American Horror Story is an American anthology horror television series created and produced by Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk.
1. The series is broadcast on the cable television channel FX in the United States.
2. Creators Murphy and Falchuk began working on American Horror Story before their Fox series Glee began production.
3. Murphy wanted to do the opposite of what he had done previously and thus began his work on the series. He stated: “I went from Nip/Tuck to Glee, so it made sense that I wanted to do something challenging and dark. And I always had loved, as Brad had, the horror genre. So it just was a natural for me.
4. Falchuk was intrigued by the idea of putting a different angle on the horror genre, stating that their main goal in creating the series was to scare viewers. You want people to be a little bit off balance afterwards,” he said.
5. From the beginning, Murphy and Falchuk planned that each season of the series would tell a different story.
6. Every season including Freak Show with the Top hats, has given hints as to what the next seasons theme will be.
7. Murphy once explained the process of planning a series’ season takes about a year. “We come up with story first and then we come up with the characters,” he said. “It is a repertory company, so we’ll move people around and sometimes there won’t yet be a role for somebody. Like when we started [the second season], I really had no idea that Dylan [McDermott] would be the person to play Sarah’s son, but the deeper we got, I thought, that would work great.
In the season premiere of American Horror Story: Freak Show, Elsa Mars (Jessica Lange) smokes a cigarette at a hospital and says; “It’s fine. It’s Lucky Strike. It’s good for you”.
Read here more awesome facts about Lucky Strike cigarettes!
8. On September 2nd, 2014, Ryan Murphy (creator) announced to the public that “All the seasons are connected to each other in somehow, someway.”
9. Connie Britton was first to be cast in the series, portraying female lead Vivien Harmon on Murder House.
10. Denis O’Hare joined second as Larry Harvey.
11. Jessica Lange originally turned down the role of Constance in season 1, but finally accepted after creator Ryan Murphy repeatedly offered her the role.
12. Constanse was her first regular role on television!
13. Ryan Murphy and Jessica Lange became so close friends during season 1 that Murphy has consulted with the actress when writing the other characters. For example, Lange wanted to play a big drunk scene and sing in season 2 (therefore sister Jude does these things), she also wanted to play an elegant woman wearing Chanel in season 3 (therefore Fiona dressed impeccably). Lange herself is also a photographer.
14. For the first season, the sequence is set in the Harmons’ basement and includes images of postmortem young children, fetuses in jars, skulls, a christening dress, a nurse’s uniform, and a figure holding a pair of bloody hedge clippers.
15. A photo of alleged axe murderer Lizzie Borden is shown.
16. American Horror Story’s title screens offer vague hints to important plot elements and events that compose each season. For Murder House, Murphy described the sequence as a mini-mystery and stated that: “By the time you see the ninth episode of this season, every image in that title sequence will be explained,” establishing the purpose of the title sequence for future season.
17. Neil Patrick Harris and David Burtka were offered the roles of Chad and Patrick on season 1, but declined because Burtka didn’t want to play a couple in constant fight shortly after A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas (2011). He feared that people would think Harris and he were a troubled couple.
18. Emma Roberts and Evan Peters, who have each played major roles in multiple seasons of American Horror Story, share more than just a professional relationship. They began dating in 2012, and on January 6th, 2014, it was officially confirmed by ‘People Magazine [us]’ that the couple had gotten engaged over the holidays. They later split, but in September 2015, it was confirmed they were together again.
19. The first season used horror film scores for its soundtrack, most noticeably the scores from “Bram Stoker’s Dracula”, “What Lies Beneath”, “Psycho” and “Insidious”. Also used the whistled “Twisted Nerve” from “Twisted Nerve”. “Twisted Nerve” was also featured in Kill Bill.
20. You can actually stay at Miss Robichaux’s Academy in Louisiana and create your own coven for $5000 dollars per night.
21. The school shooting victims on Murder House – Boggs, Greenwell, Stanley, Stapleton, and Gedman – are all named after former Boston Red Sox players.
22. The murdered cheerleader played Evan Peters’s girlfriend on One Tree Hill.
Read here awesome facts about One Tree Hill!
23. Alma and Kit Walker were inspired by real people.
24. Dominique, the song we hear repeatedly during season 2, was interpreted by a Belgian nun called Soeur Sourire and was a big hit in Belgium, France and elsewhere during the 60’s. She commited suicide with barbiturates on March 29 1985, because of financial problems. “Soeur Sourire” is French for “Sister Smile”.
25. Delphine Lalaurie and Marie Laveau were real people.There’s no evidence that they ever met, but they did both exist in New Orleans around the same time, and certainly both women had reputations which preceded them, so it’s likely they at least heard of each other. Marie Laveau was a famous Voodoo practitioner, and Delphine LaLaurie was a wealthy plantation owner who became somewhat more dubiously famous for brutally torturing and murdering many of her slaves.
26. While in character as Spalding (Coven), Denis O’Hare refused to speak.
27. Ben Woolf, who played the character Meep in season 4, passed away after being hit by a car on February 23, 2015.
28. Evan Peters plays Jimmy Darling in AHS: Freakshow. His character is based on the real life “Lobster Boy”, Grady Stiles.
29. Every scene involving Bette and Dot on season 4 required more than 10 hours to film, because it had to be repeated several times to film coverage and the interactions between Sarah Paulson, playing each time a different role, and the other actors.
30. 19-year-old Jyoti Amge, who plays Ma Petite, quickly became a lot of people’s favorite new character from Freak Show. Though her premiere in show business may seem thrilling to the rest of us, in Amge’s home country of India, where the majority of the population is Hindu, she’s widely regarded as a living incarnation of a goddess due to her unorthodox stature. Becoming an American television star is probably no big deal by comparison.
31. Edward Mordrake was a real person. To be fair, surviving records of Mr. Mordrake’s case in medical literature have been described as “apocryphal,” meaning there’s no clear evidence proving that his case was real. Supposedly, though, Mordrake was a young aristocrat born with a vestigial face on the back of his head, which he claimed, “never sleeps, but talks to me forever of such things as they only speak of in Hell.” According to these accounts, Mordrake did eventually kill himself.
32. The American Morbidity Museum is based on a real place. The Mütter Museum in Philadelphia, which has existed for many decades, is one of the only museums in the world that displays the skeletons, organs, and other physical remains of people throughout history with unusual bodies. Among other specimens, the museum’s collection includes the conjoined livers of famous Siamese twins Chang and Eng, the skeletons of a dwarf and a giant, and preserved slices of Albert Einstein’s brain.
33. The Hotel Cortez is inspired by the Hotel Cecil which has a dark history which includes several suicides, murders, and was stayed at by serial killers Richard Ramirez a.k.a. the Night Stalker and Jack Unterweger. The Hotel Cecil made news recently with the mysterious death of Elisa Lam (to whom season five is dedicated).
Got anything to add?