Cooper Koch watched the Netflix documentary about Erik and Lyle Menendez. The Menendez brotherswhich was published based on his screenplay series Monsters: The Story of Lyle and Erik Menendez. And while the actor, who played Lyle Menendez in the limited series Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan, praised the documentary, he also questioned why the new evidence now being reviewed by the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office wasn't included in the documentary were included in both. Hourly function.

“I thought they did a great job. I thought they left out some information that would have been great in there, namely the two new pieces of evidence that came out, namely the letter that Erik wrote to his cousin Andy,” Koch said during a visit Tuesday See what's happening live. “And then a member of Menudo (Roy Rosselló) came to light that he had also been sexually harassed by José Menendez.”

Menendez's cousin Andres “Andy Cano” testified in 1993 during the first Menendez trial, which ended with a hung jury for Erik and Lyle, who were on trial for the 1989 murders of their parents José and Kitty Menendez in Beverly Hills . When Cano took the stand, he testified that Erik had told him that he was being harassed by Jose.

However, the letter Koch mentioned was only discovered in 2018 – decades after the brothers were convicted in their second trial in 1996. Trial journalist Robert Rand came across the letter after Cano's death, when Rand was invited to the house by his family to search through Cano's belongings. “And within 15 minutes I found this letter, looked at it and said, 'Oh my God, this could be really important to the case,'” Rand said recently The Hollywood Reporter of new evidence supporting the brothers' self-defense claims of ongoing abuse at the hands of their father.

The letter was written when Erik was 17, in December 1988, about eight months before the murders, and was never brought to the trials in the mid-1990s.

The other piece of evidence mentioned by Koch concerns new witness Rosselló, who came forward after the trials and claimed that he had been sexually abused by José as a teenager in the early 1980s. Rosselló was a member of the Puerto Rican boy band Menudo, which was signed to RCA Records, where José was a top manager at the time.

Rosselló made the accusation in the April 2023 Peacock docuseries: Menendez + Menudo: Betrayed Boys. His claim and Cano's letter were both included in the habeas corpus petition that Erik and Lyle's attorneys filed the following month, in May 2023, and which is currently under review. Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón has scheduled a hearing for Nov. 29 to announce his decision on whether the new evidence could lead to a resentencing of the Menendez brothers, now in their 50s and currently serving a life sentence Serve a prison sentence without parole.

When speaking with THR around The Menendez brothers In the documentary, Campfire Studios producers Ross Dinerstein and Rebecca Evans explained why they didn't include the new evidence in their piece, saying they would leave it to the lawyers currently fighting the habeas petition.

“It all depends more than anything on their lawyers and how they handle the new evidence, how they handle the new habeas petition. I feel like this is where the heart of the fight is really happening,” Evans said THR. “The habeas petition was filed in 2023 and when we made the documentary, we felt that we are not here to litigate. We are not here to present evidence together with the lawyers or to present new evidence in this way.”

Adding to the Rosselló accusation: “I had the feeling that this was the story of Erik and Lyle. It's not really a story about the other man in the Menudo case. I think these are things that audiences will hear about in litigation and in the news, but we really wanted to focus on the brothers.”

During his appearance on Andy Cohen's late-night Bravo show, Koch spoke about meeting the incarcerated Menendez brothers in person at the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in a visit brokered by Kim Kardashian, who advocated for the brothers' release Deployed Discuss prison reform beforehand Monster released.

If I previously spoke about this meeting with THRKoch spoke of the moment he looked into the eyes of Erik, the brother he was portraying Monster. “We went into the prison gym and the first person I saw was Erik. And we looked at each other and he smiled and I smiled and we hugged. And it was really, really powerful and emotional. It was an amazing experience. And he – they were both so nice and they’re so normal.”

Koch said Erik praised what he had heard about his commendable performance in the fifth episode, “The Hurt Man,” in which Koch described and recounted a lifetime of abuse in a 33-minute monologue THR their discussions about the series. He also said he hopes the brothers receive a resentencing.

“You’ve done so many great things in prison,” he said. “Erik teaches meditation. He teaches speaking classes. They are both incredible people. I think back then people just didn't believe that sexual abuse between men was something to believe in, and the easier pill to swallow was that they killed their parents for money. But now, after so long, I think people are more open to understanding that something like this happened.”

Menendez lawyers Mark Geragos and Cliff Gardner, meanwhile, are holding a news conference Wednesday ahead of the November hearing with nearly two dozen Menendez family members and Hollywood friend and lawyer Rosie O'Donnell, in what the lawyers described as a “powerful show of unity.” .