Nicholas Alexander Chavez needs no introduction

Taken from the new print issue of THE FACE. Get your copy here.

Nicholas Alexander Chavez sits at a sun-dappled table beneath the High Line in New York’s Meatpacking District. It’s lunchtime, mid-cover shoot with photographer Steven Klein. Nicholas is wearing a vest and a hair net to protect his newly lacquered locks, and looking a far cry from the real-life figure that has catapulted the actor into the public consciousness in late ​’24.

In Ryan Murphy’s global TV smash Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, Nicholas plays Lyle, the elder of the two Beverly Hills brothers jailed for life for the 1989 murder of their parents. The killing and subsequent trials – at which the brothers claimed they acted in self-defence after years of sexual, physical and emotional abuse at the hands of their wealthy parents – captivated the world with their explosive cocktail of wealth, dysfunction and violence. It was a story so wild it made any TV reimagining an eye-watering challenge. But if anyone could do it, it was Murphy, the showrunner-king of high-gloss, high-stakes drama (see also: American Horror Story, American Crime Story, Pose). He just needed a pair of young, unknown but skilled and very much up-for-it actors…

Nicholas’s performance in the series, which launched on Netflix in September to instant viral acclaim, was nothing short of a revelation. He played Lyle, 21 at the time of the murders, as charming, chilling, clinical and disturbingly devoid of empathy. ​“It was about understanding why someone does what they do,” the 25-year-old reflects of an experience that was, remarkably, his first leading acting gig. ​“What makes a person capable of something so extreme?”

Even more impressively, Nicholas shone in a stacked cast: playing the Menendez’s father, Javier Bardem; as investigative journalist Dominick Dunne, Nathan Lane; as their mother, repeat FACE cover star Chloë Sevigny. ​“It’s hard to describe Chloë Sevigny,” Nicholas says, his admiration evident in every word. ​“She doesn’t reveal much; there’s a quiet mystery about her. But behind her eyes, there’s a whole wonderland unfolding. It’s nearly impossible to put into words the feeling of being with her, standing next to her.”

The night before, Nicholas is deep in a fitting in his 40^th-floor hotel room, overlooking the Empire State Building. A row of his own Lanvin and Brunello Cucinelli shoes line the floor, each pair carefully placed. He removes his Zegna jeans and stands confidently in his briefs, trying on various outfits: rubber mackintosh, leather galoshes, harnesses, hosiery. His phone rings constantly but he ignores it. Klein sits on the corner of the bed, documenting the proceedings with his iPad, crafting the shoot’s narrative.

​“Clothes really help with finding the character,” says Nicholas, embracing the FACE photography as if it were another on-camera role. Slowly, the sartorial vision crystallises – American Psycho, with Christian Bale as Patrick Bateman in the 2000 film: sleek, tailored, taut and replete with Saint Laurent precision. Perfect attire, then, for the location of the shoot: in the freezer units of the Meatpacking District. One passing worker pauses to squint at the chilling tableau: Nicholas, bare-chested in McQueen runway, standing next to a pig carcass swinging on a hook. ​“Is that one of the Menendez brothers?” she asks, eyes wide.

​“It’s a wonderful gift to be able to make someone else’s day,” Nicholas says after she’s moved on. ​“People smile ear to ear when they see me on the street and I feel very lucky to be put in a position where I can make people feel that way.”

The actor was born in Houston to parents who were barely out of their teens. They raised him in Denver, and his childhood was a whirlwind of youthful energy and inquisitiveness: ​“I was really alive and energetic. Always curious, or so I’m told.” The actor’s earliest memory is a nightmare involving an airport, an accidental detour into a luggage conveyor, and the terrifying thought of being shipped off to lands unknown. ​“I had this horrible dream,” he tells me, absently sparking a tightly held disposable lighter, when we sit down to talk in a quiet corner of the freezer. ​“I was so terrified, I ran into my parents’ room and asked if I could sleep with them.”

Denver, nicknamed the Mile High City for its extreme elevation, was the perfect mix of mountain and metropolitan, with school life playing out like a John Hughes movie. ​“I bounced around a lot, moving between different groups. There wasn’t anyone who wasn’t interesting to me.” Naturally athletic, he excelled in American football. ​“I grew up playing Little League. My dad was the defensive coach for most of my teams. He would catch flights back from business trips just to hang out and spend time with me.” His young father, then still in his early twenties and who split from his mother when Nicholas was five, would occasionally pull him from school to watch movies together. ​“I think he just really wanted to spend time with me. Watching films, bonding over that, has always been a big part of my life, especially my relationship with my dad.”

Nicholas gravitated toward acting, finding a home in his school’s speech and debate team, where he ruffled feathers with impersonations of controversial comedian Lenny Bruce. It didn’t stop him winning the state championship in the duo category with a searing polemic on hate crimes and cover-ups, a moment that led him to embrace the intersection of art and advocacy.

When the student playing Atticus Finch in a school production of To Kill A Mockingbird fell ill days before opening night, Nicholas stepped into the breach. ​“The faculty came to that first performance and told me I should consider doing this professionally. But it was jarring because Denver isn’t like LA, New York or London. The entertainment industry isn’t part of the infrastructure there.”

