"In that time, you could live a very different life, you could hide what was happening in a way that you could never hide now."
Leslie Grossman thought she knew everything about Lyle and Erik Menendez, brothers convicted of the 1989 murder of their parents, because she grew up in the same community. "I came to learn that the reality is so much more insane than you could ever imagine." In Ryan Murphy's latest season of Monster (Netflix, September 19), Grossman plays Judalon Smyth, the mistress of Dr. Jerome Oziel, "the therapist that Erik Menendez confessed these murders to." It was Smyth's tip to the police that led to the brothers' arrest. "He [Oziel] led her to believe that he was going to be leaving [his] family for her, and he confided in her." What stood out to Grossman was the duality of the brothers' lives, which "looked completely charmed from the outside." While the series is not "an exact documentary retelling," Murphy was "really grounded in the facts." Ultimately the story of this case says so much about the era in which it existed. "You could really put on a public face and have an entirely different existence in a way I don't know that you can today."
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Editor's Note: This conversation has been edited and condensed for publication.
How excited are you to be a part of this project?
I mean, there really aren't enough words for me to say how excited I am to be a part of it. First of all, I'm from Los Angeles, and I was in high school when this happened. I have friends that were in school with Erik. And look, the Menendez case captured the imagination of the nation and really the world, right? Because it was this Beverly Hills murder, but it happened 10 minutes from where I grew up, and I knew people who knew them, so I was obsessed with it on a whole other level. It's so fascinating to revisit it. And there was so much I didn't know. I watched that trial when it aired originally on Court TV. I was very interested in it. And so the thing about the story that I came to learn is that the reality is so much more insane than you could ever imagine. It's sensational enough that these murders happen, right? Like on its face. But then all of the players that existed in the universe, it is bananas and too wild to even be believed, but it is all true. You know what Ryan says? I'm not going to say it as well as he does, but we're not taking a photograph or painting a picture. So it's not like an exact documentary retelling, but he was very clear about being really grounded in the facts. I was excited, just because I thought I knew so much about the case. I was obsessed with the case when it first happened, and then to get to be a part of it, get out of town. With this cast, with these people. The actors are beyond bananas.
Chloë Sevigny! Javier Bardem!
Come on! Nathan Lane, who I've never met before. They always say, don't meet your heroes. He was five million times better than I even could have imagined, just the greatest. But also there's no better hair and makeup. There's no better set deck. Everyone is working at such a high level.
And your character, Judalon Smyth, is wild and pivotal to the story.
Wild! And I remember her. People laughed when she did her testimony. She was not trying to be funny, but she was really memorable. I was lucky enough that I got to watch her on the stand. And look, she's not a well-known public person, but there's all the footage of her testifying. So that was really amazing.
The time period this story takes place really dictates a lot of the story. From the L.A. riots and the reputation of the Los Angeles police to the role class plays. Did that stand out to you?
These boys, I mean, I'm calling them boys, they were. They grew up in Calabasas [California] and then moved to Beverly Hills and went to Beverly Hills High. And remember that this was when 90210, was on, right? This is when that was the biggest show on TV. And obviously just the notion of Beverly Hills itself is this iconic American idea of wealth, privilege, excess, and to have these two kids commit matricide and patricide.
On its face, they had everything, right? Their lives looked completely charmed from the outside. Underneath there was obviously stuff going on that was so extreme. I graduated high school in 1989, and that was sort of the ending of the '80s excess and then going into that sort of grunge era. So I do think there was a shirking of that desire to play into that cultural emphasis on wealth and money and show, and the culture really did. At least youth culture really transitioned into a rejection of that. So it was almost like the last gasp of a very specific time in American culture, and in Los Angeles specifically. There's a lot of rot under something that seems so glamorous and beautiful, and I think it was so shocking to people.
Also, you have to remember, my daughter, all her friends, they can't imagine a time without social media. They can't imagine a time without the internet, right? This was where everything was analog. I had a home phone, and if you didn't catch me when I was at home, we weren't gonna talk. And it was a big deal that I had my own line in my bedroom, because two years earlier, you were gonna have to talk to my mom and dad if you called me. So we didn't get a look into other people's lives in the way that we do now. I think that made it even more shocking. I think all the time about O.J. [Simpson], I went to high school with his children and I remember it being an open secret that everyone knew he hit his wife. There was no TMZ, there was none of these things. The first arrest, he would have been cooked, right? He would have been canceled, cooked and done. But in that time, you could live a very different life, you could hide what was happening in a way that you could never hide now. You could really put on a public face and have an entirely different existence in a way I don't know that you can today.
