American Horror Story resets its story every season but keeps its actors
Each season of American Horror Story is a self-contained miniseries with fresh characters and a new setting, yet the same performers keep returning in different roles. Evan Peters and Sarah Paulson have appeared in ten seasons apiece, and the first installment drew more viewers than any other new cable series of 2011.
Created by Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk for FX, the show launched what became the American Story franchise. Rather than one continuous saga, each season tells a tale with its own beginning, middle and end. All of them share a single fictional universe, which allows occasional crossovers and links the show to its episodic spin-off, American Horror Stories. Some plot elements are loosely drawn from real events.
The first season, set in 2011, follows the Harmons, who leave Boston for Los Angeles hoping to repair their marriage, only to learn that their restored mansion holds the ghosts of everyone who has died on the property since it was built in the 1920s. The second jumps to 1964 and Briarcliff Manor, a church-run Massachusetts asylum where Sister Jude, played by Jessica Lange, presides over patients who face both demonic possession and alien abduction. The third, set in 2013, turns to descendants of witches who survived the Salem trials, sheltering at a New Orleans boarding school while rivals jockey to succeed the coven's leader, Fiona Goode.
Repertory casting is the show's signature. Frances Conroy has appeared in nine seasons and Denis O'Hare in eight, while Kathy Bates and Angela Bassett each reached six. Usually an actor comes back as someone entirely new, though now and then a character returns.
Critical reaction has varied from one season to the next, but the cast has drawn the most consistent praise. Lange won two Emmys, a Golden Globe and a Screen Actors Guild Award for her work on the series; James Cromwell and Bates each took an Emmy; and Lady Gaga won a Golden Globe. The anthology has delivered reliably high ratings for FX.
Source: American Horror Story
