Cooper Koch Was Working at Salt & Straw When He Was Cast for ‘Monsters’
Cooper Koch is crediting his job at an ice cream shop for helping him appreciate the success of his hit series, Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story.
The 28-year-old appears on the cover of VMan‘s “A Day in the Life” issue, where he reveals that he was teaching yoga to make ends meet and “scooping ice cream” at a Salt & Straw location near his apartment in Silver Lake when he got the call for the Ryan Murphy Netflix series. While it was a much different life than the one he’s living now, Koch says his sweet shop gig taught him to, literally, savor the moment.
“I did love working at Salt & Straw — it filled me with such joy,” he tells the magazine. “I feel like that job, in a way, is what attracted Monsters because it made me so happy and busy and productive. It made my vibration so high that the job that I actually wanted came.”
Koch stuns in VMan’s latest issue, photographed by Alvaro Beamud Cortés and styled by Nicola Formichetti (Koch is seen wearing a “HOMOCORE” T-shirt from DSquared2 in this image above, provided exclusively to THR. You can shop similar styles here).
In the accompanying article, the recent Golden Globe nominee reveals how he psyched himself up on set each day, as he tried to get into the mindset of Erik Menendez.
“It started with these Post-its that were on the inside of my medicine cabinet that say, like, ‘You can do this,’ ‘You’re an amazing actor,’ ‘Keep going,’ ‘I believe in you,’” he says. “It’s a little kitschy at first, but if you read them all while you brush your teeth twice a day, they start organically seeping into your mind, and you start believing them. I did a similar thing with my trailer,” he explains, “where I had all pictures of Erik and of me on my trailer mirror and some of my lines. I would read them every day.”
As a possible release for the Menendez brothers continues to hang in the balance, Koch says he believes Erik deserves a second chance. “The main lesson is that wisdom begins when you accept things as they are,” he explains. “Erik teaches speech classes, yoga and meditation, and they help people who have been through sexual abuse. They’ve gotten college degrees. They’ve found a life in prison because they’ve accepted what happened to them, and they accepted what they did. That takes such courage and bravery and strength and time,” Koch concludes. “I think for that reason, they deserve to come home.”
While Monsters has propelled Koch into the spotlight, the actor says he’s taking his time to find his next project. All he knows is that he wants to continue this feeling — the same one he had scooping ice cream — into whatever he does next.
“You’re walking this line between what is real and what’s not,” he says. “It’s this magical, euphoric feeling that is experienced by all the people in the room, and it’s different every night, and you don’t have to stop; you just live through it. I want to do that for the rest of my life.”
