Jessica Lange played major roles in the past three seasons of "American Horror Story," but the upcoming installment is what lies closest to her heart as she was the one who first brought the subject of Freak Show to the attention of series' co-creator Ryan Murphy.
As a photographer, the 65-year-old award-winning actress has always been interested in the unusual world of traveling sideshow, according to Hypable. "It is an amazing history," she said of such shows. "And I've always been fascinated by a community of people living like gypsies, on the road and traveling from place to place and, in this case, heightened to the degree that they're all extremely special."
Murphy echoed Lange's fascination in carnivals in a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly. "If you look at her photography, she's always interested in the lost and the forgotten and the beautiful survivor of it all," he shared. "We talked about it like every couple of weeks."
Murphy also revealed that Lange, in fact, sent him a book, and so he started immersing himself into the realm of carnival. "I really loved the idea of it because I felt it was such a ripe world," he said. "The carny world, the freak show really ended for the most part when television began. So one freak show replaced another so that was always the idea."
Murphy also added that he loves Tod Browning's 1932 horror film "Freaks" and "Carnival of Lost Souls," so they decided to move forward with the theme.
"It's also our biggest year so I think it took a while and it took success for us to earn the money to do what we had to do," he continued. "We had to build an entire city. We built an entire huge compound and then we had to build the interior of all those buildings on set. It's all period. And it's all based on [production designer] Mark Worthington's immaculate research."
"Jessica went she first walked in said she was brought to tears. She kept saying, 'It's like a poem. It's like a poem,'" he recalled. "It's a very romantic, sad place."
"Freak Show" is probably Lange's last season. During an interview with BuzzFeed last year, which took place while "Coven" was airing, she confessed that she made the decision that she would only sign on for one more season.
Murphy had also addressed the possibility of Lange's leaving the show in an interview with Vulture last year.
"I'll always work with Jessica and I'll always do whatever she's interested in doing. There are no bad feelings at all. I totally respect her point of view. If she doesn't do season 5, I'll definitely spend a lot of my time trying to seduce her with stuff for seasons 6 and 7 because she's Jessica Lange and I love her," Murphy said.