Netflix today released the first look photos from the next installment of Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan’s MONSTER anthology series. MONSTER: The Lizzie Borden Story will follow the series’ first female “monster,” played by Ella Beatty (If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, Feud) alongside Vicky Krieps as Bridget Sullivan, Rebecca Hall (Vicky Cristina Barcelona, The Town) as Abby Borden, and Charlie Hunnam (Monster: The Ed Gein Story, Sons of Anarchy) as Andrew Borden.
Lizzie Borden was a woman at the center of one of the most infamous true crime cases in American history. She was tried and acquitted of the August 4, 1892, axe murders of her father and stepmother in Fall River, Massachusetts. No one else was ever charged in the murders, and she spent the remainder of her life in Fall River. To this day, the Borden House remains a historic 1892 crime scene, bed and breakfast, and museum.
Premiering September 17, the logline reads: “When the repressed daughter of a wealthy New England family and her rebellious maid find themselves trapped in a house built on humiliation and cruelty, they escape into a fantasy of sex, power, and revenge. The gruesome unsolved murders that follow don’t just shock the world—they give birth to an icon who refuses to live imprisoned in a cage, choosing instead to forge her own legend: shocking, monstrous, and gloriously free.”
Additional cast are Billie Lourd (The Last Showgirl, American Horror Story), Joey Pollari (Monster: The Ed Gein Story, American Crime), Sarah Paulson (American Horror Story, Ratched), and Jessica Barden (Dune: Prophecy, The End of the F***ing World).
“I am so excited for viewers to experience our exploration of Lizzie Borden’s story and the questions that her life animates to this day,” Beatty tells Tudum. “It has been a dream come true to investigate this complicated person’s psychology and to examine an American crime that feels almost mythic in proportion. This season gives us our first female Monster and delves into female rage and repression which I’ve found to feel strikingly relevant. I cannot wait to share it with the world.”
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