Still, his talent was spotted. Jennifer McCray Rincón, former director of Denver’s National Theatre Conservatory, offered him the opportunity to intern in exchange for helping with errands.

There he learned iambic pentameter and the musicality of Shakespeare, and applied to study acting at Rutgers University’s Mason Gross School of the Arts in New Jersey, which offered the lure of a third-year stint at Shakespeare’s Globe in London.

But after two years, he dropped out. ​“It was hard,” he admits, repeatedly tapping the lighter on the table. ​“I was young, insecure and didn’t have the discipline to drown out the noise of comparison. I lost faith in my own perspective. It’s hard being away from home for the first time, and then when you’re in a classroom full of artists, there’s a lot of self-comparison. Being an actor, that becomes your life.”

Moving to Los Angeles with little more than ambition, Nicholas struggled. He worked for Postmates, an American version of Deliveroo. Once, riding an elevator in Century City’s Westfield shopping centre to deliver an order, a woman in designer clothes looked him up and down and sighed: ​“It’s sad if this is your best and all you’ll ever be.” He was crushed. ​“People are absolutely brutal to you in the real world.”

Then Covid-19 hit, and any opportunities for the would-be actor vanished immediately. So Nicholas returned to his athletic roots. ​“I realised being active helps me feel like myself, keeps my mind sharp. Exercise helps me think about who I want to be and what I want to say.” It took months of discipline – no carbs, no cake, endless steaks, hours in the gym – before he saw the physical results. He emerged an Adonis, pectorals seemingly sculpted from stone.

With this new body came instant attention: in 2021 he landed a role on General Hospital, the daytime soap that’s an American TV institution. His debut TV part brought Nicholas both attention and a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Younger Performer in a Drama Series. ​“It was like acting boot camp,” he says. ​“I was on that show for two-and-a-half years, so you develop a really utilitarian tool belt.”

This disciplined approach paid off after his agent told him about the open audition for Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story. ​“This was a chance to do something that I’ve always wanted to do. An opportunity to play a real person with transposition and style. The kind of style that comes with a Ryan Murphy project.”

He researched thoroughly and, for the audition, transformed himself into the elder Menendez, including perfecting Lyle’s distinctive look. ​“I found this great vintage ​’80s sweater that felt just right for the character. Lyle has a really distinct haircut [because] he wears a toupée,” he says. ​“So I pulled some reference photos, and the guy who did my hair on General Hospital was kind enough to style it for me. I had one chance to grab attention.”

That self-taped audition led to a callback with the casting associate, then what turned out to be the final audition at Murphy’s offices. ​“I walked in expecting to see three or four other actors portraying Lyle. But when I got there, it was just me and Cooper,” he says of Cooper Koch, who is three years older than Nicholas but plays the three-years-younger Eric. ​“We were the only two people in the room. We hugged each other, and I could immediately tell that Cooper was a serious actor. It’s no secret that it was a big deal for both Cooper and me to audition for Ryan Murphy. Who wouldn’t feel nervous?”

A Murphy drama is a realm where the rules of convention don’t just bend – they shatter. His televisual world is one of audacious provocation, unapologetically queer and blissfully unafraid of exploring the dark, deliciously twisted corners of human nature.

Act for him and it’s more than a role; it’s an initiation into a universe where no topic is too taboo, no boundary too sacred to be pushed. Nicholas, a super-diligent student, knew that. ​“I was going to need to access every part of who I am as an artist in order to pull it off.” The young actors had 45 minutes to impress. You may not be surprised to hear that Nicholas went all in. In fact he was so fully immersed in the character that, in the heat of one improvised moment, a red mist descended. He picked Cooper up and threw him across the room, sending him crashing into one of Murphy’s antique chairs, which broke on impact. ​“Cooper was such a good sport about it. We finished the scene, and there he was, lying on the floor, smiling ear to ear. He said: ​‘That was great!’”

A few hours later, Nicholas was sitting in LA’s swanky Grove shopping mall, about to devour his first steak of the day. Then Murphy called. ​“As soon as I saw his name on my phone, I lost the ability to breathe. I said, ​‘Hello,’ and he replied: ​‘I’m not making the show if I can’t make it with you.’”

Nicholas got to work. Through extensive research, including reading When A Child Kills – a book that delves into cases of patricide, matricide and, in the case of the Menendez brothers, double parricide – he gained a profound understanding of the psychology behind such killings. ​“It’s strange,” he acknowledges with some understatement, ​“but this happens more often than we think.”

Having done the research, what does he think really happened within the Menendez family? Who does he believe is telling the truth? ​“I won’t say. There are only four people in the world who know what happened, and two of them are dead.”

As for inhabiting Lyle, the wig – and getting it perfect – was crucial. ​“There’s this clandestine wig shop in Beverly Hills that’s extremely hush-hush. You walk in and there are moulded heads of every celebrity you can imagine – Will Smith, Keanu Reeves, et cetera. They made a mould of my head, created a bald cap, then we styled a hairpiece that would best match Lyle’s hair.”

