Nicholas Chavez Explains Why Filming 'Monsters' Required 'More Thoughtful Preparation' Than 'Grotesquerie,' Compares His Time on Both Shows

Transcript

00:00I think that Lyle Menendez necessitated I'll say more thoughtful preparation

00:08right because you want to be careful and diligent with a character like that

00:12someone who is a real person and who is still alive today. With Father Charlie I

00:24kind of just let my impulses lead the way and I likened in a in a previous we

00:35were just talking about how this show to me feels like very Shakespearean in a

00:40way the language just sort of leads you in the direction that you need to go so

00:44I sort of just operated with complete and utter reckless abandon in all of my

00:49scenes and let the let the words take me where they were gonna go and let the

00:55scenes take me where they were gonna go and I was fortunate enough to have seen

00:58partners who were comfortable with every take being different. Yeah it's fun to

01:05play off of. I was told to watch Fleabag I did not watch Fleabag. It would not

01:10have helped you. I was I was really inspired by I mean we talked about

01:16Charles Manson a lot. I love the music of Chris Isaac. It's weird I I sort of

01:28formed this really strange nexus of a lot of different like primary and

01:34secondary research sources like sometimes things as weird as paintings

01:38that I had seen or music that I had found and then all of these things just

01:44culminated into into the character that you see on the screen. I just pulled from

01:51a lot of different places and tried to Swanson link my way into an interesting

01:56character. I was really inspired by Squeaky Fromme and that whole Charlie

02:02Manson family. I think that I watched a lot of cult documentaries before leaving

02:06for LA and was just immersing myself in this world of people who like at their

02:14core really believe what they're doing is right for their God which is something

02:19that I think feels a little far from me and I also think a lot of it was was

02:27like being in this Ryan Murphy world where you just like have to make super

02:31bold risky choices and like having seen partners like Nicholas to just take a

02:37swing and like trust that if it was wrong they won't use it in the final cut.