From Law and Order creator Dick Wolf, the eight-part first season of the anthology series focuses on the famed murder case that gripped the country in the early '90s. Starring Edie Falco as the Menendez brothers' defense attorney, Leslie Abrahamson, the drama looks at the players, the crime and the media circus, detailing the day-to-day battles of the trial and unveiling the shocking truth of what really went down when the cameras stopped rolling.
Justin Lubin/NBC
Next to the O.J. Simpson “trial of the century,” the Menendez case was arguably one of the highest-profile crimes of the ‘90s.
Like Simpson, the Menendez brothers quickly became media mainstays following their parents’ brutal deaths, with their pictures splashed across countless newspapers and magazines in addition to their continued presence on the then-young cable network Court TV.
Despite the wall-to-wall media coverage, the team behind NBC’s forthcoming Law & Order True Crime: The Menendez Murders contends there’s another side to the Menendez brothers that the public never saw — one that the first season of the anthology drama hopes to bring to light.
“I thought I knew the story of the Menendez brothers,” star Edie Falco, who plays the Menendez brothers’ equally famous defense attorney, Leslie Abramson, says in The Hollywood Reporter’s exclusive video. “The further into it I looked, I realized there was so much I didn’t know.”
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In addition to showing some of the first glimpses at the eight-episode drama’s sprawling cast, including The Good Wife‘s Josh Charles, Parenthood‘s Sam Jaeger and Switched at Birth‘s Constance Marie, the extended promo shows the flashbacks to the Menendez brothers’ “disaster” of a home life with their allegedly abusive father.
“You watch the news, you’re fed certain facts and you realize there’s a great deal that was going on that the public didn’t know about, and we’re trying to shed some light on those things,” Falco says. “There will be plenty of those twists and turns that knock the whole storytelling piece of it on its butt.”
Executive producer Dick Wolf has made his personal feelings about the case known, including his belief that the brothers were sentenced too harshly. “When you see the information, I think people are going to realize, ‘Yeah, they did it,’ but it wasn’t first-degree murder without possibility of parole,” he told reporters at the TCA summer press tour.
Watch the exclusive promo below.
Law & Order True Crime: The Menendez Murders premieres Tuesday, Sept. 26 at 10 p.m. on NBC.
