TV SERIES · 2011–present · USA
American Horror Story
- Created by
- Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk
- Network
- FX
- Seasons
- 13
- Episodes
- 145
- Studio
- Ryan Murphy Television, Brad Falchuk Teley-vision, 20th Century Fox Television
35 archived facts 6 topics 2 sources Last reviewed Nov 2026
An anthology horror drama series centering on different characters and locations, including a house with a murderous past, an asylum, a witch coven, a freak show, a hotel, a farmhouse in Roanoke, a cult, the apocalypse and a summer camp.
35 Interesting Facts About American Horror Story
Interesting Facts (25)
- #001
The transition in "Asylum" from Sarah Paulson's reporter to the asylum itself comes straight from real footage of Bill Baldini's exposé on Pennhurst Asylum in Spring City, Pennsylvania. Baldini's reporting led to Pennhurst's closure and the release of all its patients. Today the site hosts a seasonal haunted house and has turned up in many shows because of the paranormal activity reported in its buildings.
- #002
Playing the conjoined twins Bette and Dot in Freak Show meant Sarah Paulson wore a prosthetic head on her shoulder bearing her own facial features, so her filming days ran longer than everyone else's. Paulson said Bette and Dot were in the end the hardest characters she's ever played.
- #003
Freak Show's Edward Mordrake (Wes Bentley) was long mistaken for a real person, but he turned out to be a hoax. As the story goes, he was a nineteenth-century aristocrat with a form of diprosopus: a second face on the back of his head that couldn't eat or speak aloud but could supposedly laugh and cry. Edward reportedly begged doctors to remove his "demon face," claiming it "whispered" to him at night; no doctor would try, and he killed himself at twenty-three. The tale, though, was shown to be false: Mordrake was invented by Charles Lotin Hildreth for a sensational article in the Boston Sunday Post in 1895.
- #004
Cuba Gooding Jr. enjoyed working with Ryan Murphy on American Crime Story: The People v. OJ Simpson so much that he asked to keep the partnership going, which is how he ended up taking a role in Roanoke.
- #005
Sarah Paulson's directing debut was originally going to be the eighth episode of the eighth season, but Ryan Murphy gave her the sixth instead, a truly special episode marking Jessica Lange's return and revisiting the first season's story.
American Horror Story (2011): Sarah PaulsonImage: Wikimedia Commons · Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America, CC BY-SA 2.0 - #006
Ryan Murphy and Jessica Lange grew so close during the first season that Murphy asked her input when writing her later characters. Lange wanted a big drunk scene and a song in the second season (hence Sister Jude doing both), and in the third she wanted to play an elegant woman in Chanel (hence Fiona's impeccable wardrobe). Lange, also a photographer, was especially drawn to the 1950s circus world, which is where Elsa Mars, owner of a freak show, came from.
- #007
The Hotel Cortez is modeled on the Hotel Cecil, with its dark history of suicides and murders and guests that included serial killers Richard Ramirez, the Night Stalker, and Jack Unterweger. The Cecil was in the news in 2013 over the mysterious death of Elisa Lam, to whom the fifth season was dedicated.
- #008
John Carroll Lynch turns up in "Hotel," his second brush with a Zodiac Killer story: in Zodiac (2007) he played Arthur Lee Allen, the case's best-known suspect, and in "Hotel" he plays John Wayne Gacy, sitting across from the masked Zodiac killer as "Pogo the Clown."
- #009
In the first season, Evan Peters' Tate carries out his school shooting on the day Kurt Cobain killed himself.
- #010
Playing Spalding (Coven), Denis O'Hare refused to speak.
- #011
The characters in the fourth season (Freak Show) sing songs released after 1952, when "Freak Show" takes place. Lots of fans complained, but the obvious anachronism was deliberate: Ryan Murphy said in an interview that he picked songs by artists who were known as, or called themselves, "freaks," such as David Bowie, Lana Del Rey and Nirvana.
- #012
Jessica Lange said no to Constance at first, but after creator Ryan Murphy kept offering her the role, she finally took it in the first season.
- #013
The show's "murder house" is really the Rosenheim Mansion, which also served as the fraternity house where characters' fears come to life in Buffy the Vampire Slayer's (1997) Halloween episode "Fear, Itself," the fourth episode of season four.
