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This article discusses potentially triggering topics such as murder, gun violence, sexual assault, and harm against children.

Ryan Murphy is no stranger to controversy. In his shows, he openly showcases the Lgbtqia+ community and doesn't shy away from social commentary. Recently, a lot of criticism has centered around Murphy's true-crime shows, like Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story. But, he made his first notable mark on the controversial TV scene back in 2011 with the premiere of American Horror Story.

American Horror Story is one of the best-known horror shows of the modern era. It's known for its iconic ensemble cast, with names like Evan Peters and Sarah Paulson popping up frequently throughout the season. The show always features themes reflecting cultural anxieties, horror genre tropes, or just general spookiness. But no two seasons feature the same themes, as it's an anthology series with a new setting, plot, and characters every season.

Actress and director Sarah Paulson has undeniably marked her place in fans' and critics' hearts as a bona fide scream queen. Over the years, she has racked up numerous iconic performance credits, including Lana Winters, Cordelia Goode, and many more in FX's American Horror Story, as well as her most recent appearance as Margaret Bellum in the 2024 Hulu original film, Hold Your Breath. Given these performances, which have garnered wins and nominations from both the Critics' Choice and Emmy Awards, there is no doubt that Paulson's horror roles are impressive, memorable, and career-defining.

However, Sarah Paulson's credits also include a particularly surprising role. One which has seemingly slipped through the cracks of many fans' minds. She guest-starred as a young Dr. Ellis Grey in a 2010 episode of the timeless hit medical drama, Grey's Anatomy. Why did this role become a forgotten piece of the actress's telegraphy? Maybe because...

It’s not unusual for an actor to receive nine Emmy nominations throughout their careers. This year alone, stars like Jennifer Aniston, Hank Azaria, Christine Baranski, Alex Borstein, Sterling K. Brown, Carol Burnett, Larry David, Donald Glover, Jon Hamm, Steve Martin, Bob Odenkirk, Maya Rudolph, Martin Short, Jean Smart, Holland Taylor and Kristen Wiig all hit nine or more career Emmy bids. However, Sarah Paulson stands alone in that all nine of her nominations came for nine different projects.

This year, Paulson is up for her guest stint on Prime Video’s “Mr. and Mrs. Smith,” in which she plays an unnamed “Therapist” in the episode titled “Couples Therapy (Naked & Afraid).” She treats married spies John Smith (Donald Glover) and Jane Smith (Maya Erskine) at her luxurious home, and she gets into a bit of trouble when she reveals she’s been recording their therapy sessions.

Paulson’s co-nominees...

AHS: Asylum takes inspiration from real-life horrors like the Willowbrook State School, adding to its bone-chilling realism. Characters like Lana Winters and Kit & Alma Walker are based on real people and events, adding depth to AHS: Asylum. Dr. Arthur Arden and Dr. Oliver Thredson are inspired by real-life monsters like Josef Mengele and Ed Gein, making Asylum even more chilling.

While American Horror Story season 2, Asylum, is easily one of the darkest seasons of the anthology TV series, several of its twisted storylines are actually based on true stories. While American Horror Story tells some of the most disturbing tales on television, the stories become all the more bone-chilling when discovering that each season draws from real-life people and events. AHS season 2's Asylum is still considered one of the show's best installments after over a decade on air, partially because of how real Ryan Murphy's horror story feels.

AHS Delicate is heating up with an explosive second half, setting up a jaw-dropping climax after the mid-season finale. Fans await connections to past seasons as only four episodes remain. Will the familiar characters tie into a larger narrative? Beware of potential overlapping characters like Billie Dean Howard, Michael Langdon, Lana Winters, and the Montgomery and Mott families.

It’s a new year, and it’s time for new scares, or at least to finish the old ones. American Horror Story is returning to finish Delicate with an explosive second half. The key players are on the board, and we’re headed towards what will no doubt be a jaw-dropping climax following the stunning mid-season finale. The chaos won’t stop there either because FX has ordered a 13th season just days before the return.

It’s been a unique season of the long-running anthology, but fans have noticed something is missing.

Warning! This article contains spoilers for Mr. & Mrs. Smith season 1!

