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When Nicholas Alexander Chavez began researching his role as Lyle Menéndez for Monsters, he paid special attention to the “mask” that Lyle’s dad Jose forced him to use when he began losing his hair.
That “mask” is how Chavez refers to Lyle’s infamous toupée, which former Vanity Fair writer Dominick Dunne once described as a “state-of-the-art hairpiece, or toupée, or wig, or hair replacement, as his very expensive rug was variously called” that went on to become “a constant prop in the trial, almost as important as the two missing Mossberg 12-gauge shotguns the brothers used to blow away their parents.”
“I really saw this wig as mask of sorts,” reflects Chavez to Deadline. “It’s not one that he imposes on himself. It’s imposed by his father and the perfectionist standard that Lyle has to live up to. It’s a mask that hides a deeply, deeply wounded inner child who surfaces in episodes four.”
Before embarking on the role of a lifetime, Chavez says he poured over books about the Menéndez Family while doing a little outreach of his own in Los Angeles.
“When you’re working on a project about the Menéndez brothers, especially living in Los Angeles where they lived, you meet a great many people who are one degree or two degrees of separation away from others who directly interfaced with them,” Chavez tells Deadline. “It was interesting because several of the people who I met with told me that they could tell that Lyle was wearing a piece. And when you wear a piece, there is certain behavior that goes along with that. You sort of angle your head in a very, very specific way, maybe even subconsciously, to try to keep distance between it and the person that you’re talking to.”
Titled “Kill or Be Killed,” episode 4 of Monsters seeks to provide some answers for what led to the (embarrassing) toupée. While Lyle reveals to the attorneys that he was molested by his dad (Javier Bardem), the episode then shows his character discovering in the shower that he was losing his hair. So Jose takes him to a specialist to get fitted with a hairpiece.
“You look great in that,” Jose says to Lyle in the episode.” “You want to succeed in business? You wanna go into politics? Then you’ve got to have a good head of hair.”
“What if I don’t want to wear a wig?” says Lyle.
“We can discuss this at home,” replies Jose sternly. “You’re wearing a wig. That’s the way it’s going to be.”
Though it’s never articulated in the limited series, Chavez acknowledges the hair loss was likely due to the profound amount of stress that Lyle was under. “I can only imagine it must have been such an anxiety-inducing experience. When aspects of the way you present yourself start to fall apart … when you don’t have these external validators of your identity to lean on … it really brings out nasty realities that might be living inside you. So I felt like maybe subconsciously, when the mask of who he pretended to be started to slip, the child underneath started to come through more and more.”
While shooting the limited series, Chavez admits that he never actually wore a wig. “They used my real hair for almost the entire production, but styled it to look like it was a toupée by teasing it. The only time where it’s not my real hair is if there’s a gag. So if the wig comes off, like the scene at the dinner table, or the scene where it gets snatched off while I’m in the prison showers, they would put the bald cap on.”
And yes, the moment when Kitty snatches off the toupée is based on real-life events. Lyle Menéndez actually testified in court that “she reached, and she grabbed my hairpiece and she just ripped it off.” That’s when his brother, Erik, learned the grim truth.
He “didn’t know I had a hairpiece. I was completely embarrassed in front of my brother,” according to the testimony.
In Monsters, Kitty rips off Lyle’s toupee during a family fight at the dinner table. It prompts the brothers to admit to one another how they were abused by their dad, which led to their decision to shoot their parents.
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