First American Horror Story: Delicate Poster Featuring Emma Roberts Released

American Horror Story fans are looking forward to the upcoming Season 12, dubbed “Delicate,” for a number of reasons, with one of those being that it marks frequent star Emma Roberts making her return to the series after years away. While a handful of teasers and photos have offered glimpses of the new season, an all-new poster teases a disturbing and nightmarish take on motherhood and pregnancy. In traditional American Horror Story style, this poster isn’t a direct reflection of the plot, and merely an evocative interpretation of the new season’s tone. American Horror Story: Delicate premieres on FX on September 20th.

“Don’t worry. We’ll hold you. FX’s American Horror Story: Delicate Part One premieres 9.20 on FX. Stream on Hulu,” the series’ official Twitter account captioned the poster.

Also starring in the new season are Cara Delevingne and Kim Kardashian, who are both newcomers to the franchise. In another first for the long-running series, the upcoming season is based on a story that wasn’t an original creation from Ryan Murphy. Instead, the new season is based on the novel Delicate Condition from Danielle Valentine.

“It is essentially a horror novel about pregnancy,” Valentine previously shared with Entertainment Weekly about the book. “It’s a novel exploring not just the actual physical gruesomeness of what pregnancy is, but also the medical gaslighting that even modern, very privileged women experience as they’re going through their pregnancies and the symptoms that I feel we as a culture still don’t talk about for strange reasons.”

Valentine herself cited not only Rosemary’s Baby as a source of inspiration for the story, but also Alien, which might better explain the imagery in this new poster blending the image of a pregnant woman with a monstrous creature.

“[Alien is] really a movie about pregnancy, but it’s been written by a man who doesn’t understand that that’s what he’s writing about,” Valentine pointed out. “It’s what happens when a guy thinks, ‘What’s the scariest possible thing I can come up with?’ And it’s this idea of, what if you’re growing this creature inside of you and it’s using your resources to get bigger and you can’t control it? It has a mind of its own, and then one day it just bursts out of you in this gruesome, bloody mess. When I first saw it when I was a kid, it didn’t occur to me that that’s basically what pregnancy is, but at six months pregnant, I’m like, ‘Oh, wow! That’s just a pregnancy story without the pregnancy.’ That was the seed right there.”

Stay tuned for updates on American Horror Story: Delicate before it premieres on FX on September 20th.

Are you looking forward to the new season? Let us know in the comments or contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter to talk all things Star Wars and horror!