just stop." And he whispers. And then he says, "I am the hurt man." Now watch how he says, "It's me." Takes a deep breath and confesses that it's him. Tears running down his face completely at ease. He's staring off, lost in this memory, lost in his childhood. He's not really looking at her, but he's connected to her. He is so still, so alive, so deep. He whispers almost. "I shot my mom in the face and my dad, I think." It's a great little moment. "I don't know what I am. I don't think I'll ever know." And there's some hopelessness creeping up in him.

"I will never really know who I am if I don't get out of here." And what I want you to do is watch the little gaze he has back towards her, the last three seconds of the scene, and then it cuts to black. What the hell is that? Look? Are you kidding me? That slow look towards her at the end. I don't know what that look means. Is he checking back to see if he pulled it off, that she believes him, that she buys it, or is he just looking over at her because he wants to make sure she really understands how broken he is and how irredeemable his life will be if he has to spend the rest of his life in prison. Every time I watch it, I learn something. The amount of homework that this guy did on this script, the amount of insight that he brought to this performance is really, really, really, really good.

And when you watch this in total, you see somebody that is completely damaged, that has a lot of inner turmoil and inner conflict with his own sexuality, with the relationship to his father, the relationship to his mother, the feelings he has of love, of disgust, the need he has to still defend them, to justify what they did, despite the fact that he's completely and utterly traumatized. It's just a really good episode. I would say watch this one or two times at least, just to appreciate it and watch the whole show because it's really, really well acted and worth your time. And Ari Graynor, who plays Leslie, fully present, fully engaged, also acting her ass off, fully committed, a point of view in every moment. She really led this question-and-answer session with him in such a good way, a clear way. You knew exactly where she stood, how she felt about everything she was saying.

Ryan Murphy and the co-creator and the writer of the episode, Ian Brennan Murphy, they were in an interview and Murphy said, "Everything he does say in there was either based on things that he had said, written, talked about, written transcripts, et cetera. So it was very true to his point of view. When we were writing it. I thought that the most powerful way to do this would be able to do it in one shot, so that you could not look away. You could just not look away." And then he said, You could hear a pin drop while they were shooting the takes." He said, "They were both so committed to what they were talking about and giving victims of sexual abuse their day in court, so to speak." And just to give you a little context here, here's something that Cooper Koch had to say about working on this.

He said, "I read it every day leading up to filming. I had this groove for a long time. I read it before I went to bed. I really tried to get all of those memories to be so real and specific for me so that when I recounted them, they would evoke an emotional response." And to prepare for the episode, they would go to Graynor's porch, they would just read it for lines, no acting. They rehearsed it one time without cameras. They performed it once and they realized they didn't need to rehearse anymore. I hope you found this interesting, and I'll just close out here on something that Cooper Koch said. He said, "Being able to get so deep and so specific in the details really is the backbone of the entire performance and the entire character. So finally, getting to say those words and tell the story was so profound for me, it was so deep, and I'm so, so grateful for the experience."

Well, my fellow Daydreamers, thank you for sticking around on this one. Keeping that phone in your pocket, please subscribe and follow the show. If you have a few seconds, please go to iTunes, write an actual written review. It would mean a lot to me. It would help the show. Please, you can go to https://www.creatingbehaviorpodcast.com Go to the contact page, hit that red button. Now you SpeakPipe, leave me a message, ask me a question. I will absolutely get back to you. You can go to https://www.maggieflaniganstudio.com if you are interested in training with me and my New York City Conservatory, and you can follow me on Instagram @creatingbehavior @maggieflaniganstudio. Lawrence Trailer, thank you for the song, my man. Listen, when you see good acting, my friends, you got to champion it. You guys stay resilient, playful, love with yourself, and don't ever settle for your second best. My name is Charlie Sandlan. Peace.