Ella Beatty as Lizzie Borden in 'Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story.' Courtesy of Netflix Logo text “Lizzie Borden took an axe…”
The teaser trailer for Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story has arrived, and the near-one minute first look at the next season of Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan‘s Emmy-winning Netflix anthology is set to the eerie nursery rhyme created around the trial of Lizzie Borden — who is the controversial subject of the fourth season.
Ella Beatty stars as the first female lead in the hit anthology series as Borden, alongside Charlie Hunnam, who portrayed Ed Gein in season three. The trailer (below) features Borden wielding an axe, complete with a bloody face after the fact. Hunnam speaks the final line in the rhyme.
Related Stories
TV Ryan Murphy Spills on All-Star Season of 'American Horror Story,' Talks Ariana Grande's Exit and Is Seriously Considering Doing More 'Glee'
TV Ryan Murphy Goes Inside 'The Shards': How Bret Easton Ellis' Dark Memoir of Love and Murder Was Made for TV: "We Saw 500 Actors for These Parts" (Exclusive)
All eight episodes premiere Sept. 17 on Netflix.
Borden was famously put on trial and acquitted for the gruesome hatchet murders of her father and stepmother in Fall River, Mass., in 1892.
Murphy recently told The Hollywood Reporter that he grew up knowing the Lizzie Borden rhyme so well, he actually won an elementary school competition singing the tune.
“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. 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 shared.
He said the Borden case has modern-day relevance, which is what interested them to tell it, and that the season actually has three really great “monsters” behind it: Lizzie Borden, played by Beatty, Aileen Wuornos, played by Sarah Paulson, and Elizabeth Báthory, played by Vicky Krieps.
“I like investigating [the Borden] 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,” Murphy said. “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?“
He continued, “We are kind of doing this fantasia of women vs. the system, and it’s not what they did, it’s the question of: What made them do it? Why did they do it, if they did it? That’s what the show is about.”
Here’s the show’s 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.”
Referred to as the pair’s “wildest installment yet,” Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story promises to tell how “one young woman changed what the world believed a killer could be… all it took was an axe.”
Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story is created and written by Brennan, and 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.
Additional cast includes Rebecca Hall, Billie Lourd, Joey Pollari and Jessica Barden.
The Lizzie Borden Story comes after the first three Monster seasons following a different murderer: Season one starred Evan Peters as Jeffery Dahmer; season two followed Cooper Koch as Erik Menendez and Nicholas Alexander Chavez as Lyle Menendez; and season three starred Hunnam as Gein.
THR Newsletters
Sign up for THR news straight to your inbox every day
Subscribe Sign Up
