When Nicholas Alexander Chavez started researching his position as Lyle Menéndez for Monsters, he paid particular consideration to the “masks” that Lyle’s dad Jose pressured him to make use of when he started shedding his hair.
That “masks” is how Chavez refers to Lyle’s notorious toupée, which former Self-importance Honest author Dominick Dunne as soon as described as a “state-of-the-art hairpiece, or toupée, or wig, or hair substitute, as his very costly rug was variously referred to as” that went on to turn out to be “a continuing prop within the trial, virtually as essential as the 2 lacking Mossberg 12-gauge shotguns the brothers used to blow away their dad and mom.”
“I actually noticed this wig as masks of kinds,” displays Chavez to Deadline. “It’s not one which he imposes on himself. It’s imposed by his father and the perfectionist normal that Lyle has to dwell as much as. It’s a masks that hides a deeply, deeply wounded internal youngster who surfaces in episodes 4.”
Earlier than embarking on the position of a lifetime, Chavez says he poured over books in regards to the Menéndez Household whereas doing a bit outreach of his personal in Los Angeles.
“Whenever you’re engaged on a mission in regards to the Menéndez brothers, particularly residing in Los Angeles the place they lived, you meet an amazing many people who find themselves one diploma or two levels of separation away from others who instantly interfaced with them,” Chavez tells Deadline. “It was attention-grabbing as a result of a number of of the individuals who I met with informed me that they might inform that Lyle was sporting a bit. And whenever you put on a bit, there’s sure habits that goes together with that. You kind of angle your head in a really, very particular method, perhaps even subconsciously, to attempt to preserve distance between it and the person who you’re speaking to.”
Titled “Kill or Be Killed,” episode 4 of Monsters seeks to supply some solutions for what led to the (embarrassing) toupée. Whereas Lyle reveals to the attorneys that he was molested by his dad (Javier Bardem), the episode then exhibits his character discovering within the bathe that he was shedding his hair. So Jose takes him to a specialist to get fitted with a hairpiece.
“You look nice in that,” Jose says to Lyle within the episode.” “You wish to reach enterprise? You wanna go into politics? Then you definately’ve acquired to have head of hair.”
“What if I don’t wish to put on a wig?” says Lyle.
“We are able to focus on this at dwelling,” replies Jose sternly. “You’re sporting a wig. That’s the best way it’s going to be.”
Although it’s by no means articulated within the restricted sequence, Chavez acknowledges the hair loss was probably because of the profound quantity of stress that Lyle was underneath. “I can solely think about it will need to have been such an anxiety-inducing expertise. When elements of the best way you current your self begin to disintegrate … whenever you don’t have these exterior validators of your identification to lean on … it actually brings out nasty realities that is perhaps residing inside you. So I felt like perhaps subconsciously, when the masks of who he pretended to be began to slide, the kid beneath began to come back by means of increasingly more.”
Whereas capturing the restricted sequence, Chavez admits that he by no means truly wore a wig. “They used my actual hair for nearly the complete manufacturing, however styled it to appear to be it was a toupée by teasing it. The one time the place it’s not my actual hair is that if there’s a gag. So if the wig comes off, just like the scene on the dinner desk, or the scene the place it will get snatched off whereas I’m within the jail showers, they’d put the bald cap on.”
And sure, the second when Kitty snatches off the toupée is predicated on real-life occasions. Lyle Menéndez truly testified in court docket that “she reached, and she or he grabbed my hairpiece and she or he simply ripped it off.” That’s when his brother, Erik, discovered the grim reality.
He “didn’t know I had a hairpiece. I used to be fully embarrassed in entrance of my brother,” in keeping with the testimony.
In Monsters, Kitty rips off Lyle’s toupee throughout a household battle on the dinner desk. It prompts the brothers to confess to 1 one other how they have been abused by their dad, which led to their resolution to shoot their dad and mom.
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