Netflix’s ‘Monsters’ explores Lizzie Borden mystery in first female-focused season

[LOS ANGELES] Ella Beatty believes her portrayal of Lizzie Borden in Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story, the first female-focused instalment of the Monsters anthology TV series, marks a new direction for the Netflix biographical crime drama.

“It’s a very new chapter for the show,” the American actor said in an interview. She added that anthology creators Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan were passionate about exploring the story of a woman accused of murder.

The series dramatises high-profile homicide cases in American history, with each season focusing on a different killer. Previous instalments included the stories of Jeffrey Dahmer, Ed Gein and Lyle and Erik Menendez.

Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story, which begins streaming on Thursday (Sep 17), follows Borden, who was tried and acquitted of the 1892 ax murders of her father, Andrew Borden, played by Charlie Hunnam, and her stepmother, Abby Borden, played by Rebecca Hall.

The case became embedded in American culture through a folk rhyme and countless portrayals in music, radio, film, theatre and television. Yet, much about what happened inside the Borden home remains unknown.

“I knew that she was this sort of almost mythological figure in American history, and I knew the nursery rhyme,” said Hall, an English actor.

“I didn’t know that she wasn’t convicted. I didn’t know that there was all this mystery around the details of what happened, but she’s this kind of like folkloric figure almost,” she said.

For director Max Winkler, those unanswered questions offered an opportunity to explore the limitations placed on women in the 1890s.

“You’re essentially treated like a piece of property, and your best role is to get married off and have as many kids as possible,” Winkler noted. “Lizzie can’t get married off. She can’t find someone to take her”.

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He said that the perceived frustration and disappointment surrounding Lizzie’s place in society became a way to examine “female rage”, and what can drive people towards violence when they fail to fit the expected mould.

Winkler wants audiences to understand that the show does not assume anyone is born evil.

“As you get to learn more about people and what the pressure cooker is that leads people to snap, anyone can kill anyone,” he explained. “It just is what are you willing to kill for, or what leaves you no choice, and this show is no different. It’s just the killers look different.” REUTERS