Sarah Paulson's role in Mr. & Mrs. Smith marks a new trend in her career after leaving American Horror Story. Her guest appearance in the show provides comedic relief in the midst of dramatic episodes, with the impact being similar to her cameo in The Bear season 2. Paulson's recent appearances emphasize her potential in comedy TV roles and the desire to see more of her in that genre.

Sarah Paulson’s role in Amazon’s Mr. & Mrs. Smith series confirms the start of a new career trend after her decade-long stint on American Horror Story. Emmy winner Sarah Paulson is arguably best recognized for her many roles in American Horror Story since 2011, having portrayed memorable figures such as Lana Winters, Cordelia Goode, Sally McKenna, and Billie Dean Howard. However, Paulson exited American Horror Story after season...

American Horror Story features varying timelines and interconnected storylines that span different time periods and locations, making it challenging to follow at times. Each season introduces new characters while also bringing back familiar faces, creating surprising connections between seemingly distinct narratives. The show explores themes of societal prejudices, mental health care, witchcraft, addiction, and political manipulation, blending real-life horrors with fictional terror.

Each season of American Horror Story is its own concise story, but each installment marks a chapter in a much larger shared universe, meaning the full American Horror Story timeline is tough to pinpoint. American Horror Story is best known for its wildly varying timelines, the same actors playing multiple roles in the same season, and its insertion of characters from a previous season into a newer season. Each season takes place during different time periods and locations, yet there are some surprising connections.

American Horror Story season 4, Freak Show,...

Margot Robbie, now a big star in Hollywood, could have been part of American Horror Story: Asylum. Robbie auditioned for the show in 2011, and casting director Eric Dawson was impressed, recognizing her star potential. It's not specified which part Robbie auditioned for.

According to American Horror Story casting director, actor Margot Robbie auditioned for the hit show. Robbie has been a big star in Hollywood for several years, but with her success as the lead of Greta Gerwig's Barbie, a movie that continues to break box office records, the actor's profile has risen even further. But back in the early 2010s and before her breakout role in Martin Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street, Robbie could have joined the anthology American Horror Story during what was arguably the peak of the show's critical acclaim.

In an interview with Backstage's In the Envelope: The Actor’s Podcast, casting...

Every season of American Horror Story takes inspiration from real characters and events, though making significant changes to them to fit the show’s style and tone, and American Horror Story: Asylum has many characters based on real-life people. After exploring the stories of the ghosts living in a haunted house in American Horror Story: Murder House, the series took the audience back to the 1960s in AHS: Asylum to see the horrific events that took place at the fictional mental institution Briarcliff Manor. Asylum mixed the horrors of social experiments, racism, and a serial killer with a supernatural element that might seem out of place: aliens.

American Horror Story: Asylum followed the stories of Kit Walker (Evan Peters), an innocent man arrested under suspicion of being the Bloody Face killer; Lana Winters (Sarah Paulson), a journalist whose investigation of Briarcliff led her to be committed to it; and Sister...

While the immortal spell was fictional, American Horror Story: Coven’s character Delphine Lalaurie was actually based on a real-life New Orleans woman of the same name. AHS: Coven was the Ryan Murphy TV Show’s third installation, focusing on a small coven of young female witches in modern-day New Orleans, led by The Supreme Fiona Goode (Jessica Lange) and her daughter Cordelia (Sarah Paulson). The coven had to channel their powers and hide their magic from society, all the while engaging in a centuries-long feud with the local Voodoo witches led by Marie Laveau (Angela Bassett).

While American Horror Story is a work of fiction, the series does draw from real-life historical events and includes more sinister characters based on real people like that of Delphine Lalaurie. For example, AHS: Asylum's main antagonist Bloodyface, the first iteration, was Dr. Oliver Thredson, who is based on serial killer Ed Gein.

Ryan Murphy's long-running horror anthology series American Horror Story is well-known for its campy and excessive approach to its genre, but what is somewhat less known is the extent to which it draws on real-life inspirations to ground its fantastical narratives. Both those seasons set in the past and the present often have one foot in the world of reality and one in the sideways world so commonly found in horror. Thus, the series has always excelled at tapping into the most frightening and disturbing aspects of American history to anchor its often bizarre plots.

