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After months of anticipation, the latest installment of Ryan Murphy’s Monster anthology series dropped on Netflix on Thursday.

Murphy is no stranger to controversy, of course.

But this time, the discourse has less to do with the content of the series than with its star.

As you might have guessed from her name, Ella Beatty has a very famous father. And a very famous mother, for that matter.

She’s the daughter of Warren Beatty and Annette Bening — and she’s become the latest young star to receive criticism for being a nepo baby.

The 26-year-old actress stars as the title character in Netflix’s fourth season of Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story, which premiered September 17.

The series dramatizes the infamous 1892 case in which Borden was accused of murdering her father and stepmother before ultimately being acquitted.

But before Ella could take on one of history’s most notorious alleged killers, she had another distinction to contend with: being born into Hollywood royalty.

Ella is the youngest child of Oscar-nominated actress Annette Bening and legendary actor Warren Beatty.

After graduating from Juilliard in 2022, she made her professional acting debut in Murphy’s Feud: Capote vs. The Swans. She made her Broadway debut in 2024’s Appropriate and appeared in the 2025 film If I Had Legs I’d Kick You.

Then Murphy came calling again.

Ella landed the title role in Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story, marking her first leading television role and the first season of the anthology to center on a female figure.

Previous seasons focused on Jeffrey Dahmer, the Menendez brothers, and Ed Gein.

But while she may have climbed the ladder much more quickly than most, the role was hardly something Ella took lightly.

She told Netflix that she immediately dove into true-crime podcasts and other material about the real-life case after auditioning (via People).

At the same time, she recognized that the series is a fictionalized dramatization rather than a documentary.

Unlike some nepo babies, Ella doesn’t deny that she’s benefited from her famous last name. But she says she’s benefited even more from her parents’ advice.

According to Ella, Warren and Bening encouraged her to listen, stay curious and “get interested rather than be interesting.”

Not exactly bad advice from two people who have spent decades navigating Hollywood.

And if Ella is lucky, people will find her performance as Lizzie Borden so interesting that they’ll be willing to overlook her not-so-humble origins and focus on her work.