At last! For months we’ve been waiting for any news about what the plot would be in season 2 of ‘American Horror Story,’ and now we have the juicy details from none other than Ryan Murphy himself!
Little bits and pieces have been teased in the last few months but here’s what we know so far:
- The setting will be in an insane asylum in the East Coast.
- The focal character in this season will be Jessica Lange’s role as the person who runs the asylum.
- James Cromwell will be in a 10 episode arc where he plays an employee at the asylum and whose boss is Jessica Lange.
- Returning cast members include Zachary Quinto, Sarah Paulson, Evan Peters, and Lily Rabe as new characters unrelated to the ones in the first season.
- Chloe Sivegny will be playing Shelly the nymphomaniac.
- Adam Levine has joined on to play one half of the couple known as ‘The Lovers’
- Season 2 will take place in another time period.
Now in an interview with Vulture, Murphy has disclosed even more about the series. Just like the first season had an overlying theme around it (which happened to be infidelity), the second season will deal about sanity. “What makes someone sane or insane?” he questioned, “Sometimes the people you think are insane are actually the most sane of all. It’s fun to write about people who society throws away.”
He also revealed the time period and who the inmates would be in this institution:
“I haven’t said this publicly, but the new season is set in the sixties and Chloë Sevigny, for example, plays a character who was put in an asylum because she was a woman who likes sex, so her husband sends her away. At the time, you were able to put people away for that. Another character is institutionalized for being a lesbian”.
The setting of an institution seems like a good place to write about following the creepy Murder House of season one and opens up a lot of opportunities for the writers to get creative. As Ryan explains:
“To me, there’s nothing more scary than somebody coming to you and saying they’re going to take you away and put you in a mad house and you have no legal rights and there you shall stay till the end of your days. That is a real horror. Everybody has felt people thinking, “You’re f***ing crazy.” Even somebody saying that to you is scary.”
One of the distinct components that make ‘American Horror Story’ unique is that it is an anthology series – somewhat like a mini-series each season. Because of this, the use of actors in different roles may seem odd to the television viewer but it doesn’t seem to faze Murphy:
“I think (the audience) will (adjust to seeing the actors in the new roles… It’s not like the actors are playing similar parts. They’re going to look different, they’re going to sound different, they’re going to have different accents. It’s a different time period. The actors are so excited to do that and hopefully their enthusiasm will translate. I mean, I would pay to watch Jessica Lange read the phonebook. And she’s so the opposite of Constance this year. Like, if she was the wilting Blanche DuBois character, there’s not a shred of that now.”
And for the Evan Peters fans out there, there’s a great surprise in store this year –
SPOILERS – READ ON AT YOUR OWN RISK
According to Murphy, he feels that “people will love seeing Evan Peters, who was last season’s ultimate badass bad boy and this year is the hero of the show.”
So it sounds like fans should not go into season 2 with any preconceptions as Murphy seems to have quite a few surprises in store. Since this season will deal with sanity, I’m sure there will be lots of “what the ???” moments, don’t you think?
