BuzzFeed News went on an exclusive visit to the American Horror Story: Freak Show set to find out about the celebrated franchise’s most controversial season yet, whether or not this is really the end for Jessica Lange, and who will be returning for Season 5.
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Although night had fallen on the humid New Orleans set of American Horror Story: Freak Show in mid-August, for the sprawling cast and crew, the day was just beginning.
While American Horror Story alumni Jessica Lange, Sarah Paulson, Evan Peters, Kathy Bates, Frances Conroy, and franchise newcomer Finn Wittrock were gathered inside one of the production's three massive soundstages to film the fourth season premiere, across the room, behind a bank of glowing monitors, sat AHS co-creator and executive producer Ryan Murphy, who was directing the episode from a script he co-wrote with Brad Falchuk. As the crew tweaked lighting cues and camera movements with the actors' stand-ins, Murphy grabbed the copy of Susan Meiselas' famed photography book Carnival Strippers sitting next to his director's chair and brought it over to Lange and Paulson. The trio hurriedly flipped through photos of scantily clad circus performers and laughed; the kinds of laughs only elicited by a delicious in-joke cultivated over years of late nights — either on a set or over a cocktail.
Once the crew had everything synced up, the actors found their marks, Murphy returned to his director's chair (extremely modern; white cushion, metallic legs), and silence permeated the room, which was filled with non-working crew members who had gathered to watch the season's first truly big scene: a verbal sparring match between Lange's freak show impresario Elsa Mars and Conroy's socialite of considerable wealth Gloria Mott.
The soundstage, which previously housed Miss Robichaux's Academy for Exceptional Young Ladies, the central set of the series' third installment, AHS: Coven, had once again been transformed into the year's most important set piece: the stage where the cast of Fraulein Elsa's Cabinet of Curiosities would perform their freak show.
Underneath an expansive red and white striped tent worthy of Barnum or Bailey and surrounded by rows upon rows of wooden risers sat the ornate stage where "monsters," as Elsa calls them, would be gawked at, talents would be performed, and dreams would (hopefully) be realized.
But there's no dream more important, or aggressively pursued, than that of Elsa, a fallen star whose wardrobe (an attention-grabbing powder blue pantsuit with matching eyeshadow) was as memorable as her singing. Which, despite her delusions of grandeur, is described as "caterwauling" by Mott.
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