Ryan Murphy is pushing back on fan speculation that the 13th season of “American Horror Story” centers on a single past installment, revealing instead that the anthology’s next chapter will pull characters from across its full history. Speaking to Entertainment Tonight on Monday while promoting his new series “The Shards,” Murphy said set photos from New York had led viewers to assume a “Coven” revival, but the season goes considerably further than that.
“Everybody thinks it’s a Coven season and it’s not. It’s all the seasons,” Murphy said. “Sarah Paulson is playing six or seven roles. Jessica Lange is playing all four of her iconic characters. Evan Peters is playing five characters. It is like the Avengers. They all come together to defeat the ultimate evil.”
Lange’s involvement marks a notable reversal. The actress largely stepped away from the franchise after 2014’s “Freak Show,” returning only briefly in 2018 to reprise Constance Langdon from the original “Murder House” season, and had repeatedly said publicly she had no plans to come back in a larger capacity. Murphy said convincing her required a direct pitch. “As soon as I pitched it to them, many of them had said no over the years, they were like, ‘Well, OK, I’ve gotta come back for that,'” he said. “But I pitched Jessica Lange and she was like, ‘Oh shit, now I gotta do it.'” He added that the season runs 13 episodes to match its title, a structure he said took years to write.
Peters, who has appeared in numerous prior “AHS” cycles, told The Hollywood Reporter earlier this year that he was startled by Lange’s decision. “Ryan knows how to have those dinners. He will get you in a second. I was definitely shocked, but thrilled, honestly,” he said in January.
The season’s cast also includes Emma Roberts, Angela Bassett, Kathy Bates, Billie Lourd, Gabourey Sidibe, Leslie Grossman, Alex Consani and Paul Anthony Kelly. Ariana Grande had been set to make her franchise debut this season but exited over scheduling conflicts tied to her Eternal Sunshine tour.
FX describes the season as bringing back an ensemble of returning fan-favorite roles to close out a franchise that has drawn more than 700 million streamed hours worldwide across its prior chapters, from a haunted family home to a witches’ coven to a traveling freak show. “American Horror Story: 13” premieres Thursday, Sept. 24, at 9 p.m. on FX, streaming the next day on Hulu domestically and on Disney+ internationally.
