SciFi Mafia was exSQUEEsingly excited about attending the Paleyfest panel for SOMEONE’s (my) favorite new show of 2011, American Horror Story, on March 2. We were given some wonderful insights into the making of Season 1, and a few tidbits about what is to come in Season 2, which will premiere in the fall. The Season 2 bits will be at the end, in case you don’t want to be spoiled, but really, there isn’t anything too spoilery, so enjoy!
In attendance on the panel were creators/showrunners Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk, executive producer Dante Di Loreto, and actors Jessica Lange, Dylan McDermott, Connie Britton, Sarah Paulson, Frances Conroy, and Alexandra Breckinridge. Taissa Farmiga and Evan Peters had both reportedly wanted to attend but are each working on other shoots at the moment.
The evening began with a screening of the penultimate episode of Season 1, “Birth.” If you ever get a chance to see a great TV show in a theatre, do it, you’ll get a whole new appreciation. When asked afterwards why this was the episode chosen to be screened, Murphy replied that it was his favorite episode; he loved the acting, the secrets that had to be kept about it, and the look. Connie Britton said that the birth scene was a wrenching three-day shoot.
The showrunners were asked about the birth of the series. Falchuk said about Murphy that he “is so good at finding something that the audience doesn’t know it wants yet.” Murphy said that the two of them started talking about AHS right at the end of Nip/Tuck, and that they “wanted to do a little novelette about infidelity.” It moved to the back burner when Glee came along.
In answer to a question that probably all of the fans had, Murphy acknowledged that AHS was always going to be an anthology series, though very few people knew that. It was definitely how they pitched the series to Connie Britton and Dylan McDermott, which was part of the attraction for the actors. Falchuk said, “I think it’s very hard to maintain the tension of a horror show over the course of three or four seasons because eventually you’ll say, well, get out, especially now in 2012, I think they’d find out about the house on the internet.”
Here’s a clip that gives you a feel for the panel, and more about how Connie Britton, Dylan McDermott, and Jessica Lange became involved in the show:
Murphy told Lange that in creating the part he was thinking “what would have happened to Blanche Dubois [the role she played in A Streetcar Named Desire on Broadway] after she got out of the looney bin?”
Not surprisingly, there was a lot of talk about Dylan McDermott’s bare butt, and about his naked, crying and masturbating scene. He said there was no way he was going to have a body double. Dante Di Loreto pointed out that sexuality is part of horror but usually means a bare breasts, and that this was a twist on that. The character was a sex addict, and this was therefore a necessary aspect of the role. Alexandra Breckinridge was also asked about her part; she said she was nervous about the look of her character but knew what the part was. “There was really good lighting.”
There was of course some discussion about the Rubber Man. Murphy has a large personal research library, and had “a great book about sadomasochistic wear from the 50s”. The picture of the rubber suit was on the cover. It originally had breathing tubes, but they looked “too whiskery” so they adjusted it. The moderator asked Falchuk, “When Ryan brings you a picture like this and says ‘this is what we’re doing’ do you say to yourself ‘this is f*cked up’?” Falchuk said no, “this is Tuesday.”
Dylan McDermott had to be fitted for the rubber suit, “but you have to be naked, and you have to get lubed.” He also said it was a great weight loss program, because you sweat so much in it. Connie Britton was most comfortable with McDermott being the one in the suit, so he was always the one wearing it in her sex scenes with Rubber Man, even though it wasn’t always supposed to be his character. Britton said, “when I first read the pilot, I was convinced that Rubber Man was gonna go. There was no way that was gonna make it into the show, not a chance. Cut to – I had a lot of sex with the Rubber Man.”
Sarah Paulson and Jessica Lange were in The Glass Menagerie on Broadway together, and Dante Di Loreto was the producer, about 7 years ago. She didn’t come up with a back story for her character of the psychic in the show; most of the preparation she did with Ryan Murphy was in the look of her, right down to the fingernails. Murphy said, “the main question about the psychic was ‘was she real, or was she fake?’ and the answer was, ‘both.’”
They were asked if they were surprised that the character of Tate, who was really evil, was apparently so well liked by the audience. Falchuk replied that, because the timeline jumped around so much, we were allowed to fall in love with him first. “Our intent always was to never judge any of the characters, I think that’s one of the reasons Constance works so well, and (Tate) works so well.”
The Infantata was very difficult to cast. The man they finally found “is a great guy who’s really a school teacher and just does a little bit of acting,” according to Murphy. “We worked a long time on casting molds. It was also the start of my obsession with the Lindbergh baby kidnapping gown, so we designed it to match.”
Because they had so little time between shooting the pilot and the series, the house they used for the pilot (which is now for sale) was used for most of the sets, since they didn’t have much time to build sets in a studio. Di Loreto said it’s located “in this fantastic messed up neighborhood in LA. It was actually a church for a while, and is currently across the street from a convent. (The nuns) loved the Halloween episode.” The worst part of shooting on set were the flies that they brought in for the scene when they find Violet’s body. Once that scene was over there were still quite a few flies hanging around.
