‘Exhausting’ preparations: Cooper Koch describes filming The Hurt Man episode of Monsters

The fifth episode of Monsters, The Hurt Man, was honestly a whirlwind to watch, but it seems it was even more of an experience for Cooper Koch and Ari Graynor behind the scenes. The episode is a single shot, 33-minute slow zoom onto Koch, playing Erik Menendez, giving a detailed account to Ari Graynor (his lawyer) about the 12 years of alleged sexual, physical and mental abuse he received from his father that turned him into a killer.

If you’ve seen the episode, it’s really intense and easy to get lost in. The whole time I was watching I had a million questions like how could he possibly remember all those words, how can someone be so good at acting, and how many takes did they do. Well, Cooper Koch and Ari Graynor spilled a lot of details with The Hollywood Reporter about the Monsters episode, and how The Hurt Man came to be.

via Netflix

Cooper had the episode script for nine months before filming

Cooper Koch recalled “having a long time” with the script for that episode, which he’d been given in June of 2023. The episode was then shot over two days in March of 2024, meaning he spent nine months with the script before filming. He seemed very immersed in its content: “I carried it with me everywhere I went. I read it every day, and sometimes before going to bed. And really, my approach to it was just taking all of the stories that he tells and all the memories that he recounts, and really trying to imagine what it would look like from his perspective.” It sounds like Cooper really gave this episode his all.

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Cooper focused on tiny details of Erik’s testimony

Cooper also spoke about going “granular” to get into Erik’s mindset for this particular episode, focusing in on details from his stated claims of abuse, like what a young Erik and his abuser were wearing at the time, the weather, and the decor of the room where Erik claimed it happened. Cooper said by zeroing in, it helped him access the emotions of a child version of Erik.

“That allowed me to be so present and open when we did go to shoot it,” he said. “You just kind of have to trust that those memories are created and that they’re there for you, and then when you speak about them, they’re truthful and real, and then you can access the kind of emotions that he was probably feeling.”

Cooper filmed EIGHT takes of The Hurt Man scene

For each of the two days they shot The Hurt Man episode of Monsters, Cooper Koch performed four run throughs of the continuous shot (meaning he did it eight times in total). He described the experience as “exhausting.”

“But you know, that kind of reminds me of some advice that I got from one of my fellow actors on the project, Dallas Roberts [who portrays therapist Dr. Jerome Oziel], who told me in one of our rehearsals — the quote was: ‘You get too tired to lie.’ So if anything, the more exhausted you get, maybe the more truthful you become.”

via Netflix

Ari Graynor avoided preparing for the scene for as long as possible

On the other hand, Ari Graynor spent as little time with the scene before shooting. She told The Hollywood Reporter that she “avoided it for several months” because she was “intimidated by it.”

“I felt like I really needed to know Leslie, really know who she was, and really know her in my body before I fully started prepping that episode, because there are a lot of interjections. It’s a lot of listening.”

She explained that Leslie held a lot of responsibility towards Erik: “She’s being both his lawyer and therapist and human and mother, and there are a lot of different parts in that, with not a lot of language, and trying to understand how she would hold all of that, and then really wanting to be there to support Cooper.”

“I think we both felt not only that it was a gift creatively, but that this was, hopefully, a gift, or something that is much bigger than us,” she said.

The two bonded over the shared experience

She described Cooper’s acting as “completely unparalleled,” and said that on the days they shot the scene, she and Cooper would go back to hers where they’d decompress the scene, cry and laugh, and have sushi and smoke. Very vibey indeed.

“We talked, and really held it in this very sacred space together,” she shared.

Related stories recommended by this writer:

• A body language expert analyses who is lying in the real life Menendez brothers’ trial

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• Monsters star Leslie Grossman defends series against Menendez brothers’ ‘ruinous’ claims