Yahoo Lifestyle Performer of the Week: Nicholas Alexander Chavez
THE PERFORMER | Nicholas Alexander Chavez
THE SHOW | Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story
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THE EPISODE | “Kill or Be Killed” (Sept. 19, 2024)
THE PERFORMANCE | Throughout Season 2 of Ryan Murphy’s true-crime anthology series, Chavez delivered one star-making performance after another as Lyle Menendez. But it was his work in the fourth episode that will continue to haunt us long after we’ve moved on to our next binge.
Over the course of that harrowing hour, the actor — already a Daytime Emmy winner, owing to his General Hospital stint — repeatedly let loose the rage that so often rendered Lyle intimidating. A switch would be flipped, and boom! The Menendezes’ firstborn would erupt, his portrayer channeling that anger not just through the ferocity of his voice but through the tension that took hold of his entire body.
Even more impressive, however, were Chavez’s quieter moments, as Lyle recounted for his lawyers the abuse that he’d suffered — and the abuse that he himself had inflicted on his younger brother Erik. Chavez was nothing short of devastating in the way that he played Lyle, even at that point, as at first being detached from and confused by what had transpired. His father loved him, Lyle said over and over, repeating a lie that perhaps he had to keep believing in order to keep… existing.
As Lyle’s revisitation of the molestation and worse went on, Chavez demonstrated his enviable mastery of his craft, subtly showing us his real-life character’s increasing difficulty keeping down the horror of what had transpired. It was a losing battle, of course, a fact that Chavez drove home as Lyle admitted that, as much as he’d hated what his father had done to him, he’d turned around and done the same thing to his brother — “to make it normal, even though I knew that it f—king wasn’t.”
By the time “Kill or Be Killed” was over, we were sick. Sad. Beyond upset. But we were also glad that we’d endured the episode. Because as hard as it may have been to watch, it did shine a spotlight on Chavez, for whom even the sky isn’t the limit.
Scroll down to see who scored Honorable Mention shout-outs this week…
HONORABLE MENTION: Samuel L. Jackson and Don Cheadle
Secret Invasion, for all its faults, gave us an intense, six-minute two-hander between Samuel L. Jackson and Don Cheadle — the MCU vets’ first time acting together, amazingly. Well, Peacock’s Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist this week put the Academy Award-nominated actors inside a much smaller room for nearly five minutes straight, and the result was damn electric. Jackson as “Black Godfather” Frank Motten was cool like the other side of the pillow; told by Cheadle’s Detective J.D. Hudson that he’s a person of interest, he nodded, “I’m an interesting person!” Cheadle, meanwhile, showed us that Hudson was operating on an elevated level during the grilling, being just amiable enough to get away with warning Motten, “You’re officially on my radar,” and then not flinching when told/threatened, “We better be sure we don’t run into each other no more.” Whomever winds up with the upper hand in this rivalry, it’ll be a knockout to watch. — Matt Webb Mitovich
HONORABLE MENTION: Charles Edwards
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power’s sophomore season has been infinitely more harrowing than its first, owing much of its dialed-up intensity to Charles Edwards’ sublime turn as the elfsmith Celebrimbor. Season 2’s penultimate episode, “Doomed to Die,” showed us Celebrimbor at his absolute lowest, and Edwards did a bang-up job emphasizing his character’s costly flaws. For Edwards, the challenge lies in portraying Celebrimbor’s madness as an inevitability. The pride, self-pity and righteousness were there from the get-go; the seeds of his descent predate his partnership with Sauron. Even as he fell apart, Celebrimbor retained the pride and pompousness that facilitated all of this in the first place, and Edwards, weeping, shouting and blubbering through the siege of Eregion, kept his performance anchored in this truth. — Hayden Mears
HONORABLE MENTION: Patrick Brammall and Harriet Dyer
Paramount+’s absolute gem of a romantic comedy Colin From Accounts is back for Season 2, and that gives us a chance to celebrate its stars/co-creators, Patrick Brammall and Harriet Dyer, for crafting hilariously imperfect but ultimately relatable characters in lovebirds Gordon and Ashley. Dyer’s best moments came in Episode 5, putting on a masterclass in physical comedy as Ashley lost her phone and faced an arduous trek back home, suffering the indignity of being caught by the cops using a neighbor’s mail to… well, we’d rather not say. Brammall, meanwhile, took the spotlight in Episode 7, with Gordon channeling his repressed grief over his father’s death into becoming a ridiculously obsessed stage mom for his dog Colin before finally letting the tears come out. These two — who are married in real life, by the way — are just about our favorite couple on TV, and we’ve got our fingers crossed for a Season 3 so we can see them make more magic together. — Dave Nemetz
Which performance(s) knocked your socks off this week? Tell us in the comments!
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