Ryan Murphy’s Muse Leslie Grossman Is Stepping Into Her Spotlight

The Parting Shot with H. Alan Scott

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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