Seeing himself in the mirror as a bald man was key. ​“It was alarming. The bald cap with the toupée was only used for scenes that required a gag. I had to create two different characters: the deeply wounded, hurt inner-child and the outer persona that he shows the world. I had to play the mindset of a boy pretending to be his father, a domineering record label executive. Because as long as he’s pretending to be his father, he doesn’t have to confront the reality of being a wounded 10-year-old boy.”

The moment when Lyle’s wig is ripped off at the dinner table by his raging mother is a turning point in the show. ​“That’s when the truth begins to emerge about who he truly is.” The characteristic gloss and glamour of a Ryan Murphy production shines through in Monster – and in this case, the showrunner’s signature style is a perfect fit for the story’s opulent setting: the extravagantly wealthy Beverly Hills of 1989. The lavish aesthetics are flawlessly on point, immersing viewers in a complex world of staggering excess, sinister undercurrents and secrecy protected by privilege.

For Nicholas, the locations, costuming and production design were a godsend. ​“When I put on Lyle’s clothes, it wasn’t [to be] kitschy or stereotypical. It captured the essence of the time. The ​’80s were a time of extreme materialism, and there’s no better place to embody that than Beverly Hills. There was this incredible vintage Versace jacket that Lyle wears that I got to keep. Wearing those clothes really helped transport me into the character.”

Filming the show’s multiple intense scenes, particularly the shooting sequence, proved to be a challenge – especially given an odd personal connection. ​“Javier and my dad look quite similar.

They’re both Latin men with thick, dark hair and broad shoulders. So from behind, it’s hard to tell them apart. When you’re shooting a scene, you can become so immersed in the moment that it’s difficult to separate the two. In the heat of it all, it’s easy to get lost.”

That’s clearly even more the case when you’re as intense and focused as Nicholas is. He admits it was hard to detach from Lyle at the end of each gruelling day. ​“I would describe myself as an obsessive person,” he says. ​“And Lyle definitely infiltrated my life thoroughly. My process lies somewhere between Method acting and living in a vivid imaginary world. It’s a blend of the two. Where one ends and the other begins, I’m still not sure.”

That’s true in more ways than one. Such has been the real-word response to Monster – and to be clear, the show has not been without its detractors, not least the brothers themselves calling out script inaccuracies and suppositions – that the Menendez’s sentencing is now being reviewed. The renewed focus on the case has led to calls for clemency, for the brothers to be released after three decades in prison. Los Angeles’s incoming District Attorney is due to consider their case upon taking office in early December. ​“I look forward to putting in the hard work to thoroughly review the facts and law of the Menendez case,” said DA-elect Nathan Hochman in a statement, ​“including reviewing the confidential prison files, the transcripts of the two trials and the voluminous exhibits, as well as speaking with the prosecutors, defence attorneys and victim family members.”

For his part, Nicholas says that ​“I knew it would be a revelatory journey”, although even he likely didn’t imagine the show might help its real-life protagonists win their freedom. ​“You can’t create art without uncovering something about yourself along the way. If I had any reservations, it was about what I might discover. What this character might force me to confront about myself.”

As filming on Monsters wrapped, Ryan Murphy called again, this time offering a provocative role in Grotesquerie, another new horror anthology series. But this time, Murphy made it clear: no audition necessary. Nicholas was being offered the part of Charlie Mayhew, a twisted, jockstrap-wearing, self-flagellating, sex-obsessed priest. Never one to shy away from a challenge, he devoured all nine scripts overnight. The next day, he was on the phone with Murphy: ​“This is incredible. When do we start?”

Nicholas Alexander Chavez’s physicality might suggest a picture-perfect all-American jock – he embodies health, wealth, a polished glow that’s perfect for magazine covers. Yet he’s clearly drawn to a murkier, sleazier, macabre energy. His next project? A lead role in the reboot of the I Know What You Did Last Summer horror franchise.

​“People have always said I have a dark side,” he acknowledges. ​“As an actor, I’ve gone through so many phases of self. I’m still evolving. It feels like every few months, a new version of me dies and is born. But I suppose that’s just part of being human. My only aspiration is to work with the greatest artists of our time.” He pauses, sparks that lighter and stares at the flame. ​“We only get one life.”

HAIR Tomo Jidai at Home Agency MAKEUP Mark Carrasquillo at R3 Mgmt SET DESIGNER Jack Flanagan at Streeters STUDIO MANAGER Chris Mccoy HEAD OF PRODUCTION Adam Lilley PRODUCER Katherine Bampton LOCAL PRODUCER Frank Decaro LIGHTING DIRECTOR Dean Doors PHOTO ASSISTANTS Dylan Garcia, Rowan Liebrum, Nathaniel Jerome and John Manuel Gomez DIGITAL TECH Sara Lewis STYLIST’S ASSISTANTS Hollie Williamson, Sierra Estep, Jagger Cruz and Hudson Spangler HAIR ASSISTANT Tomoko Kuwamura MAKEUP ASSISTANT Nanase Ito SET ASSISTANT Mike Williams PRODUCTION ASSISTANTS Mclean Haws and Fabio Utrilla