Connie Britton was asked about the “parts” she had to eat. The “brains” were “some kind of weird gelatin thing that they made. The props department, who was amazing, a good couple of weeks before we were going to shoot it kept coming at me with spoons – ‘does this taste ok, because it could be the brains.’” She had to eat quite a few different “parts” but everything else she ate on camera besides the brains ended up on the cutting room floor, “which I resent,” she said, smiling.
Murphy, Falchuk and Di Loreto were asked about the challenges of running both Glee and AHS at the same time. Murphy said that the Glee kids were fans of the work of AHS; “they would sneak over and watch Jessica work, or Dylan and Connie work, and they were much more excited about what was going on in (AHS) than they were about the next (Glee) script. Falchuk said that the challenge of working both shows was the endurance sport aspect of it, and said that in fact on separate days he and Murphy each showed up to the wrong place for production meetings. Murphy and Falchuk both said it was hardest on Di Loreto, who acknowledged that it was a little schizophrenic, since several aspects of several episodes of each show were going on at the same time.
As for other challenges of the show, and whether there was ever any hesitation by the cast or the network about any aspect of the show, Murphy replied that he was adamant about having the show air around Halloween, and FX was reportedly great about working with them on that time frame. Murphy: We were shooting episode 5 or 6 by the time the show got on the air… and who knew if it was going to work. Really for us it was just a really great opportunity that we were thankful for. I remember when we did the pilot it was very clear like – let’s just go for this, let’s be brave and let’s risk failing because greatness usually comes out of that if you’re lucky enough, and the actors really did embrace that.” Standards took out one shot, one that the writers were actually on the fence about, “but otherwise everyone just embraced that it was very much a Grand Guignol emotional experience.”
Di Loreto: “It’s a very rare time that we’re existing in where the studio and the network were fully invested, fully on board with the show, and even though the scope of it may have exceeded what the original idea was, clearly everyone wanted to give us everything that we needed to make the show a success.”
They did take some time for fan questions near the end. One fan asked about the source(s) for the series. Murphy: “For me the show really is the evil stepchild of Dark Shadows. My grandmother, whom I was very close to, used to make me watch Dark Shadows as punishment when I was three, which says everything about who I am today”. And different scenes reflect different influences; the scene in the pilot when the Infantata attacks was actually modeled on Diane Keaton’s work in Looking for Mister Goodbar “which scared the sh*t out of me when I was young.”
Another fan asked about the creation of the opening title sequence. It turns out that Murphy is a giant fan of title sequences.
It was very important to me that (the title sequence) be in the pilot because I love title sequences and I really wanted it to evoke a mood, a very special feeling. For me the best title sequence I’ve ever seen in a film was for Seven, so I went to that team… We hadn’t shot a frame. They read the script and they came and talked to me, so I encouraged them to come to the set… A lot of things in that title sequence were clues. Almost all of them were answered except for one, which was the guy with the clippers, which was something we entertained as a story line and then dropped. And we’re going to do the same thing this year, that’s one of the hallmarks of the show.
Speaking of unanswered questions… Constance’s fourth child? Murphy: “We know who the fourth child is, it is something we had written and talked about and we had removed but we have not lost sight of the fourth child and in a fun show like this, that could be Season 4.”
NOW ABOUT SEASON 2 – As we reported on Friday, Jessica Lange is coming back. We learned earlier in the day that Zachary Quinto will also be back. At the panel, we got a little bit more:
We’re writing it so we don’t want to talk about it too much but the interesting thing about it is that anybody could pop up at any time, first of all. you know this year for Connie and Dylan and Taissa, the Harmons, they’re exhausted, let’s give them at least one season off, but we really love that Orson Wells Mercury Theater approach, so Sarah Paulson is coming back, and Evan Peters is coming back, and Lily Rabe (the original owner in Season 1) is coming back. Some people have gone off and made movies and other TV shows, but the door is always open for fun crossover cameo stuff. But it’s a very fun idea to take a group of actors that you love, and say “come play on the playground as a completely different person in a completely different story.” And every year in the series is about a different haunting, so everybody will be playing the opposite of what they’ve been playing, which is fun.
Shooting starts in July, with the series airing around October. The actors don’t know anything about the storyline yet. Jessica Lange said, “it’ll be terrifying in June. Now I’m pretty relaxed about it.”
When asked if there will be ghosts in the east coast institution (an aspect which Murphy didn’t discuss) in Season 2, Murphy replied:
Well, never say never about the ghosts, but I’m more interested in – there are so many great genre subsets of horror – our only rule in the show is no werewolves and no vampires. I think a supernatural element will always be part of the show but I don’t think we’re interested in (ghosts)in the same way, I think we’re trying to do something more historically accurate… From where we are now (in writing it), I’d say it is a very equally terrifying but very different vibe. The ghost thing I loved, and I loved the “are they alive/are they dead,” but the fun part of the show, the gift of the show, is to sort of reinvent it every year, so I don’t think we’ll go back to the trope that we did.
Thanks to all of the panelists for attending and giving such terrific insights, and to everyone involved in Paleyfest for the terrific event.
American Horror Story Season 2, starring Jessica Lange, Zachary Quinto, Sarah Paulson, Evan Peters, and Lily Rabe, premieres in Fall 2012 on FX.