These real-life inspirations help to ground American Horror Story throughout its various seasons. When viewers find themselves confronted with elements of the real world that they know, this gives the horror a bite, sometimes lacking in other similar series. Thus, beneath all the excess that so often characterizes this series and its approach to its stories,...

Like any other season from American Horror Story, American Horror Story: NYC has links to past seasons, thus expanding the series’ connected universe, but it also repeated one of American Horror Story: Asylum’s most disturbing themes. After a not-so-successful tenth season with American Horror Story: Double Feature, the series continued with NYC, which mixed supernatural elements with real-life issues and horrors that made the fear and tension a lot more real than in other seasons.

American Horror Story: NYC took the audience to 1980s NYC and into the LGBTQ+ community, taking a close look at their different struggles and how they were affected by the rapid spread of AIDS. In addition to that, and because this is AHS, the characters had to deal with a serial killer with truly disturbing plans and a supernatural entity that ended up being linked to the AIDS epidemic. One of...

American Horror Story continues to not-so-subtly build its connected universe, and while it has already solved some old mysteries, it has also made others more confusing, such as what happened to Kit’s children after Asylum, as American Horror Story: Double Feature made their nature more confusing. American Horror Story has explored a variety of fears and creatures, and for its second season, the widely acclaimed Asylum, it mixed two very different themes that, ultimately, worked quite well: a mental institution and aliens.

One of American Horror Story: Asylum’s main characters was Kit Walker (Evan Peters), a young man falsely accused of the killings committed by the Bloody Face murderer after he had a close encounter with aliens. Among the twists and turns in Asylum was that both his wives, Alma and Grace, were abducted and impregnated by the aliens, giving birth to a daughter and a son,...

Evan Peters has been in more seasons of FX’s “American Horror Story” than any other male actor, appearing in all of them except for Season 9, “AHS: 1984,” and the upcoming Season 11, “AHS: New York City.” (Sarah Paulson matches his track record for female actors.) Soon after winning an Emmy in 2021 for HBO’s “Mare of Easttown,” Peters returned to “AHS” during the long-awaited pandemic-delayed Season 10, “Double Feature: Red Tide.” Over the past decade, nearly all of his characters have stuck with viewers (we’re going to pretend Jeff Pfister didn’t exist).

Read on for our listing of Evan Peters’ “American Horror Story” characters ranked worst to best. (Or scroll through our gallery for photos.) Agree or disagree with our picks? Be sure to sound off in the comments section. Peters is currently getting awards buzz for playing the titular serial killer in Netflix’s “Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story.

Content Warning: This article contains mentions of graphic violence, murder, and death.

American Horror Story might be an anthology show but in recent years characters from previous seasons have begun to reappear. Characters like Lana Winters, Cordelia Goode, and Constance Langdon have become firm favorites over the show's run, so much so that Ryan Murphy couldn't resist bringing them back.

Realted: 10 Single-Season American Horror Story Actors Who Should Come Back

One of the most exciting elements of the show is waiting to see which past characters will show up again. Even over one season, fans become attached to the different characters so it's always exciting when they show up again later. With season 10 having just begun, fans will be left wondering if any past characters might show up this time around.

Although we've only seen two episodes so far, FX's American Horror Stories has already given us a new iconic character in the premiere: Sierra McCormick's Scarlett, aka the Rubber Woman. The prickly Scarlett becomes one of Murder House's latest victims after her dads (Matt Bomer and Gavin Creel) buy it to flip it into an upscale haunted-house experience. After a few nights in her new home, Scarlett's dark side intensifies when she puts on Tate Langdon's old gimp suit, and she spares no one who scorns her, especially not the mean girls at school. McCormick delivers a tour-de-force performance that explores every creepy and complicated aspect of Scarlett's character. So who is McCormick, and where might you have seen her before? Here's what to know about the 23-year-old actress's impressive résumé!

Related: American Horror Stories Is What Nightmares Are Made of, and We've Never Been More Ready

McCormick's...