How do you humanize a character that is not only seen in a comical light, but also who is obscure but pivotal to the story?
She was in love, or believed that she was in love with Dr. Jerome Oziel, who is the therapist that Erik Menendez had been seeing, and is a therapist that Erik Menendez confessed these murders to. He was married, he had a family and he led her to believe that he was going to be leaving that family for her, and he confided in her, and really brought her in to this world that was dangerous. He feared for his life. She, in turn, feared for her life. And look, she got him to agree to move her in with him and his wife and children. When it became clear that their relationship was not going to go in the direction she wanted, she was like, "Okay, I'm going to go to the police and blow this up."
The truth is, I do not think she was particularly concerned with the murders. I think her real goal was to take down Dr. Oziel. It was a personal vendetta. And when you watch her testimony, every time they try to get her to answer, particularly prosecution, when they try to get her to really bring it back to what she knew about the specificity of the murders and what happened on the day that they confessed, she just wants to turn that wheel back into the other lane of like, "Let's destroy the character of Dr. Oziel." So I humanized her, because truly, she was a woman scorned and she felt used by him. And then her testimony takes a very serious turn, where she accuses him of sexual assault, of rape, of brainwashing her, of manipulating her. And I absolutely believe that was her experience. But I do think in the end, she was chomping at the bit to testify because she really wanted to take the doctor down. The boys, the murder was sort of secondary to what her main goal was. She was a complete victim, and she's not funny. She's not written to be funny. What she says is exactly what she testified to in court. Some of the stuff is wild and elicited laughs in the courtroom, but to me, it was dead serious, and that is how I played it. She was not a clown. She was not there to be a sideshow. She was a person who was a victim of this doctor, yeah. So I just tried to lean into her absolute truth and reality of what she experienced.
I wanted to ask you about your collaborations with Ryan Murphy, because you've been working with him since the beginning of your career. What is it about the two of you that just works?
He's given me opportunity. People just want to cast what's the easiest common denominator. And Ryan, and not just with me, but with his entire troop of people that he works with over and over again, is like, "Nope, we're gonna see you this way. We're gonna see you that way. And you know you can do it. I know you can do it." He's given me all of these opportunities to do these incredible things. We just had 25 years of being friends. The fact that so early on in my career, I met somebody who was like, "I get you. I'm into you and I'm buying what you're selling," was super meaningful to me, because I felt weird and different. I think about what was popular when I started acting in 1997, '98, you had to look a real specific way. There was no body positivity. There was no interest in anything other than perfect-looking beautiful, blonde girls. And by the way, I don't think I look like a troll, but certainly I was unique, and Ryan was like, "I love that. You're unique. Let's celebrate that." And it was such a gift. I was so, so lucky. Also, I adored him from the very second that I met him. There was an understanding and a simpatico and just a total fusion of what we thought was the funniest thing ever. So that was also just pure luck that I met that person, when I met that person.
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A writer/comedian based in Los Angeles. Host of the weekly podcast Parting Shot with H. Alan Scott, every week H. Alan is joined by a different celebrity. Past guests include Tom Hanks, Keke Palmer, Melissa McCarthy, Michelle Yeoh, Jeff Probst, Tiffany Haddish, Jamie Lee Curtis, Idris Elba, Bette Midler, and many more. He also writes the Parting Shot portion of the magazine, the iconic last page of every issue. Subscribe to H. Alan's For the Culture newsletter, everything you need to know in pop culture delivered to your inbox every Tuesday and Thursday. H. Alan has previously appeared on The Jimmy Kimmel Show, Ellen, CNN, MTV, and has published work in Esquire, OUT Magazine and VICE. Follow him @HAlanScott.
A writer/comedian based in Los Angeles. Host of the weekly podcast Parting Shot with H. Alan Scott, ... Read more
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