New ‘Law & Order’ makes a case for convicted siblings

TV REVIEW

All of the “Law & Order” franchise have featured plots and storylines that were — as executive producer Dick Wolf describes it — ripped from the headlines.

In the case of his latest NBC series, “Law & Order True Crime: The Menendez Murders,” the storyline comes from the years of headlines surrounding the 1989 arrests of Lyle and Erik Menendez for the shotgun murder of their parents through the brothers’ sentencing in 1996.

The eight-episode offering, starting tonight, takes a dramatized look at the notorious murder for which the brothers were tried on national television for brutally killing their parents in Beverly Hills, California. The arrest and trial became a national sensation and a media circus because of the elements involved: money, power, abuse and two good-looking suspects.

The task of playing the brothers fell to a couple of relatively unknown actors: Miles Gaston Villanueva portrays older brother Lyle while Gus Halper takes on the role of Erik. Neither actor was old enough to remember the Menendez case when it was originally making headlines. Halper said he knew nothing about the case until his audition.

“I actually feel like that was a benefit (in) approaching the character because we didn’t have to break through all these preconceptions of them I think a lot of people had because of the media frenzy about the case,” Halper said.

One of the elements Halper focused on in playing Erik was how devastating it would be to be emotionally, physically and psychologically abused by their parents their entire lives.

Villanueva knew a little about the case, but he discovered with the first script that there’s a lot of the story that was never told. The research that executive producer-writer Rene Balcer uncovered revealed private moments that came through with a lot of emotional power.

Neither Halper nor Villanueva had the opportunity to talk with the Menendez brothers before, during or after the filming.

The script focuses on the testimony of the brothers: that they had been molested by their father and mother, an accusation corroborated by testimony from relatives and some photographs that were found. Court documents show that Erik, who was 18 at the time of the murder, had been molested by his father two weeks before the murders. Lyle was 21.

And the research showed that there was a large degree of implicit political collusion between the judge and the district attorney’s office in the second trial to assure a conviction, a factor the series highlights.

At the heart of the trial is four-time Emmy Award winner Edie Falco, who plays defense attorney Leslie Abramson. The defense she presented attributed the murders to years of parental abuse.

Falco was drawn to the series by the chance to portray Abramson, who generally was passionate about her work but especially so about the Menendez case.

“She was really about doing a good job, getting the best defense for her clients,” Falco said. “Her job came first; justice was really what this was about for her.”