STACK October 2016 Issue 144

32 / 125

T he fifth season of Ryan
Murphy and Brad Falchuk’s
award-winning American
Horror Story ventures into The
Cortez, an infamous Los Angeles
hotel. Series regular Denis O’Hare
returns, this time as Liz Taylor, the
Cortez’s transgender bartender who
possesses an insight into the dark
secrets the hotel holds.
With each season of AHS
exploring a different theme, O’Hare
admits the subject of Hotel is
difficult to narrow down, noting
that parents and children figure
prominently.
“[There’s] John and Alex and
their obsession with their lost child,
Holden; I have a child who I abandon
– I can’t say too much given what
episode we’re in, but other people
have children. Iris and Donovan…
the dominant theme for her life is
her tortured relationship with her
son. The Countess, in a way, makes
children by making vampires, and
so there’s a fear attached to losing
your children, to losing your family,
but it also dovetails with the idea of
identity."
The actor adds that many of the
hotel’s residents are attempting to
escape their past and must face
personal demons, as opposed to
literal ones.
“As Liz, I run from a past, which
at some point I’m going to have
to deal with, probably. So many
characters are looking at unrequited
love or the wreckage of a past
and they are fearful of facing that
wreckage. It’s funny, it’s a really
mature theme and it’s actually
nothing to do with classic horror or
fear of monsters. It’s fear of things
within you that you haven’t resolved,
in a way.”
It’s not just facing your fears
that this season explores, but
also evoking fear from ordinary
locations. In discussing the idea
behind American Horror Story,
O’Hare acknowledges the
worldwide phenomenon
of horror, and finds that
the typical American
landscape makes for a
specific kind of horror
that he regards highly.
American Horror Story regular Denis O'Hare frocks up for the
series' fifth season, Hotel. Words Adam Colby
visit
32 OCTOBER 2016
DVD&BD
FEATURE
When these
American Horror
Story actors
aren’t giving
us the creeps,
they’re stealing
the spotlight on
the stage.
Denis O’Hare
Winning a Tony for his
performance of
Mason Marzak
in Take Me Out,
O’Hare was
also nominated
as Charles Guiteau
in Assassin and played
Ernst Ludwig in the
1998 revival of Cabaret.
Jessica Lange
After leaving the AHS
family with her
Freak Show
character Elsa
Mars, Lange
spent some
time as Mary in
Long Day’s Journey Into
Night, earning herself
a Tony Award in the
process.
Sarah Paulson
Very active in the stage
circuit, Paulson
made her mark
on Broadway
in Collected
Stories and The
Glass Menagerie, as
well as spending many
years in off-Broadway
performances.
FinnWittrock
Debuting on Broadway
in 2012, Wittrock
brought Happy
Loman to life
in Death of a
Salesman. Also
performing in
Shakespeare’s Romeo
and Juliet and Othello,
he will hit Broadway
once again in 2017 for
The Glass Menagerie .
Words Savannah Douglas
• American
Horror Story:
Hotel
is out on Oct 6
“I think of The Amityville Horror
as being the exemplar. There's
something about east coast old-
fashioned houses with attics – big
rambling houses are very American.
You think about a slasher movie
where you’re in the middle of a plain,
in a farmhouse in Kansas. I mean, In
Cold Blood , Truman Capote’s great
novel, is a horror novel in many ways
and what makes it so horrible is that
it’s about an ordinary town; these are
normal people and things just don’t
happen there.
“America has a patina of
wholesomeness, whether real or
imagined, that I think this exploits,”
he adds. “You take the underbelly of
America and you open it up; America
prides itself on being so moral and
so wholesome and so clean cut,
so to subvert that I think is a very
American opportunity.”
On facing the challenge of his
fifth – and incredibly unique – AHS
creation, O’Hare confesses that the
process of makeup plays a huge part
in discovering and encapsulating his
characters over the years.
“I would let that makeup dictate
me, and once I was in the wig
and makeup, I stopped speaking. I
wouldn’t speak anymore because
I just felt like I was being jokey if
I went in and out of character like
that,” he says.
“And Liz, the same thing, I’m
not an outrageous, fabulous person
in real life, but put me in heels and
something happens, something
comes out. I tend to be a little more
aggressive than I normally am.”