Cooper Koch is no stranger to intense roles, having appeared in slashers like They/Them and body horrors like Swallowed. It’s experience that almost certainly helped him when taking on his newest role in Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story. In the series, he plays Erik Menendez, a young man who brutally murdered his parents after alleging that he suffered sexual abuse at their hands for years. Nicholas Alexander Chavez has an array of television experience, also appearing in Ryan Murphy’s Grotesquerie, which is currently airing, and General Hospital, for which he won a Daytime Emmy Award. The skills he’s honed over the years shine through in his role as the other brother, Lyle Menendez.

You might not have known Koch and Chavez’s names before this, but you certainly will after. The show sinks or swims based on their performance, and the layers and vulnerability they bring to the screen help the show soar. Their twisted chemistry with Javier Bardem and Chloë Sevigny, who play their parents, is necessary and undeniable, and their dynamic with one another acts as the heart and soul of the show, anchoring it with authenticity and emotion throughout the gruesome events and reveals.

Collider got the chance to speak with Koch and Chavez about shooting the show’s most intense scenes (including the long take in Episode 5 and the murders themselves), how they developed chemistry with one another, and more.

Cooper Koch Talks Shooting the Most Intense Scenes of ‘Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story’

COLLIDER: I want to start in the middle with my question because Episode 5 is one of the most harrowing but well-acted episodes of television I think that I’ve ever seen. Cooper, what was it like to prepare for that both logistically with the one long take but also emotionally because the subject matter of that episode is so intense as well?

KOCH: Well, thank you so much. It’s very kind of you to say — I appreciate it. Really, it was just reading the script as much as I can. I had it for a long time. I got the script the day I was cast, so it was just reading it every day over and over again before I went to bed. And yeah, just making those memories as specific as possible — the stories that Erik shares — really digging in and really understanding what it all looked like so that, when I retold them, it would be super real for me. That’s kind of what I set out to do. It took two days. We shot four takes each day, and they chose the last take.

Wow. It absolutely blew me away.

KOCH: Thank you.

This show is so intense, and the visuals even…I mean, that murder scene is so brutal and so gory, and I feel like it disturbed me more than a lot of horror movies, frankly. I’m curious, for both of you, what it was like to act in that realistic space and to be there physically as well as mentally.

KOCH: It was definitely intense that first day. We shot it over a week — it was I think three or four days of just shooting that one scene — I think the first day is really intense. We were using prop guns on set, and you had a sound of the gun, and it’s gruesome. You can’t help but imagine. Obviously, that’s VFX, so we’re not seeing that happen, but imagining it was scary. And then I think by the end of the second day into the third day, it became a little bit more like choreography because we had to do the same motions — do the exact same things over and over again — so it kind of became rote a little bit, which was sort of better to separate yourself from it. And I actually think when they committed the crime, that was probably similar to how they felt. I’m sure there was a sort of dissociative quality to how they felt.

Nicholas Alexander Chavez on Being Inspired By Javier Bardem in ‘Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story’

That’s a really good point. For you, Nicholas — Lyle puts so much of this sense of macho bravado on, but there is a lot of pain and trauma for him as well, and also guilt simmering under that surface. For you as a performer — how do you approach that mask and those layers to him?

CHAVEZ: I think that’s a really astute word to use — mask. He’s definitely portrayed as the less sympathetic of the two brothers and can behave impulsively and erratically at times, but what I tried to do is look deeply at why this behavior existed. I think that he tried really, really hard to mimic the behavior of his father. I think he felt very strongly that he had to become, in many ways, José Menendez. There’s a lot of parallels between the way that Javier Bardem plays his character and the way that I tried to play mine. In a way, my performance became clearer when Javier came on set because I knew that, first and foremost, Lyle Menendez was his father’s son. Lyle Menendez was, more than anything, a really, really wounded child who had experienced years and years of abuse at the hands of his family and, as a result, sometimes acted out and behaved in ways that are probably quite difficult for many people to understand. I think that when audiences see this and react to this firsthand, I understand why they have so many different responses to it.

Nicholas Alexander Chavez and Cooper Koch Discuss Their “Instant Chemistry” in ‘Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story’

That’s really well said. The relationship between these two brothers is very much I feel like the heart and emotional core, as strange as that may sound, of the story. How did you develop that unique chemistry and that very complicated but very intense bond? I feel like they’re sort of each other’s life rafts in a way.

KOCH: Yeah, I think we got really lucky on the first day that we met. It was our screen test together, and there was an instant chemistry that just clicked and worked. I think we were just both two actors that did our homework and showed up, and we just were ready to go to experience it together. And then, you know, we’re working together every day, long hours. We’re in the same scenes, not to mention the scenes are really intense and emotional. I think, organically, you form a bond and a connection.

You two are in kind of a unique position in that this case happened before you were born, but a lot of people watching the show will remember it very vividly. Do you think the fact that you were surrounded by people who were firsthand familiar with this case ultimately made your jobs harder or a little bit easier?

CHAVEZ: It’s interesting because we weren’t surrounded by too many people who were firsthand familiar with it. They were maybe firsthand familiar with the way that the media portrayed the case, which is a different thing. In my process, I wanted to separate fact from narrative, and I wanted to try to remain objective as long as possible and try to form an interpretation of the character that was free from judgment. And I wanted to build from the ground up — I wanted to start with his childhood, and I wanted to start with the hurt child underneath, which I feel like really plays through in Episodes 4 and 7.

Absolutely. I’ve read that you all tried to keep it a little bit lighter on set, which I think is very necessary in order to get through this very intense show. Is there anything specific you did to try and keep that levity and that vibe up a little bit, so to speak?

KOCH: Everyone that we worked with was so lovely. We had amazing directors, an amazing camera department, our hair and makeup department was amazing. Everyone — our PAs our, our ADs — everybody was so lovely. I knew that, at any point, if I was feeling down or needed a hug or needed to just laugh with somebody, I had a plethora of people who I could go to and talk to. And there were days that were super emotional and intense, and you have to be really focused for those, but then there were days that were light and that had levity, so we were allowed to have some fun. Also, making TV is really fun. I think that’s why we do it.

That’s a very nice thing to hear after being in this world for a long time watching it.”

Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story is available to stream on Netflix.