‘Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story’ Finale Director Explains That Imagined Ending and Why Sarah Paulson Made Him Cry

[This series contains major spoilers from the entire season of Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story.]

Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story was different than previous seasons of Netflix‘s Monster franchise in that this season got to go a bit more off script. In order to tell the infamous yet little recorded story of the Massachusetts woman who, in 1892 at the age of 32, was tried and acquitted for the gruesome axe murders of her father and stepmother, creators Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan were allowed take liberties to fill in the questions that linger to this day about what really happened in that house, and what drove Lizzie Borden to — as the series posits — kill her father Andrew and stepmother Abby Borden.

Max Winkler (Love Story, Feud) directed six of season four’s eight episodes (all now streaming on Netflix), and he closed out the series with a nod to where they began. The final image of the season features the more modern-day serial killer, Aileen Wuornos (played by Sarah Paulson), being greeted in the afterlife — after being sentenced to death by lethal injection in 1992 — by the ghosts of Lizzie Borden (played by Ella Beatty) and her lover, Borden housemaid Maggie a.k.a Bridget (played by Vicky Krieps). The imagined scene comes after the series gave Lizzie and Maggie an (also imagined) hopeful ending, only to, as Winkler puts it, then “hard cut to the flat line [of Aileen’s death] and the people who have just watched Aileen [die] who are unbuckling her and talking about where they’re going to have lunch.”

Winkler “knew that would be the ending when we started,” he tells The Hollywood Reporter about the finale, “Carnival.” The series wove Wuornos’ story in with Borden’s to illustrate how little has changed when it comes to female rage — when women are put in cages — and how society views women who kill across centuries. “There’s the romance of Sarah [Paulson] and the peace in the afterlife that they’re going to a better place, then … that antiseptic blue curtain in juxtaposition of that ornate, beautiful, red velvet curtain at that big theater at the beginning. I felt like if I could start where we start and end where we end and have an emotional involvement for those characters while doing it, that this had a really good chance to emotionally resonate with people.”

Below, Winkler takes THR inside directing this Monster season — gruesome murders, vomit scenes, Sarah Paulson and all (“I cried when she was doing [her final meal],” he says) — and muses about why this franchise, which debuted No. 1 on Netflix’s Top TV list, always strikes a chord with viewers, this one in particular: “[The ending is about] thinking that you could have a happy ending when the patriarchal stack of chips is so, so heavy against you.”

You got to open and close this season, having directed the premiere and finale (and four episodes in between). Before we get into the finale, the ratings are in and they’re big again. Why do you think this Monster franchise always resonates?

I don’t know. It’s very risky doing it. Nothing they do in the concept of it is a lay up. You never know if people are going to want to watch it. It’s the art of trying to make something both entertaining for people to watch and also about something very complicated, like what makes people people. They’re not monsters. They’re human beings who had a very specific set of circumstances that predate them coming onto this planet that turn them into people who do these monstrous things.

This series, in particular, seems to be, timing-wise, exactly the right time based on everything that’s happening in culture right now. A lot of people are watching it. The reach of Netflix is obviously crazy. It’s different from any other service, even compared to something like Love Story [on Hulu], which is a huge, huge hit. I’ve made a lot of movies that people never get to see or never know where to find and it’s really nice, just the amount of people who have Netflix.

Do you follow along with the response online, read reviews or go on social media?

No, I don’t check anything. Some people will send me a funny thing, but it’s just too painful for me to engage because the good stuff will never be good enough. And the bad stuff … I’m too mentally ill to actually enjoy that part! (Laughs.) This part is hard for me [after release].

Our camera test was exactly a year ago. I’m on a text chat with the actors and there are funny Nance O’Nell memes going around, and I like those. But I know anytime Ryan [Murphy] makes anything, it will have a very big reaction. I know this series, in particular, gets a really big reaction. But I’ve heard from a lot of people and people are really seeming to enjoy it, and finishing it quickly. A lot of people have finished it in one sitting.

This season was easier for me to binge than some of the previous Monster seasons. I think a lot of that is the tone and, after speaking with Ian Brennan, can probably also be attributed to the fact that there was a lot less known about this case, which allowed for liberties to be taken with the story. He did use the word “fun” when talking about writing this season. Did you feel like this season was more fun to make?

