When Nicholas Alexander Chavez started researching his function as Lyle Menéndez for Monsters, he paid particular consideration to the “masks” that Lyle’s dad Jose compelled him to make use of when he started dropping his hair.
That “masks” is how Chavez refers to Lyle’s notorious toupée, which former Vainness Honest author Dominick Dunne as soon as described as a “state-of-the-art hairpiece, or toupée, or wig, or hair alternative, as his very costly rug was variously known 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 stay as much as. It’s a masks that hides a deeply, deeply wounded interior little one who surfaces in episodes 4.”
Earlier than embarking on the function of a lifetime, Chavez says he poured over books in regards to the Menéndez Household whereas doing just a little outreach of his personal in Los Angeles.
“Whenever you’re engaged on a venture in regards to the Menéndez brothers, particularly dwelling in Los Angeles the place they lived, you meet an incredible many people who find themselves one diploma or two levels of separation away from others who straight interfaced with them,” Chavez tells Deadline. “It was fascinating 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 if you put on a bit, there may be sure conduct that goes together with that. You type of angle your head in a really, very particular manner, possibly even subconsciously, to attempt to hold 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 dropping 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 a very good head of hair.”
“What if I don’t wish to put on a wig?” says Lyle.
“We will focus on this at house,” replies Jose sternly. “You’re sporting a wig. That’s the way in which it’s going to be.”
Although it’s by no means articulated within the restricted sequence, Chavez acknowledges the hair loss was doubtless because of the profound quantity of stress that Lyle was below. “I can solely think about it should have been such an anxiety-inducing expertise. When facets of the way in which you current your self begin to collapse … if you don’t have these exterior validators of your identification to lean on … it actually brings out nasty realities that could be dwelling inside you. So I felt like possibly subconsciously, when the masks of who he pretended to be began to slide, the kid beneath began to return via increasingly more.”
Whereas taking pictures the restricted sequence, Chavez admits that he by no means really wore a wig. “They used my actual hair for nearly all the manufacturing, however styled it to seem like 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 might put the bald cap on.”
And sure, the second when Kitty snatches off the toupée relies on real-life occasions. Lyle Menéndez really testified in courtroom 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 fact.
He “didn’t know I had a hairpiece. I used to be utterly embarrassed in entrance of my brother,” in keeping with the testimony.
In Monsters, Kitty rips off Lyle’s toupee throughout a household struggle on the dinner desk. It prompts the brothers to confess to 1 one other how they had been abused by their dad, which led to their determination to shoot their dad and mom.
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