Ryan Murphy is on a hot streak right now, with Feud: Bette and Joan being rapturously received and the seventh season of American Horror Story going into production. But this new outing sounds as if it’s to be a bit of a departure for the horror anthology show. Murphy previously announced that the series would be about the recent presidential election, but clarified that Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton would not be characters.
He’s now reversed that position, however. In an interview with E! Online, Murphy explained that:
“[We haven’t cast Clinton or Trump] yet. We’re halfway through the writing and not yet. But it’s really, really fun. It starts on election night is all I’ll say…”
He continued:
Horror Story is always about allegory, so the election is allegory. It’s our jumping off point. It is about the election we just went through and what happened on that night and the fallout of that night, which to many people, from all sides of the camps is a horror story. And you know, that show is always so fun when it’s about the zeitgeist and what we’re doing now.”
Now, there were few more terrifying nights than watching the results rolling in on November 8th. I sat there with a gnawing feeling in my belly, soon followed by a cold sweat and a rictus expression of horrified disbelief. Someday there needs to be warts n’ all dissection of that crazy campaign and what follows (and continues to happen). But is American Horror Story, up to this point a slightly cheesy over-the-top horror show, the place to do so? That’s up for debate.
American Horror Story has been of variable quality, occasionally feeling as if it’s bitten off a little more than it can chew. Can it really do this very important story justice while managing to be entertaining schlock? I guess we’ll find out.
In the meantime, Murphy is keeping busy with an already confirmed season 2 of Feud, this time about the collapsing marriage between Charles and Diana, as well as continuing production on Katrina and Versace, and the next two seasons of American Crime Story.