It was really challenging to make because a lot of it is comedic, with the insane way that people wrote and spoke and had expectations for women in that time period, which is not that long ago — 1890 is so laughably insane, and the fact that there’s still some crossover to it today and that half of the internet thinks that we should go back to that way of life? It lends itself to make fun of it.

So much of the last season with Charlie [Hunnam] was Charlie [as Ed Gein] in a barn or in a cold house talking to himself. This season, there are so many people and so many words where just making the days was challenging to do in the right way. You wanted to create this pastry box laced with arsenic, and have the beauty of something like an age of innocence.

When you talk about the first episode and the last episode, it was very intentional where it would end. I always knew the last shot was going to be Aileen’s body and the curtain closing to match the ornate beautiful curtain of the fairytale version of “Lizzie was this crazy person!” and then the actual reality.

That was even less time ago, and still, we’re in very similar situation. You get the hopefulness of the suffragette movement; we’re in reds and it’s joyful and like they’re finally going to have a chance. And then the last image of Aileen sitting there [after being put to death by lethal injection], after that hope that her and Lizzie and Bridget are together in a place where everyone’s treated equally [in the afterlife] … It’s inspired by All That Jazz, which I think everything I do is, because the finale of [season three’s] The Ed Gein Story is very inspired by that, too, with them dancing at the end.

All That Jazz is one of my favorite endings to a movie of all time. It’s romantic and beautiful. He finally has a chance to say amends to all the women he’s hurt and his daughter, who he didn’t spend enough time with, and the producers. Everyone’s clapping for him, and at the end, it’s just the hard, cold cut to a body bag being zipped up — and that’s what you’re left with.

It wasn’t until I found that Fiona Apple song [“I Know”] — someone else who’s been objectified for being incredible and brilliant and talented, but then a back turned on her for being difficult or traumatized or whatever. That song, that moment of an artist I admire so much helped me kind of close the loop.

There is no actual hard evidence that Lizzie and Maggie (a.k.a. Bridget) ever reconciled after her trial, right? Did you all find anything in your research?

No, but the finale is similar where there’s not a lot of hard evidence about everything. The court stuff we had was Lizzie’s testimony in the house — the stories are the stories. But this was less about a forensic, true crime. No one thought a woman could do it. She completely got away with it because the implicit sexism of a “woman’s not smart enough, not strong enough to do it or get away with it” ran rampant around America in that time period.

The end was that she’s left in this sort of solitude and the alienation of what she wrought for herself, and the Maggie thing became more of a symbol for us, thinking that you could have a happy ending when the patriarchal stack of chips is so, so heavy against you.

It is so interesting to think no one believed Lizzie could do these murders even when her story didn’t add up; and then you see Aileen’s trial, where she says she killed those Johns in self-defense, yet that didn’t matter and she was found guilty. What does that juxtaposition say about how people viewed women and what they’re capable of in these different time periods?

That they’re a very easy scapegoat, no matter what. And the look on Sarah’s face [as Aileen] when she hears the Richard Mallory [first victim of Wournous] news — that he actually had these [sexual crimes] charges brought against him — and she’s still, again, another “crazy piece of white trash” in jail? It’s taking out the human aspect of who she was.

This series shows what Ian and Ryan are thinking about. Last year was so much about isolation and loneliness and not being able to ask for help. This season, you look at the pageantry of 1894 Fall River — it all looks different; there’s corsets and horses. But you could modernize the dialogue and it wouldn’t be so different from dialogue you would see on news networks or the internet today.

After directing Sarah Paulson in that finale, is there anyone else you could imagine taking on this Monster‘s Aileen Wuornos?

She’s an unbelievable actor who does so much preparation and physical work. It was my first time working with her and I was stunned by what happens when she comes out on set. My favorite scene that she did — because it really allowed her to improvise a lot — was the scene with her having her final meal. Just the mixture between protective strength and unbelievable vulnerability. I cried when she was doing it, because to have a front row seat to that and watch it happen was really humbling.

The whole cast is so good. Every single person. Everyone who had one to five lines to our regulars was so well cast. Rebecca [Hall, as Abby Borden]’s monologue in episode four and getting to see why she is the way she is; Charlie [Hunnam as Andrew Borden] in episode five; Nance [O’Neill] in episode seven; Billie [Lourd] on the stand. Vicky and Ella get to do it in each episode. I love the ensemble part of this series.

