Charlie Hunnam is playing Andrew Borden and Rebecca Hall is playing Abby Borden in Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story. Netflix’s own cast guide identifies Andrew as Lizzie’s father and Abby as her stepmother, placing both actors at the center of the household the new season will turn into a pressure cooker.
That pairing matters because the series is not treating the adults as distant names in a famous crime. Its official setup places Lizzie in a New England home shaped by cruelty and humiliation. Hunnam and Hall therefore have to establish the family power structure before the story reaches the murders that made the Bordens part of American folklore.
- Release date: September 17, 2026
- Title: Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story
- Genre: True-crime anthology drama
- Streaming on: Netflix
Hunnam’s Andrew is the authority Lizzie cannot escape
Hunnam arrives after playing Ed Gein in the previous Monster installment, but Andrew Borden calls for a different kind of menace. Netflix identifies him simply as Lizzie’s father, while the official premise frames the family home as an environment where repression is built into daily life. The performance has to make Andrew’s control legible long before any act of violence is shown.
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That is also why casting a familiar, forceful screen presence is useful. Andrew is not merely a historical victim in this version; he is part of the dramatic conflict. The season can explore Lizzie’s position inside the house without pretending that a dramatized scene settles a disputed historical question.
Hall’s Abby changes the shape of the household
Hall plays Abby, Lizzie’s stepmother. That relationship gives the season another source of friction: Abby is both a member of the household and someone positioned differently within it. Netflix’s announced premise pairs Lizzie with the Bordens’ live-in maid, Bridget “Maggie” Sullivan, played by Vicky Krieps, which means Abby’s place between family loyalty and domestic tension should be crucial.
Hall’s casting should keep Abby from becoming only a plot device. The public history supplies very little access to anyone’s private thoughts, and a television drama necessarily fills that silence with interpretation. The useful question is not whether every exchange happened exactly this way, but how the show uses Abby to expose the competing loyalties in the Borden home.
The surrounding cast widens Lizzie’s world
Ella Beatty leads the season as Lizzie. Billie Lourd plays her older sister Emma, Jessica Barden plays actor friend Nance O’Neil, and Sarah Paulson appears as Aileen Wuornos. That last casting choice signals the anthology’s interest in the afterlife of notorious women, not a claim that the two women shared a historical timeline.
Netflix’s official cast announcement is the clearest guide to who plays whom before the season arrives. It also makes clear that this is an interpretation of a well-known case, rather than a documentary reconstruction.
Hunnam and Hall give the story its two most consequential parental figures, while Beatty’s Lizzie remains the perspective through which the house is understood. Does that casting make the drama’s version of the Borden family more unsettling? Share your take in the comments.
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