The Terrifying Rise of Ryan Murphy, TV's Most Divisive Man

Kim Kardashian in the latest episode of American Horror Story Photo: Alami

The final season of American Horror Story has a few surprises creepy sleeves. In one unexpected development, AHS: Delicate features Kim Kardashian in a direct dramatic role (the series premiered in the US last week, with no UK release date yet for Disney). What's even scarier is that Kardashian deserves the role. The Hollywood Reporter claims she outshines her co-star Emma Roberts; USA Today praises her for realizing the show's «high potential.»

Kardashian plays the role of Roberts' assistant to high-profile Hollywood star Anna Victoria Alcott. At first glance, Anna has the whole world: her latest film has received acclaim, and she is in a loving relationship with her art dealer husband (Matt Czuchry). However, behind the scenes, all is not well. After several failed IVF attempts, Anna is desperate to get pregnant. Due to her anxiety, she began to experience daydreaming visions related to her struggle to conceive. She's living the Hollywood dream, but her life is a nightmare.

Anna's ordeal may be a metaphor for the recent travails of American Horror Story and its creator, TV mega-producer Ryan Murphy. On the surface, all is well: Exactly one year ago, Murphy achieved one of the biggest successes of his career when his Dahmer crime film, Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, became Netflix's third-most-watched drama of all time.< /p>

He's working on a second series of Monster for Netflix, this time telling the story of the Menendez brothers, who murdered their wealthy parents in Beverly Hills in 1996. Meanwhile, Disney is so eager to lure him back from the streamer, with whom it signed a $300 million production deal and is preparing to break the bank — even as it sharply cuts budgets across every aspect of its operations.

However, as in the case of Delicate, the picture is completely different. when you peel back the layers. Murphy has always been controversial: his breakthrough hit, the surgical horror-comedy Nip/Tuck, dealt with themes of incest, organ harvesting and child abuse.

However, over the past few years, especially in the last few months, he has received more and more criticism. And for all of Dahmer's success, and despite protests to the contrary, it's not at all obvious that Netflix would be sorry to see his back.

The show comes four years after a deal with Netflix that has so far yielded only flops with films like The Politician, Hollywood and The Prom. In contrast, another high-profile Netflix outsider, Grey's Anatomy's Shonda Rhimes, made an instant sensation in Bridgerton.

Dahmer also caused controversy. Subscribers flocked to him. However, reviewers felt that the gruesome portrayal of Jeffrey Dahmer's murders bordered on voyeurism. “There is no real justification for its existence,” said The New Yorker. “This turns Dahmer into a terrifyingly immortal thing: an icon,” decries Vanity Fair.

Ryan Murphy in 2016. Photo: Jason LaVeris/FilmMagic

Journalists weren't the only ones shocked. The families of several of Dahmer's victims criticized Murphy. Rita Isbell, the sister of Errol Lindsay, whom Dahmer killed at age 19, said Netflix «profited» from the tragic story.

Murphy said he has tried to contact the families but has had no luck. “This is something we have been researching for a very long time,” he said. “And we, over the course of three, three and a half years when we actually wrote this, worked on this, we reached out to 20 — about 20 families and friends of the victims, trying to get information, trying to talk to people, and not a single person got back to us in this process.»

However, it was only this summer—especially after the start of the Hollywood writers' strike—that the backlash against Murphy reached critical mass.

He was accused of breaking the strike by keeping three plants open while the rest of the industry shut down. Murphy is a member of the Writers Guild of America, but he is said to have gone on to oversee American Horror Story and two other shows: American Sports Story (about the downfall of American football player Aaron Hernandez) and American Horror Stories (an AHS anthology). as director and producer.

David Schwimmer and John Travolta in Ryan Murphy's American Crime Story. Photo: AP

The cover was blown by none other than Kim Kardashian, who didn't seem to notice the writers picketing the set. She tweeted that she was taking a break from filming and asked her followers if anything was wrong? A lot, the strikers said: for example, there was a picket line that she had just crossed.