The finale presents alternatives for the murder, briefly. It’s clear where the show stands, and I know where Ian and Ryan stand. After all the research and making the show, do you agree Lizzie did it?

That was our intention of making the show. That was how I had understood it, yes.

You directed the murders over and over again. This franchise has never shied away from showing murders, but can you talk about the different iterations we saw?

Well, Sarah Adina Smith directed Rebecca’s [Abby Borden] murder, which I thought she did brilliantly. I did the opening murder, which is very much the fairytale version of it. We’ve heard this nursery rhyme. It’s the movie version of it where nothing went wrong; this sort of operatic ballet. And it’s intentionally romantic. Whereas the actual killing of Andrew [Borden] and Abby is brutal and sad. Despite their limitations and abusive tendencies, I feel empathy for them before they die. It’s very sloppy and messy and sad. I don’t think any version of it is cool or that Lizzie is like a superhero.

It was very intentional for me, for Andrew’s death, to show all 41 whacks, because it is so many whacks. It’s so past the point of getting the job done. There’s so much premeditation and passion into doing that, and to actually play that with no music and just the sound and the banality of a lifeless body being hit by some blunt instrument is very viscerally upsetting.

We did certain cutaways. I at first wanted to find 41 little cutaways to all the little details — that was something we had on our list of things to do. But we ended up staying more on the whacks and more on Lizzie’s face, which hardened by that point, and how her and Maggie sort of switch sides. Maggie’s actually the one who was the instigator, unlocking Lizzie’s birdcage. The emotional experience that Vicky as Maggie has doing at the end, the passing of the acts, I thought was really effective and something we figured out on the day.

I also spoke with Rebecca Hall about the vomit scene earlier in the season, where she and Charlie Hunnam get sick (when Lizzie unsuccessfully tries to poison her parents).

That was the hardest thing we did because Rebecca cannot have anything in her mouth or else she vomits. She’s very, very afraid of vomiting. If she sees vomit, she vomits. So that was difficult because we did it all practically.

Her and Charlie were heroes for that. Charlie actually ate the oysters, for which I will always be grateful. And Rebecca did one of the bravest things, because it’s a real thing, her thing. She was like shaking, so her courage to do that and to trust me… we tried to do it as quickly as possible, and it pays off because she’s so amazing in it. Intricate dinner scenes are always challenging.

Ian Brennan said that he and Ryan Murphy are planning for 10 seasons of Monster, and that they have three options for next season. This was the first female serial killer the show featured, and had a different tone than the Jeffrey Dahmer and Ed Gein seasons. Do you feel like this season casts a wider net of options for the future of the series?

I don’t know. I was certain that it was going to be about someone else last season and then Ryan called me and said, “Will you just read 10 pages of this thing? Do you know anything about Lizzie Borden?” I had no idea what he was talking about. I’d known about Lizzie Borden a little bit because Charlie Hunnam and Jessica Barton and I had all made a movie in Fall River, Massachusetts, [Jungleland (2019)], which is ironic because the three of us worked on this. I would never take anything they say as gospel. They find their muse in different places and then it just comes. By the time they decided they were going to write Lizzie Borden, the script was done within five days. They have a magical kind of wizardry, and the thing I’m attracted to is how different the last two seasons are.

Gein is so quiet. The monster in the Ed Gein one is isolation and quiet, so your mind can start playing tricks on you, whereas this is so loud. I read it and I immediately called them and I was like, “Okay, it needs to feel like noises [go] off.” People walking in and out of the room, everybody is talking constantly. There’s birds squawking. There’s Maggie, Ella and Rebecca. I love the rhythm of all of that.

What are you working on with Ryan Murphy on next? Are you allowed to say?

No, but hopefully something cool.

Like Love Story season two?

Right now, I’m about to make something else, a pilot tomorrow in New York City that Ryan is not involved with. Then I’ll go home and edit. I haven’t been home in my bed since June. So I’m looking forward to going home in October and taking my kids to school.

Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story is now streaming all episodes on Netflix. Follow THR‘s show coverage here.