Ryan Murphy responds to Erik Menéndez's criticism of Monsters: 'We do it very carefully'

Ryan Murphy is defending his latest true crime series amid backlash from one of its subjects, Erik Menéndez.

Speaking to Entertainment Tonight about the convicted felon's disapproval of Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, Murphy conceded that it's "really, really hard" to "see your life up on screen."

“I think it’s interesting that he’s issued a statement without having seen the show,” Murphy said. “The thing that I find interesting that he doesn’t mention in his quote is if you watch the show, I would say 60 to 65% of our show in the scripts center around the abuse and what they claim happened to them."

"And we do it very carefully and we give them their day in court and they talk openly about it," added the series co-creator.

Sign up for Entertainment Weekly's free daily newsletter to get breaking TV news, exclusive first looks, recaps, reviews, interviews with your favorite stars, and more.

Writing about sexual abuse, Murphy said, "can be controversial." “It’s a Rashomon kind of approach, where there were four people involved in that,” he added. "Two of them are dead. What about the parents? We had an obligation as storytellers to also try and put in their perspective based on our research, which we did.”

One of the most controversial elements of the series are scenes that suggest the brothers shared an incestuous connection. “If you watch the show, what the show is doing is presenting the points of view and theories from so many people who were involved in the case,” Murphy said of the depiction. “[Investigative journalist] Dominick Dunne wrote several articles talking about that theory. We are presenting his point of view. And we had an obligation to show all of that and we did.”

Monsters, the second installment of Murphy's crime anthology series Monster, centers on the 1989 murders of José and Kitty Menéndez, who were killed by their sons Lyle and Erik, and the trials that followed. Prosecutors alleged the brothers were motivated by greed and murdered their parents to inherit their riches, but the brothers alleged it was to put a stop to the years of emotional, physical, and sexual abuse by their father.

In a statement shared through his wife Tammi, Erik — who, along with his brother, is currently serving a life sentence for the deaths — slammed the "ruinous character portrayals" and "lies" in Murphy's series.

Murphy similarly faced backlash for the first season of the anthology centered on serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer (played by Evan Peters). Family members of the victims, made up of predominantly Black men, called out Murphy for capitalizing on the trauma and said they were not contacted by production. Murphy stood by the series, claiming that his team did reach out to families and "not a single person responded to us in that process."