From José Menendez to ‘Spellbound’

Did any other actor show the range of Javier Bardem this year? The No Country for Old Men star went from playing José Menendez, the terrifying patriarch in Ryan Murphy‘s true-crime series Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, to voicing the whimsical purple people eater in Vicky Jenseon’s animated musical Spellbound. Only Bardem’s fellow Spaniard, Karla Sofía Gascón, playing the pre-and-post-transition roles in Emilia Pérez, comes close.

For Bardem, both roles are virgin territory. While he has played plenty of nasty characters in the past — mop-toped killer Chigurh in No Country, ghostly pirate hunter Captain Salazar in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, sadistic cyberterrorist Raoul Silva in Skyfall — José Menendez in Monsters, his first major TV role, was a new challenge. Murphy takes a Rashomon-style approach to telling the over-exposed story of the 1989 murders of José and Kitty Menendez by their sons, Lyle and Erik, depicting both the parents’ perspective and scenes reflecting the brothers’ claims they suffered years of violent and sexual abuse from José.

“He was a monster,” says Bardem of José Menendez. “He did some horrible things that we know of and some horrible ones we are pretty sure of. And then there are things that we don’t know for certain, like the sexual abuse. We may think it did happen or didn’t happen. But for me, as an actor, the challenging part was to play him in a way that you could think both that he is guilty of sexual abuse or not. The audience will have to decide, as we, as citizens in the world when we see the trials will have to decide. But there is no certainty.”

Even after immersing himself in the case, Bardem remains uncertain about the truth. “Some days I will think, oh yeah, for sure, [José] did it. Some days I will wake up and think, you know what? I’m not sure, and that’s why it’s so fascinating.”

The case’s broader implications about intergenerational trauma — José Martinez is shown to be a victim of abuse, as well as a predator — particularly resonated with the actor. “Once we understand that José Menendez was abused by his own parents, and he didn’t express that because he never felt able, or capable, and that he brought that over to his own children, making them victims of abuse [it really] speaks to the domino effect of pain and harm that can carry on for generations if it’s not taken care of properly.”

But playing José, says Bardem, was not nearly as terrifying, or as traumatic, as the prospect of performing in an animated musical with Spellbound. The feature, released on Netflix Nov. 22, follows Princess Ellian, voiced by Rachel Zegler, on a quest to reverse a spell that has transformed her parents, King Solon (Bardem) and Queen Ellsmere (Nicole Kidman) into monsters.

“I am not a singer. I can barely sing,” Bardem admits. “I admire so much all the Broadway musical performers. How in the world can they sing, dance, and act at the same time? But this was a movie, so I could repeat as many takes as we needed. Then there’s the editing, which is magic, they make you sound beautiful. I know I’m not a singer. I’ll never get to where Rachel Zegler is, Jesus, her voice is amazing! I’ll never get there. But I thought: ‘I don’t need to be Parvarotti. This is a purple monster. Just relax, enjoy yourself, and do your best.”

After making a career of playing human monsters, Bardem, now 53 and the parent (with wife Penelope Cruz of two teenagers, aged 12 and 14) finds himself shifting towards more PG-rated content. Spellbound followed turns in Rob Marshall’s live-action The Little Mermaid and the family-friendly Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile.

“There’s a moment in being a parent where your kids ask: ‘Dad, where are you going? What’s your job?’, and you can’t show them No Country for Old Men,” he says. “The first thing I did was Pirates of the Caribbean where I thought: ‘OK, this one I’m doing for my 7 year old’ so they can come to set and see daddy working and understand when I’m not at home, what daddy’s doing.”

For Bardem, creating work his children can watch has become deeply meaningful. “The first time you show a movie of yours to one of your kids, that’s an experience I’ve never felt before,” he reflects. “Your whole effort, your whole career, the whole time you’ve been going up and down suddenly makes sense in that moment when you are sharing what you love with the person you love the most, and they appreciate it, they understand who you are. That’s a beautiful, beautiful moment of awareness.”

Monsters and Spellbound are streaming on Netflix.