- #014
Getting ready to play Michael Langdon in Apocalypse, Cody Fern read the Bible and Ayn Rand and studied the political climates of the time around the world and their effect on society.
- #015
In the fourth season, every scene with Bette and Dot took over ten hours, because the coverage, and Sarah Paulson's exchanges with the other actors while switching between roles, had to be filmed several times over.
- #016
The second season's Asylum is actually a courthouse in Orange County, California.
- #017
Evan Peters' Freak Show character, Jimmy Darling, was based on the real "Lobster Boy," Grady Stiles Jr.
- #018
Jessica Lange skipped the fifth season, saying five seasons of one show was enough and she wanted to do something different.
- #019
Husbands Neil Patrick Harris and David Burtka were offered Chad and Patrick in the first season, but Burtka declined, not wanting to play a constantly bickering couple so soon after A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas (2011) in case people thought he and Harris were in trouble. Both later had supporting roles in the fourth season.
- #020
Clowns of America International took a dim view of Freak Show's Twisty the Clown (John Carroll Lynch), feeling he misrepresented clowns and gave them a bad name.
- #021
With the timeline now turned back, "Apocalypse" became the first season to end with all its main characters alive (apart from Michael and Myrtle Snow).
- #022
Each season's opening titles are said to hint at what will happen as the season unfolds. "Coven" was the first to use animation, and "Freak Show" the first to be fully animated.
- #023
Jessica Lange is returning to the four roles she previously played in American Horror Story's 13th season. The actress announced that, in addition to these, she will also play a "mysterious" fifth character.
- #024
The actress also said that Ryan Murphy "promised" her a musical performance. Lange relayed the promise Murphy made on this matter.
- #025
Lange's reprise of her four previous roles in American Horror Story and her playing a fifth mysterious character stands out as a notable development in the new season's cast.
Production Story (1)
- #026
The first season's house is a real place, the Rosenheim Mansion at 1120 Westchester Place in Los Angeles, California, built in 1908 by architect Alfred Rosenheim, one of Los Angeles's most influential architects of the early 1900s, as his own home. The pilot's house scenes were filmed there, after which parts of the interior were recreated on a set, while exteriors are still shot on location.
Behind the Scenes (1)
- #027
The whistling at the end of the first-season finale, as Constance looks at Vivian's baby in its crib, is the same tune Tate whistled walking through the library during the school shooting.
Characters & Cast (3)
- #028
When Cody Fern joined Apocalypse, he was told he'd be the hero against Sarah Paulson's villain; just days before filming he found out he was actually playing the villain, Michael, and Paulson the hero.
- #029
Ryan Murphy called American Horror Story a repertory company where performers get moved around, noting that a role for someone might not exist yet.
- #030
Oscar winner Kathy Bates was confirmed for season three as Madame Delphine LaLaurie, an immortal racist; Ryan Murphy said the character, inspired by a true story, would be five times worse than her role in Misery.
Easter Eggs & References (1)
- #031
The first season's score borrowed from horror films, most notably Dracula (1992), What Lies Beneath (2000), Psycho (1960) and Insidious (2010), along with the whistled "Twisted Nerve" from Twisted Nerve (1968), which Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003) also used. Asylum drew on music from other films too, such as Carrie (1976) and Candyman (1992).
Deeper Meaning (4)
- #032
At PaleyFest 2013, Brad Falchuk said American Horror Story calls for a little compassion at the end, since viewers fall for the characters differently than they would in a film.
- #033
Brad Falchuk compared horror films with a horror TV show: a film can kill off everyone but one person, but a series owes its characters something else, because the audience feels a different kind of affection for them.
- #034
"Dominique," heard again and again in season two, was sung by Soeur Sourire, a Belgian nun, and was a big hit in Belgium, France and beyond in the 1960s. Beset by money problems, she took her own life with barbiturates on March 29, 1985. "Soeur Sourire" is French for "Sister Smile."
- #035
Every season, Freak Show included, dropped hints about the next season's theme.
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Sources & editorial notes
Reference databases
- Wikipedia
- IMDb
Sources for the entries on this page
- Wikipedia American Horror Story — Wikipedia
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