FX recently set the premiere date for the fourth installment of its critically acclaimed anthology series “American Horror Story: Freak Show” for Wednesday, October 8 at 10 PM ET/PT., which went along with the first promo.
A third has just swung in, along with a family portrait photo, courtesy of THR.
“American Horror Story: Freak Show” begins its tale in the quiet, sleepy hamlet of Jupiter, Florida. The year is 1952. A troupe of curiosities has just arrived to town, coinciding with the strange emergence of a dark entity that savagely threatens the lives of townsfolk and freaks alike. This is the story of the performers and their desperate journey of survival amidst the dying world of the American carny experience.
Jessica Lange, Kathy Bates, Angela Bassett, Frances Conroy, Sarah Paulson, Emma Roberts, Gabourey Sidibe and Evan Peters return. New cast includes Michael Chiklis, Wes Bentley, John Carroll Lynch, Finn Wittrock, Patti LaBelle and the world’s smallest living woman, Jyoti Amge.
“At every freak show, you have the tropes but there’s some [that are] unique and weird,” Murphy told THR about season four. “It’s about something: It’s about outcasts and how society at that time … true stories about circus performers who were cast aside. The story in many ways dovetails with Asylum, because they leave one era and you can see many of them in real life were put into asylums. There’s a great symmetry we’ve come up with that’s rewarding.”
Judging from the official Freak Show hashtag, the series will explore the “freak” in all of us, as the German #WirSindAlleFreaks translates to “we are all freaks.”
“It’s darker than Coven; it feels very unique,” Murphy told The Hollywood Reporter of Freak Show. “I directed the first one and I haven’t done that since the very first one of season one. It feels like a Douglas Sirk movie; it’s very 1952 presentational and then the horror is an unexpected jab. As opposed to last year, which was crazy camera work and comedy. This year feels different. The special-ability cast that we have is amazing and I feel so thrilled because for so many of them, it was their dream to be actors and they didn’t have any opportunities. There’s a great community. They feel part of something perhaps for the first time in their life and that’s an amazing thing that I was really emotional about when I was directing them.”
