‘STORIES’ TIME
Regular Horror’ ‘American sequel back for Bomer
MATT Bomer said it was a “no-brainer” to star in the two-part first episode of “American Horror Stories.” “Ryan Murphy gave me a loose pitch for what his ideas were for this particular episode, and nobody is a better pitchman,” Bomer, 43, told The Post. “I’ve been home for this entire pandemic taking care of my family, and this filmed around the corner.”
The new anthology series (Thursdays on FX on Hulu) is a spinoff of the “American Horror Story” franchise. In the original show, each season has a different season-long plotline. “American Horror Stories” breaks it up further and tells a different scary story each episode, in the same style as “Black Mirror.”
In the two-part episode “Rubber (WO)man Part One” and “Part Two” (now streaming), Bomer stars as Michael, a man who’s moving into a haunted house in LA with his husband Troy (Gavin Creel) and their troubled teen daughter, Scarlett (Sierra McCormick). As Michael and Troy renovate their new property, preparing to open it for ghost-themed retreats, their project starts to go awry and their relationship becomes strained as they argue about money.
Meanwhile, Scarlett begins acting out, viewing R-rated material online that disturbs her fathers, while local teen girls go missing and a mysterious figure in a black bodysuit skulks around with a knife.
“The most challenging aspect in a show like this is keeping it human and grounded when circumstances can get extreme,” said Bomer. “And keeping a sense of humor about it. This franchise has always done a good job of sensationalizing a lot of our fears, but also boiling them down to a human level. There are a lot of parental fears that anybody who has kids in 2021 can relate to.”
Bomer is a veteran of the “American Horror Story” franchise, having previously appeared in “American Horror Story: Freak Show” and in “American Horror Story: Hotel ”in 2016 as Donovan, the companion to The Countess (Lady Gaga). While his two-part episode of “American Horror Stories” soon dissolved into outrageous territory — complete with plenty of dead bodies and blood — Bomer said his previous experience made him feel right at home.
“Honestly, I feel that ever since the blood orgy I did with Lady Gaga, everything is pretty tame after that,” he said. “I was head-to-toe in ‘Carrie’ prom-scene-esque levels of blood. They basically wrapped us up like sardines in tarp in-between takes of that [scene]. It was Gaga and I, and these two wonderful actors who we’d just met 10 minutes before, lying on a tarp next to each other sandwiched in. And they’d peel the tarp off and we’d do the next take. It was very strange.
“So after that, any amount of corn syrup [for fake blood] is pretty tame. That was a wild experience. It was certainly memorable.”
As the two-parter first episode of “American Horror Stories” progresses, and Michael’s life becomes more chaotic, it becomes clear that the ghosts are very real, mirroring Bomer’s real-life experiences.
“I do believe in [ghosts] to a certain extent . . . If you’re not the first occupant of a home, there is a history there, there’s an energy that can carry over into your experience,” he said. “I stayed in this hotel in Santa Fe when I was doing [the 2016 film] ‘The Magnificent Seven’ and there was a sound in the night, like someone was doing some cleaning work . . . So I asked the front desk, ‘Who is cleaning at 3 a.m.?’ and they were like, ‘Oh that’s just the ghost!’ It turned out I was staying in a known haunted hotel.
“I’m glad I didn’t know that before. I think if I had, I probably would have checked out fast.”