The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
‘American Horror Story’ will tackle presidential election
Ryan Murphy said on Bravo’s “Watch What Happens Live” that the upcoming season of his critically acclaimed FX anthology series “American Horror Story” will focus on the 2016 presidential election.
“I don’t have a title, but the season that we begin shooting in June is going to be about the election that we just went through, so I think that will be interesting for a lot of people,” he told host Andy Cohen.
Murphy is the prolific producer behind “Nip/Tuck,” “Glee” and another anthology series, “American Crime Story.”
Murphy’s “American Horror Story” comments come as a surprise because the show’s past seasons have been about fictional events — usually of the supernatural variety. Viewers knew almost nothing about the show’s most recent season before it premiered in September. The move certainly fueled fan theories and generated buzz for the show’s sixth season, which was eventually revealed to be about a couple whose paranormal encounters in a rural North Carolina mansion inspire a documentary called “My Roanoke Nightmare.”
Aside from Murphy’s recent comments, all we know about Season 7 is that two of Murphy’s frequent collaborators — Evan Peters and Sarah Paulson — will return to the franchise. Paulson won an Emmy for her portrayal of beleaguered prosecutor Marcia Clark in “The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story” and has logged four nominations for her various “American Horror Story” roles.
Paulson pulled triple duty in “Roanoke,” playing the actress who helped re-enact the couple’s horrific ordeal in the documentary before experiencing her own frightening series of events. Paulson also reprised her role as journalist Lana Winters, who first appeared in the anthology’s second season, “American Horror Story: Asylum.”
Murphy’s next project is “Feud: Bette and Joan.” The show, also an anthology series, will explore the rivalry between actresses Joan Crawford and Bette Davis in its first season, which premieres March 5.