Netflix has unveiled the full trailer for Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story, the fourth installment of the anthology series from Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan.
The trailer shows the series’ first female lead, Ella Beatty (Feud: Capote vs. The Swans, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You), take on the role of Lizzie Borden, the accused axe murderer who was tried and acquitted in the 1892 gruesome hatchet murders of her father and stepmother in Fall River, Massachusetts. “Just let me have the first whack,” Lizzie says in the trailer.
Here is the official synopsis: “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.”
In a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Murphy teased season four and the series’ controversy, saying, “I find that show to be very interesting because you know that no matter what you do, it’s going to be controversial. That’s baked into the cake. I’m always interested in, not glorifying these characters, but the Monster franchise is only about one thing: Are monsters made, or are they born?”
Murphy shared that he had a “deep connection” to the famous case.
“When I was in kindergarten, I won first place singing the Lizzie Borden nursery rhyme [“Lizzie Borden Took an Ax…”] in a choral competition, if you can believe that. That was the first thing I ever won,” he said. “So I grew up with that nursery rhyme. I’m from the Midwest. I thought everybody knew that nursery rhyme, and they did not.”
He continued, “I like investigating that story because, in many ways, you can look at what it deals with women and society and it’s very about today. It’s a very modern story. The story of Lizzie Borden is: Did she do it or did she not? There are many theories.”
According to Murphy, this season has “three really great ‘monsters’ behind it: Lizzie Borden (Beatty), Aileen Wuornos (Sarah Paulson) and Elizabeth Báthory (Vicky Krieps).
Created and written by Ian Brennan, Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story is executive produced by Brennan and Murphy, along with Max Winkler, Eric Kovtun, Scott Robertson, Louise Shore, Nissa Diederich, Todd Kubrak, Carl Franklin and Tanase Popa. Sarah Adina Smith directs episodes four and six. Winkler directs the rest.
Season four of Monster follows its first three seasons, which focused on different murderers: Season one starred Evan Peters as Jeffrey Dahmer; Season two centered on Cooper Koch as Erik Menendez and Nicholas Alexander Chavez as Lyle Menendez; and season three starred Hunnam as Ed Gein.
The Lizzie Borden case has inspired several previous retellings, including the 1975 TV movie The Legend of Lizzie Borden, Lifetime’s 2014 Lizzie Borden Took an Ax and 2018’s Lizzie starring Chloë Sevigny and Kristen Stewart.
Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story launches with eight episodes on the streamer Sept. 17.
