Ella Beatty has stepped into her most prominent screen role to date. Netflix released “Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story” on September 17, 2026, the fourth season of Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan’s true-crime anthology, and it hands the 26-year-old actress the title role: Lizzie Borden, the woman tried and acquitted in the 1892 axe murders of her father and stepmother in Fall River, Massachusetts.
The season marks a turn for the “Monster” franchise, which previously centered on Jeffrey Dahmer, the Menendez brothers and Ed Gein. It is the first installment built around an alleged female killer, and the eight-episode run is framed around the misogyny, gender expectations and class pressures of Victorian-era New England. Whether Borden actually swung the hatchet remains one of American crime’s most enduring open questions — and the series leans into that ambiguity rather than resolving it.
Beatty leads a dense ensemble. Charlie Hunnam plays her stern father, Andrew Borden, with Rebecca Hall as her stepmother, Abby. Vicky Krieps appears as the family’s housemaid, Bridget Sullivan, and Billie Lourd plays Lizzie’s older sister, Emma. Jessica Barden takes on the stage actress Nance O’Neill, while Joey Pollari plays the visiting uncle, John Morse. In a nod to the anthology’s wider universe, Sarah Paulson resurfaces as Aileen Wuornos.
For Beatty, the part caps a fast rise. The daughter of Warren Beatty and Annette Bening, she trained at Juilliard, made her Broadway debut in “Appropriate” in 2024 and appeared in FX’s “Feud: Capote vs. The Swans” and A24’s “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You.” Lizzie Borden is her first leading television role.
Critical reaction has been split. Some reviewers praised the season as lurid, propulsive entertainment anchored by Beatty’s controlled central performance; others argued it revisits familiar “female rage” territory without adding much that feels new. Either way, the premiere places Beatty at the center of one of the fall’s most talked-about streaming titles.
