Annette Bening’s daughter cast as infamous murder suspect in Ryan Murphy’s Monster

Season four of Ryan Murphy’s Monster anthology series has found it leading ladies.

The show will focus on the case of Lizzie Borden, who was tried and acquitted of murdering her father and stepmother with an axe in the 1890s.

Ella Beatty, the daughter of actress Annette Bening and actor Warren Beatty, has been cast as Borden, according to The Hollywood Reporter. She made her TV debut in Murphy’s Feud: Capote vs. The Swans last year.

Rebecca Hall, seen recently in Godzilla vs Kong, and Vicky Krieps, who have also both worked for Murphy before, will star alongside Beatty.

The Borden case gained widespread media coverage and fascination at the time and has been adapted numerous times for TV and film, including Lizzie, starring Chloë Sevigny and Kristen Stewart, in 2018, which featured a relationship between Borden and the family maid.

It has been suggested before that Borden was a lesbian. She died of pneumonia in 1927 and no one else has ever been charged with the crime.

Murphy has suggested homosexuality in previous seasons of Monster. Last year’s focus on the case of Erik and Lyle Menendez, insinuated that the former was gay, and that the brothers had a physical relationship.

When the show faced criticism, including from Erik Menendez, Murphy responded: “We do it very carefully and we give them their day in court and talk openly about it. We present the facts from their point of view.”

The focus on the Borden case will follow the upcoming third season of Monsters which stars Queer as Folk‘s Charlie Hunnam as 50s serial killer Ed Gein. Set to be subtitled, The Original Monster, it will look at the man considered by some to have been the inspiration for Psycho and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Gein became “an instant crazy celebrity from the moment he was arrested”, according to Murphy. He died in a mental institution in 1984, having originally been found guilty of first-degree murder.

The first season of Monster starred Evan Peters as serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer.

The first two seasons of Monster are streaming on Netflix now.

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