Here's What It Was Like Filming 'AHS: Cult' Right After the 2016 Election
If American Horror Story is known for one thing, it's nightmare-inducing storylines. Now entering its eighth season, the show has produced a series of horrifyingly memorable episodes—ones that, while highly dramatized, often hinge on realistic aspects of American society. But the most difficult season to shoot, according to the cast, was the last—thanks, in large part, to how closely AHS: Cult mirrored the polarized political landscape in the U.S.
Members of the cast, including series veterans Sarah Paulson and Evan Peters, gathered for an Emmy FYC panel at the WGA Theater in Beverly Hills on Friday night, moderated by showrunner Ryan Murphy. They opened up about what it was like to shoot the seventh season on the coattails of the 2016 presidential election—and they were beyond candid about it.
Paulson said that she'd initially assumed she and her costars would have already worked through their feelings about the election by the time filming began. As it turns out, the opposite was true: "By the time we were shooting... we all thought that maybe we were not over it but in a place where having to access this would be sort of easy," she explained. "But...it just felt way too fresh. Too soon to be reenacting it with a sense of safety for your internal well-being... it was like, nope, go in there and pick at it."
Series newcomers Billy Eichner and Leslie Grossman agreed with Paulson that the politically-charged subject matter was incredibly difficult to tackle. Grossman said that for her, filming proved emotionally taxing—due in large part to her character, who commits a mass shooting in the season.
"I'm not afraid of clowns; I don't have phobias; I'm not afraid of all that stuff. I'm afraid of gun violence, so confronting that directly was uncomfortable," she explained. "When I shot that scene, the first take, I thought I was going to throw up. There was a minute or two when my heart was pounding; I broke into a cold sweat; and then I gathered myself and kind of got myself together. But it's much scarier to do the real stuff than over-the-top horror stuff."
Eichner agreed that filming these scenes was difficult but also recognized that not addressing the issues could have been problematic, too: "It's such a huge story, and it's impacting our lives on a personal level, on a sociopolitical level. If you don't deal with it, you kind of feel like you might be irrelevant, and if you do deal with it—well, you have to have a fresh take on it because there are so many people with their take on it 24/7 on TV and on Twitter and everywhere."
Ultimately, members of the cast agreed, Murphy's willingness to immediately tackle controversial topics is part of what makes the show so enticing—and important. As Eichner said: "[The show is] obviously a horror, but for me—in a good way—it made me laugh a lot, because I really think it was ultimately a satire of the insane and absurd and highly charged time that we're living in."
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