The actresses play sisters Emma and Lizzie Borden in ‘Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story’

NEED TO KNOW

• Billie Lourd shares what it was like to play sisters with Ella Beatty on Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story
• “It was just so easy to fall into that relationship because she’s so lovely,” Lourd told PEOPLE at the season four premiere of Monster in New York City on Wednesday, Sept. 16
• Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story is now on Netflix

When Billie Lourd met Ella Beatty on the set of Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story, it was like they’d “known each other forever.”

Lourd, 34, and Beatty, 26, star in the fourth season of the Netflix anthology series as sisters Emma and Lizzie Borden, respectively. Emma and Lizzie belong to a wealthy New England family and were once close, but as Lizzie and her rebellious housemaid Bridget Sullivan (Vicky Krieps) become deeply entangled, their relationship strains.

For the two actresses, portraying the Borden sisters came “easy,” Lourd told PEOPLE at the New York City premiere on Wednesday, Sept. 17.

“We didn’t have to do anything because Ella Beatty is one of the kindest, warmest, most magnetic, magical people of all time,” The Last Showgirl actress said. “It was just so easy to fall into that relationship because she’s so lovely, and I love her so much.”

Their shared experience of growing up in Hollywood as daughters of famous parents played a part in their instant bond. Lourd is the daughter of the late Carrie Fisher and Bryan Lourd, while Beatty is the youngest child of Annette Bening and Warren Beatty. “We really speak the same language,” the Scream Queens alum said. “We were kind of raised in the same way, and it was just really easy. She’s amazing.”

Speaking with PEOPLE ahead of the show’s premiere, Beatty shared that she’s dreamed of being an actress since she was a child and that she was “absolutely over the moon” to take on her first lead role in a TV series with Monster.

“As a child, I played make-believe so unrelentingly that it was always just sort of how I made sense of the world. Of course, my parents gave me that,” she said. “Also, I think it’s a part of my spirit more generally. I really love watching people, observing people. Playing pretend was my favorite thing. But I feel continually as I get older, I feel more keenly that connection to being an actress.”

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The Lizzie Borden Story is the first installment of Monster with a female lead, as it follows the Massachusetts woman accused of murdering her father (Charlie Hunnam) and stepmother (Rebecca Hall) with an ax. Highlighting female rage, season four also features the stories of notable killers Countess Elizabeth Báthory (Krieps) and Aileen Wuornos (Sarah Paulson).

“When the repressed daughter of a wealthy New England family and her rebellious maid find themselves trapped in a house built of humiliation and cruelty, they escape into a fantasy of sex, power, and revenge,” the official synopsis reads. “The gruesome unsolved murders that follow don’t just shock the world — they give birth to an icon who refuses to live imprisoned in a cage, choosing instead to forge her own legend: shocking, monstrous, and gloriously free.”

Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story is now on Netflix.

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