Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story cast and true story: Netflix's premiere puts Charlie Hunnam under the axe this time
Ryan Murphy's Monster machine has run through Dahmer, the Menendez brothers, and Ed Gein, and on Thursday, September 17, it finally hands the franchise to a woman — all eight episodes at once, because Netflix knows exactly what we are.
The delicious bit of casting business: Charlie Hunnam, who spent last season being the monster as Ed Gein, returns this season as Andrew Borden. Which means the man graduates from wielding the violence to receiving it, via hatchet, from his own daughter. Career development!
The cast, which is honestly showing off
Ella Beatty — Juilliard-trained daughter of Warren Beatty and Annette Bening — plays Lizzie, the anthology's first female lead. In the trailer she delivers the line of the season with terrifying serenity:
"Just let me have the first whack," she says, and somewhere a Netflix marketing executive achieved enlightenment.
Around her:
- Rebecca Hall as stepmother Abby Borden (whack recipient No. 1)
- Charlie Hunnam as father Andrew Borden (whack recipient No. 2)
- Vicky Krieps as Bridget "Maggie" Sullivan, the live-in maid and Lizzie's co-conspirator in fantasy
- Billie Lourd as big sister Emma, Jessica Barden as actress Nance O'Neil
- And Sarah Paulson as Aileen Wuornos, in scenes set decades later — yes, the timeline does a full Ed Gein-style split, framing Lizzie as the patron saint of monsters to come
William Friedkin Despised This 10%-Rated Horror Sequel So Much He Called It An "Abomination"
The true story underneath the corsets
The facts, for the three people who never skipped rope to the rhyme: Fall River, Massachusetts, August 1892. Andrew and Abby Borden are hacked to death in their own home. Lizzie, the repressed 32-year-old daughter of the town's most joyless rich man, is arrested, tried in the media circus of the century, and acquitted. Nobody else is ever charged. The case remains officially unsolved, which has stopped precisely no one — including this show, whose logline promises a household "built on humiliation and cruelty" and an escape fantasy of sex, power, and revenge.
As for Hunnam, he's taking his on-screen dismemberment in stride. His actual plan for premiere day involves his longtime girlfriend and the couch:
"We sat down and watched the whole thing in a day," he says of their Ed Gein binge — a day he calls one to remember, and one they plan to repeat.
Imagine binging your own axe murder with your partner as a date night. Honestly? Goals.
Previously we wrote: Stephen King Defended This Disastrous 10%-Rated Adaptation of His Story: "They'll Do Better Next Time"
