October 5 once seemed an interminably long time to wait for this much-buzzed-about series, and now it’s FINALLY HERE. Ready or not. If you’ve read our review of the American Horror Story pilot you know we loved it, and we’ll give you a quick preview of episode 2 right now: we loved that one as well. We’ve shown you clips, we’ve reviewed it, and now we have one more thing to help you prepare: we spoke with the show’s creators.
Brad Falchuk and Ryan Murphy have what we could call a “varied” career as far as genres go, when you consider that they created not only Glee but Nip/Tuck. Their new show is definitely closer to the latter than the former. Word is that the cast of Glee checked out their younger cousin and were terrified.
The co-creators were terrific on the call, and kindly overlooked the squeeing by the SciFi Mafia interviewer, who is clearly a big fan of the show.
SciFi Mafia: Hi, guys. Thanks so much for being on the call. And thanks for the show. It’s exquisite. I just love it.
Brad Falchuk: Thanks.
Ryan Murphy: Thank you.
SciFi Mafia: And these episodes are my favorite kind of show, like the best Disneyland ride, because I’m totally glued to it until it’s over. So this morning as I was watching episode 2, you gave me one of the most horrible mornings of recent memory because it stopped at minute 32. No! [Ed. note – most episodes are about 43 minutes long]
Ryan Murphy: You’re kidding.
SciFi Mafia: It was horrible. It was like, “No! That’s the worst possible” ‑‑ I finally had to ask somebody else, who I knew had it, what happened because I couldn’t go another minute not knowing,
Ryan Murphy: Are you saying that your copy didn’t work?
SciFi Mafia: Yeah. But I’m getting another one. They’re already taking care of it for me. It was horrible to be left at that particular spot, but really any time in the show, because it really is just so gripping for me.
Ryan Murphy: We can act it out for you if you want.
(Laughter.)
SciFi Mafia: I would love that.
Ryan Murphy: I’ll be Jessica Lange.
SciFi Mafia: Perfect, perfect. That would be interesting, actually.
Ryan Murphy: Well, thank you for your nice words.
SciFi Mafia: Oh, no, it’s my pleasure, as I said.
Now, are both of you writing all the episodes, did you write all the episodes, or do you have a writers’ room?
Brad Falchuk: We have a staff of really amazing writers, some that have some of the genre experience. And it’s a very sort of tight staff. Like Jim Wong, who was on The X‑Files and did the Final Destination movie, and Tim Minear and Jen Salt, who was on Nip/Tuck, and a new girl named Jessica Sharzer. They’re all just really ‑‑ they just love the material. It’s exciting. We all get together and sort of talk about what scares us. That was always the idea. It wasn’t like what are the global scares? What are the giant scares that we can talk about? It was more what are the intimate scares? What are the things that keep us up at night or make us keep the light on, and then how do we turn that into a story? So it’s been really fun working with them. They’ve been really great, and they’re big fans of the show themselves.
SciFi Mafia: And do you have plans for further seasons? Have you already sketched out the next five seasons or not?
Ryan Murphy: Well, sure. I think, you know, in today’s marketplace when you go in to pitch a show, you just ‑‑ you know, at least my experience, also working with John and everybody at FX, they don’t just ask you, “Okay, what’s the pilot about?” You know, we talk about the themes of the show, what is the show really about, where is it going. And we certainly did that with this.
SciFi Mafia: Do you have kind of an ideal number of seasons that you’d like to have play out?
Ryan Murphy: You know, I think that we talked about five seasons for the show. But look, if it’s a success, if John would like it to go ten and I’m not in a wheelchair at the Motion Picture home, I would (laughter) ‑‑ continue.
We love doing the show. We have a great passion for it. It feels exactly like when we did Glee. We just couldn’t wait to come into work. We love the writers. We love the actors. Everybody on set is excited and jazzed because you feel like you’re making something kind of that you haven’t seen before on television, and that’s always a very, very exciting place to be. And it happens rarely. It’s happened to us twice in a row, luckily. So it’s just really fun. And October is my favorite month of the year. I was actually supposed to be born on Halloween. My mother went into labor, and then I didn’t come out. So I just love, and I always have, even as a child ‑‑ I love this month. I’m thrilled to be a part of it.
From a broadcast point of view, I think FX has done an amazing job marketing it. It’s a really spooky, scary fall event at a time when you want to sort of turn on the TV late at night, turn off all the lights, and be scared. And that’s what we are delivering to people, I think.
SciFi Mafia: Well, I think you’re absolutely being successful in that. Thanks again so much.
Ryan Murphy: Thank you.
Here are what some others are saying about the show:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dl2g1S6nk20[/youtube]
We hope you’ll like it, too.
American Horror Story premieres tonight, Wednesday, October 4 at 10/9c. (this first episode runs extra long, so be prepared) on FX.
