American Horror Story Season 2 – The Search Begins for the New Cast
Steve Barton
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In probably one of the most ballsy moves in television history, the “Glee” team of Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk killed off almost the entire cast of its “American Horror Story”, leaving fans wondering what’s on tap for Season 2. Recently during the Television Critics Association event FX president and general manager John Landgraf offered some insight.
“Ryan Murphy’s already looking for that cast,” Landgraf said. “He’s already in active conversations with new people and also two or possibly three of the existing cast members. Some series regulars or guest cast may be continuing next year although they would be playing entirely new roles. We just didn’t want to tell the audience that because the experience of not knowing where it would end would be diminished if they knew we were going to burn this cast and location to the ground.”
Landgraf continues, “I was really excited about this idea from the get-go. One of the things I think Ryan’s particularly strong at is creating a really distinctive world in all its aspects. That includes the tone and mood of the place, the costume design and music, cinematography. If you looked at the way those characters were dressed, right down to Jessica Lange’s wardrobe and the way her hair was styled, Ryan Murphy was involved in every aspect of that. Even with ‘Nip/Tuck’ he wanted to recreate it at a certain point so he moved it from Miami to LA. This gives him the opportunity to do that every year.”
“They have more leeway and creative freedom than most so I don’t know every detail of everything they’re up to, [but] I certainly knew a lot,” Landgraf said. “I knew the entire family was going to die by the end of the season. One of my biggest concerns about the piece is that the nature of the genre is that you’re always ahead of the protagonist. You know things the protagonist doesn’t know so we knew that certain critics and audiences would get frustrated with the leads. It’s just a classic rule of storytelling the leads should know more than the audience, or at least not less. After the lead characters were dead and knew everything, they were at least by the end of the piece able to recapture their status as leads. The final episode where Vivien and Ben Harmon spook the new couple out of the house was the first time in 7 or 8 episodes where they were ahead of the audience. It was an experiment. I didn’t know if that would alienate the audience. It didn’t in terms of viewership. That’s Ryan. He’s going to push the form and go to places you wouldn’t expect.”
Look for more on Season Two as it develops.
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