<\/p>\n
Nicholas Alexander Chavez says his final callback audition to play Lyle Menendez in Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan\u2019s \u201cMonsters: The Lyle and\u00a0Erik Menendez\u00a0Story\u201d was not like others he had ever been on.<\/p>\n
\u201cUsually when you go to a callback, there\u2019s four or five other people there to play the part. But it was just Cooper [Koch] and myself,\u201d Chavez says, referencing his co-star who plays Erik Menendez. \u201cAnd then Ryan [Murphy] strolled through, and we had no idea who was going to be there, so it completely took us by surprise. They made sure that we felt comfortable. We went up there, we did the scenes. I think it felt electric right off the bat with Cooper. Ryan called us two days later to let us know that he wasn\u2019t going to make the show if he couldn\u2019t make it with us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chavez says his preparation for the\u00a0Netflix series\u00a0included reading, watching and listening to everything he could about the siblings and their two trials. The Menendez brothers are currently serving life sentences without the possibility of parole for the first-degree murder of their parents, Jos\u00e9 and Kitty Menendez, in 1989.<\/p>\n
Koch spoke to Erik on the phone the night before the series premiered on Netflix last month, followed by meeting him and Lyle when he visited them in prison with Kim Kardashian. Chavez,\u00a0like show co-creator Murphy, has no such plans.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs an artist, you can\u2019t help but have kind of a morbid curiosity about the people who you play, and after living in this character and circumstances for the six months of shooting this project, I think that there is, on some level, a desire,\u201d Chavez says. \u201cBut ultimately, I\u2019ve recognized that as an artist, it\u2019s important to have the grace to be able to release characters after they\u2019re done. That\u2019s a big part of the job, and I\u2019m kind of holding true to that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked if he believes the brothers deserve a retrial, Chavez will only say, \u201cI know that there\u2019s been a lot of discussion about this. I\u2019m really interested to see what happens in the future. I think that it\u2019s up to the United States justice system to decide that.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMonsters\u201d was still in production when Murphy cast Chavez in his other series, FX\u2019s \u201cGrotesquerie.\u201d \u201cDuring the last few weeks of filming \u2018Menendez,\u2019 I was shooting \u2018Grotesquerie\u2019 as well,\u201d the actor recalls. \u201cThen the night that we wrapped \u2018Menendez,\u2019 I remember I got in a in a car, and then they took me to the hotel near where we were filming \u2018Grotesquerie,\u2019 and I jumped right in the next day. I think I filmed for five days straight after that, so it was truly one project into the next. It\u2019s been very cool to experience Ryan\u2019s creative vision in two different worlds because they\u2019re very different.\u201d<\/p>\n
Travis Kelce makes his acting debut in \u201cGrotesquerie.\u201d\u00a0\u201cHe\u2019s so charming, He\u2019s so charismatic, he\u2019s so down to earth. And you can definitely tell that the guy plays professional football for a living because the guy\u2019s a team player,\u201d Chavez says of his co-star. \u201cHe came in super collaborative. He performs with confidence. I was honestly blown away that it was his first time acting.\u201d<\/p>\n
Does Chavez consider himself a Swiftie? \u201cAm I a Swiftie?\u201d he says with a smile. \u201cYou know, her music, it\u2019s infectious. And whenever it comes on, I find myself dancing along to it. She she has so much fun and also just what a performer.\u201d<\/p>\n
He considers, then adds, \u201cOK, fine, \u201cI\u2019m a Swiftie.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Nicholas Alexander Chavez says his final callback audition to play Lyle Menendez in Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan\u2019s \u201cMonsters: The Lyle and\u00a0Erik Menendez\u00a0Story\u201d was not like others… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":6661,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6657","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nfl"],"yoast_head":"\n