00:00Hi, I'm Levi Chambers with Gaiety and Pride.
00:02Hello, Nathan.
00:03Hello, Ari. How are you?
00:04Hi, how are you?
00:06Doing great.
00:07I have very little time with you, so I'm going to jump right in.
00:10First questions for Nathan.
00:12Dominic, Dominic's coverage of the Menendez trial
00:16really shaped public perception in a profound way.
00:19Do you think that the media's...
00:22I mean, a lot, yeah.
00:25Four minutes.
00:27Hello, minutes.
00:27Really?
00:28Everybody keeps saying this, and I think, really?
00:30You could watch it on TV.
00:32I didn't need him to tell me, but okay, go ahead.
00:36Do you think the media's portrayal of the brothers
00:39influenced their fate, ultimately?
00:42And what does this case tell you about the broader relationship
00:45between press, media, and the judicial system?
00:50Well, you got an hour.
00:53I wish.
00:54I...
00:57Yeah, I...
01:01What was the first part of the question?
01:04Do you think the media's portrayal of the brothers influenced their fate?
01:07No.
01:07You know what I think affected it?
01:09When they bought shotguns and killed their parents.
01:13That affected it.
01:15That was the biggest effect.
01:17And then, you know, as time went on, we found out
01:21this was...
01:23Things were very disturbing in that household,
01:26and it was not the picture-perfect family they appeared to be.
01:32But, you know, at the time, you know,
01:36they looked at this kind of thing very differently than they would now.
01:40And, you know, now there's an entire group on TikTok
01:44clamoring for them to have another trial and to look at new evidence
01:48and a better understanding of abuse.
01:55You know, yeah, I don't...
01:58I don't think it affected the outcome of the trial, for sure.
02:03I think there was this initial reaction to it,
02:07which was they're two spoiled rich kids playing tennis and, you know,
02:14and had everything, and they murdered their parents for the money.
02:18And then it obviously was a much more complicated story.
02:23And we've come to understand that better over these 35 years.
02:28Leslie was a fierce advocate for the Menendez brothers,
02:32arguing that their actions were a direct result of just the years
02:36of abuse that Nathan was just talking about.
02:38When you were preparing for this role, in your research,
02:40did you find that her belief in their defense reflected a larger societal failure
02:46to understand the effects of trauma on children, on families,
02:50especially in high-profile wealthy families?
02:53I mean, yes to everything you said, except the high-profile wealthy family part.
02:58I mean, she was...
03:03She often talked about how psychology had not caught up,
03:06the law had not caught up with psychology or vice versa.
03:10Like, to understand 35 years ago, our sense of understanding abuse, trauma,
03:19the psychological effects of that,
03:23we didn't have a shared language about that back then,
03:26which we do now in a very different way.
03:28We're still building it.
03:29But just the response to the show now really speaks to that.
03:33On TikTok, there's a whole greater understanding about these things
03:37that back then were much harder, I think, for her to explain
03:45because people on the jury, people in culture,
03:49and so many of the men certainly in the jury on the first trial
03:52didn't believe and didn't know.
03:55And she was a fierce advocate for them.
03:58But she also came up from juvenile courts and being a public defender.
04:02She had an entire lifetime of work of seeing the effects of traumatic childhoods
04:11and how that results in actions taken later in life and circumstance,
04:19like nothing happens in a void.
04:22And I think she saw that throughout her career
04:24and always had an innate sense of fairness and justice and children,
04:31you know, like what happens with children that are not nurtured.
04:34And so when she met the boys,
04:39I think she developed a very true and deep relationship with Eric,
04:43but that was built upon her years of experience
04:46of seeing, in some ways, the hardest parts of humanity to hold.
04:52Thank you very much.
04:53I'm out of time, but I really loved your answer.
04:55So thank you so, so much.
04:57Thanks.
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