‘American Horror Story’ Needs Kim Kardashian
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Pregnancy and its various complications have always been fertile ground when it comes to horror. From devil children to… well, it’s always devil children, isn’t it? Which is why the most recent season of American Horror Story: Delicate — which deals with the heartbreaking trials and errors of IVF — could have easily been a joyless slog. Haven’t we seen enough movies where a woman has the audacity to want a child, only to give birth to Damien? Thank God, then, for Kim Kardashian.
Say what you will about Ryan Murphy’s various foibles, but he sure knows how to cast a diva. Whether it be Lady Gaga as a blood-guzzling vampire queen on American Horror Story: Hotel, Dominique Jackson as the grand dame ballroom queen on Pose, or, sure, Lea Michele as… Lea Michele on Glee, Murphy has an eye for talent that imbues his dark shows with a much-needed burst of campy levity. And with AHS: Delicate, he knocked it out of the proverbial park with Kim Kardashian, an early contender for this season’s MVP: Most Valuable Publicist.
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American Horror Story: Delicate — based on the truly excellent thriller by Danielle Valentine — follows aging actress Anna Victoria Alcott (played, for some reason, by 32-year-old Emma Roberts) on her quest to have a baby via IVF… and win an Oscar. Since the OG book is loosely based on Rosemary’s Baby — and this is American Horror Story after all — you can probably suss out that things do not go quite as planned in the pregnancy department. And that’s a trend we’re seeing quite a bit these days — from Shauna’s terrible miscarriage in the most recent season of Yellowjackets to movies like Huesera: The Bone Woman and any number of body horror flicks about pregnancy. The horror show that is trying to have a baby is a worthy narrative for AHS to tackle, but, thankfully for those of us in the trenches, Kim evens out all that heartrending drama with her portrayal of Alcott’s trash-talking, frozen-faced publicist Siobhan Corbyn.
Kardashian may have had her ups and downs in the acting department in the past (that Razzie for Temptation: Confessions of a Marriage Counselor probably still stings), but she was made to play Corbyn, the bodycon dress to Alcott’s boxy suits. In the second episode of the season, now on Hulu, Anna deals with some truly horrifying pregnancy highs and lows — ending, spoiler alert, with what she thinks is a miscarriage. It’s a heartbreaking moment that likely could have turned off viewers dealing with the same thing, but Kardashian is the foil for all that — making both Anna and the audience laugh through the darkness.
Kardashian steals nearly every scene she’s in — which is quite a feat when you’re contending with Cara Delevingne performing an unsanctioned ultrasound. First, she winks at a past scandal when she presents Anna with the dress that Madonna wore to the 1991 Oscars — a Marilyn Monroe-esque affair that was clearly a nod to the Monroe gown Kardashian borrowed (and apparently damaged) for the Met Gala. She then busts out a requisite Madge impression with Roberts of “Sooner or Later” from Dick Tracy, which Madonna performed at the awards — a silly moment for sure, but one that cuts through layers of anxiety that had the potential to be suffocating.
Murphy also gifts Kardashian with some of the show’s best lines: a plea to Anna to stop walking around looking like a “cat’s asshole,” a spiel on how to gaslight everyone so they’ll forget your media faux pas, à la Olivia Wilde, and more than her share of foul-mouthed bon mots. Could the bit get tired as the season goes on? Sure. But that’s kind of the deal when it comes to Ryan Murphy, at least when he’s firing on all cylinders — the relentless darkness and camp even out eventually. And given the subject matter of Delicate, we’re going to need Kardashian vamping for all she’s worth to get through it.
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