Ryan Murphy don’t need no hateration, holleration in this Grotesquerie.
Photo: WireImage for Vanity Fair
Ryan Murphy is teasing a surprise series for FX called Grotesquerie, a new horror drama coming this fall. Ryan Murphy doing a horror show for FX? Sounds familiar…but no, this one falls outside of American Horror Story’s expansive umbrella. The mysterious teaser, posted to the Instagram accounts for Ryan Murphy Productions and FX, simply displays the names of cast members Niecy Nash-Betts, Courtney B. Vance, and Lesley Manville — while Nash-Betts delivers an eerie voiceover.
“I don’t know what’s started. I can’t put my finger on it. But it’s different now,” she says, in what sounds like a phone call. “There’s been a shift. It’s like something’s opening up in the world. A kind of hole to the center of nothingness. What I saw today…they sent shrinks for everyone who worked this crime scene. You say, ‘Well, hon, evil has always existed,’ and cite some statistic about how the world’s getting better, less murder, more help, less global horror, never been a better time to be alive, hon. Come back. It’s not getting better. And I keep needing to hear your answers, because something’s happening around us, and nobody sees…but me,” she ominously concludes.
Nash-Betts is already a pro at fending off Murphy villains like the Red Devil and Jeffrey Dahmer, having previously worked with the prolific producer on Scream Queens and Monster, the latter of which just earned her an Emmy Award. Courtney B. Vance similarly won an Emmy for portraying Johnnie Cochran in another Murphy-helmed project, American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson.