Jessica Lange is a frequent collaborator with Ryan Murphy. The actress has worked with him for quite some time across various television series including four seasons on American Horror Story, her turn as Joan Crawford in Feud, and her latest role as Dusty Jackson in Netflix’s The Politician. However, despite working extensively with Murphy on various projects here’s still one thing she won’t do for him: gore.
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During a press conference promoting The Politician, Lange told Screen Rant that the gore element of the popular FX series is something that she didn’t want to be involved in even from the beginning and that Murphy always respected that.
“There are things that, I tell you, I won’t do,” Lange said. “But we have come to kind of an understanding. For instance, in American Horror Story, my characters never had to… Over those four years of doing that, I wasn’t involved in the really gory aspect of that series. I said, from the beginning, I didn’t want that. The thing that interests me was the psychological danger. You know, the failings. But did not want to do the other stuff. And he always respected that. So instead, he would give me, like a Bowie song to sing, which was a great trade-off.”
The Bowie song Lange is referring to is actually two — “Life on Mars” and “Heroes” — that her character Elsa Mars performs in Asylum. Specifically, her performance of “Heroes” being a major part of the season finale, something that underscores that there is more to American Horror Story than just the violence and gore of each season. But even looking beyond that, Lange is right. Her characters really aren’t part of the gorier aspects of the series and it doesn’t seem like they ever will be. Lange recently suggested that her time on American Horror Story is done.
“I don’t think so,” Lange said. “I feel like I got the best of it in those first four seasons. Great characters. It was exciting to do. I worked with some of my favorite actors, but I can’t see that we could ever get back to that.”
She had previously indicated that the only reason she returned to the series for Apocalypse was a very specific scene: Constance Langdon’s death.
“To play a part like that, to play a scene like that, I find deliriously fun because it’s total abandon,” Lange said. “There’s no reason, there’s no logic. It’s just about the physical and emotional. So the idea that she is basically OD’ing and having these — are they visions, her children come to see her? It was my favorite scene to shoot, because there is a physical abandon to it that I always like to investigate.”
American Horror Story: 1984 airs Wednesdays at 10/9c on FX.
