Posted in: FX, Netflix, TV | Tagged: ahs, American Horror Story, dahmer, evan peters, fx netflix

American Horror Story Season 10 Was Supposed to Have More Evan Peters

Evan Peters originally had "a very big role" & "a very different role" set for American Horror Story Season 10 - and then "Dahmer" happened.

Published Tue, 13 Jun 2023 12:29:11 -0500

by Ray Flook

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Normally, we would be sharing another update on how things were going with production on Ryan Murphy & Brad Falchuk's American Horror Story: Delicate. But for this go-around, we're actually taking a look back to the tenth season. Split into two parts ("Red Tide" & "Death Valley), the pandemic-impacted American Horror Story: Double Feature was a mixed bag, to say the least – with "Red Tide" being our personal favorite. One of the biggest reasons for that was the on-screen chemistry between Evan Peters (Austin Sommers) and Frances Conroy (Sarah Cunningham, aka Belle Noir) – we could've watched an entire season focused on just those two characters. Well, we might not have gotten an entire season, but according to long-time Murphy casting director Eric Dawson, we were supposed to get a lot more of Peters that season. That is until Murphy wanted Peters for the Netflix limited series Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story. Because before that happened, Peters had "a very big role" and "a very different role" set for the season.

"The truth is that Evan wasn't available. He was doing 'American Horror Story' Season 10 on the East Coast, and we were shooting on the West Coast. So as much as our first conversations were like, 'Wouldn't Evan be great,' it really wasn't practical, especially during the pandemic, getting him back and forth. He had a very big role in season 10 and a very different role. So we just sort of knew that even though he was our dream guy, it probably wasn't possible," Dawson shared during an interview with Awards Daily. "I spent a few months looking at other Dahmers, I think we saw about 700 possible Dahmers altogether, all on tape. We got done with that search, and we had some really good people, but then Ryan was like, 'I think we have to see if we can make it work with Evan.' We knew that Evan would just knock this out of the ballpark."

So it sounds like the writers behind AHS Season 10 had to do some serious maneuvering to free up Peters for Murphy's Netflix project. "And so 'Horror Story' peoples' heads, of course, exploded, but we made it all work, and it was worth it. That's the great thing about Ryan. Most showrunners would go oh, he is unavailable, we have to move on. Ryan figures it out. We wrote scenes together, we changed schedules, we did everything. Because at the end of the day, Ryan knows that casting is as important as the script, so he does whatever is possible to make sure he has the cast he wants," Dawson added.

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