WGA «Strike Captain» Warren Leith accused Murphy of threatening his cast and crew, who said those who worked with the producer were told they would be «blacklisted in Murphy country» if they did not show up for work . Murphy denied this, and his lawyers threatened to sue the WGA. Leith deleted and retracted the tweet, saying the allegations were «baseless» and «totally false and inaccurate.»

The controversy is not over. The debut of «Delicate» last week was marred by claims from actress Angelica Ross, who appeared in «Murphy's Pose» and previous seasons of AHS, that Emma Roberts made a transphobic comment on the set of «American Horror Story: 1984.» She later tweeted that Roberts called her to apologize for behavior that «was not ally behavior.»

Hey guys!
I'm on the set of AHS and we have some time between shots. What are you all doing????

— Kim Kardashian (@KimKardashian) June 23, 2023

However, if Roberts was forgiven, Ross did not spare Murphy. In another tweet over the weekend, she accused the producer of not doing enough to combat racism on his sets. She claims that one of the crew members on the AHS set wore a series of «racist» T-shirts with slogans like «Build that wall» and «I don't kneel» (a dig at Black Lives Matters and the ritual of kneeling). ). Ross says she refused to leave the production van until the situation was resolved and accuses Murphy of blaming her.

“Ryan Murphy calls me directly…” He starts by saying, “Are you okay?” Not «What's going on?» He starts: “What the hell is your problem?!” Are you serious?!» He says, «You think I'm going to silence you after everything I've done and I've been an advocate and done nothing but uplift trans black women?»

It was a reference to Pose, which told the story of gays and the Voguing trans scene in New York in the eighties. Ross continued, “This isn’t the first time I’ve encountered this energy at rodeos from white people who think they’re doing well but don’t hold back when some black people or people they’re trying to help tell them, ‘Wow. you have a blind spot.» (In a conversation with The Hollywood Reporter, Murphy's co-producer Tanase Popa disputed Ross' version of events: «[Murphy] basically said, 'I don't understand why you came on Twitter instead of coming to us.'»

She claimed that Murphy also ghosted her after he responded positively to her idea for an AHS series with an all-black cast. “Remember your idea for a season of HORROR starring black women? Well, I’m doing it,” Murphy wrote to Ross, according to a screenshot she shared on Twitter. “I’m not sure about the plot yet, but we’ll be opening a writers’ room in the fall.” That was the last she heard, and Murphy has yet to publicly respond to her comments.

This isn't the first time Murphy has been blamed for a botched film set. In 2020, Glee's Lea Michele! was accused of bullying by several former cast members. Michelle's co-star Heather Morris said the actors were too scared to speak out.

“I think a lot of people were very scared,” she said. “I know, honestly, I didn’t feel like this was where I belonged. And I don't know why, because I was an actor just like everyone else, and we all deserve to feel comfortable on set.»

Murphy admitted that Glee! it was not the easiest time in his life. The show became a mega-hit, making him famous after the cult success of «Nip/Tuck». However, he said the behind-the-scenes drama sometimes got out of control.

Lady Gaga in American Horror Story Photo: FX

“There was a lot of infighting. There were a lot of people who slept together and broke up,” he recalled in 2021. “It was good training for being a parent, I can tell you that. But I also made a mistake: we all got personal.”

Just this year, Michelle revealed she «reached out» to former cast members who felt they were bullied and said she wanted to «make amends.» Either way, the controversy has done little to change Murphy's position at Fox or Disney, which acquired the network in 2019. From serial killers to sex-obsessed plastic surgeons, his work is the antithesis of Disney and its family values. is set to leave Netflix and return to Fox, where he produced some of his best-known shows, including the first and second seasons of American Crime Story, which revisited the case of OJ Simpson and Gianni Versace.

Despite this. recent flops and hostility surrounding the latest American Horror Story, the industry still considers him a proven hitmaker. That's why even he will continue to work with Netflix, both on the new season of Monster and the sequel to his other big crime hit, The Watcher.

“Very few people can do that. to do what he ended up doing at Netflix,” said streamer CEO Ted Sarandos. “Everyone knew about Versace. Everyone knew about OJ. Everyone knows about Jeffrey Dahmer, but he takes these familiar stories and makes them completely fresh.»