Ryan Murphy rejects Grotesquerie-AHS comparisons

Ryan Murphy has heard the questions about the naming conventions of his various FX series, but he doesn’t see the validity.

The TV mogul tells Deadline that he would “strongly disagree” with the suggestions grotesque should have been under the American Horror Story banner, or that the story of Aaron Hernandez would have been more suitable as a new installment of American Crime Story instead of the first in a new anthology series, American Sports Story.

“grotesque has nothing in common American Horror Story. It just doesn’t. I think it’s the difference between doing Don’t look now i Halloween I would never have fit in that show. It was never considered for that. It’s a very different animal,” he said of the new horror series starring Niecy Nash, which revealed a major twist in the story that Murphy and FX chief John Landgraf also discussed with Deadline.

From American Sports StoryMurphy added that the series is “less about crime, but about toxic masculinity (and) concussion injuries…”

“I think what does overlap is my interest in my tone and my casting and world-building and all that stuff,” he said. “When it came out, and I started hearing about it, because I wasn’t reading anything, I was like, ‘What are you talking about?’ No, it’s nothing like that.

These are just four of the several series Murphy currently has on FX, which also include American horror stories i doas well as those still in the works like American Love Story — the first season of which is slated to depict the relationship between John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy — i The Beautywhich in some ways Murphy says is a more modern take on the same themes he previously explored Nip/Tuck.

But while all of these series may have some overlapping themes, each has “a distinct set of influences” that sets them apart in his mind.

For the record, Landgraf agrees. He explained to her that, American Horror Story is “a simple horror structure with a very inventive tone and atmosphere and visual language and characters”.

“(grotesque) is not that. You can already see that it is not. It’s a totally existential thing. It’s more like it come out or something that’s full of misdirection and social commentary, and isn’t one And then there was none-horror-type,” he continued. “So I can understand, certainly, that you sympathize with people who were confused by it, because nominally it’s horror, but it’s really its own, totally different thing. I think it would have done both of them a disservice American Horror Story i grotesque put it in there, because it’s not just a subset of American Horror Story. It’s its own thing, totally different.”