What Brought Jessica Lange Back To ‘American Horror Story’ In The Past Could Work Again
Jessica Lange is many things. She’s a legend in Hollywood and an Academy Award-winning actress, to name a couple. She is also one of the original leads on American Horror Story, starting in the very first season as Constance Langdon, mother to Tate and Addy. Since then, Lange took on starring roles in the series all the way through the fourth season, Freak Show. She did come back to reprise the role of Constance in American Horror Story: Apocalypse, but there isn’t specific talk of her returning to the series soon.
Even though the public doesn’t know if she’ll come back to the show in the future, Ryan Murphy has some techniques to get her back, and it could work again.
Ryan Murphy knows how to pick the right roles to “seduce” Lange back on set
In an interview with The Wrap’s Emmy Magazine in August, Lange shared that Murphy, the creator of the show, just has a perfect way with words when it comes to asking her back on the show. “It was like all conversations with Ryan,” she said about the time he asked her to return for Apocalypse. “He is extremely… Can I use the word seductive? He knows exactly what to say to whom. I think he knows me so well by now that he hits all the key phrases right off the bat.”
As stated above, the show had gone three seasons without Lange, and this was Murphy’s way of bringing her out of her AHS break.
Playing her original role of Constance was part of the draw
It wasn’t just Murphy’s way of asking. Lange was also drawn in by what Constance was given in Apocalypse. “So, for instance, he’s talking about the relationship with the children and a 10-page monologue, the drunkenness, and the death,” she explained. “He hits all the scenes that would make it interesting for me to come back to play this character.”
In Apocalypse, the Murder House and Constance are revisited when Madison and Behold travel to it to find answers about Michael, the Anti-Christ. Constance is her typical, dramatic self for most of her time on that season. Her storyline ends when she kills herself because she can’t cope with raising Michael, and would rather die in the house and spend the rest of eternity with her three kids there than being killed by Michael elsewhere.
“To play a part like that, to play a scene like that, I find deliriously fun because it’s total abandon,” Lange said of her monologue and final moments as Constance. “There’s no reason, there’s no logic. It’s just about the physical and emotional… The idea that she is basically OD-ing and having these – are they visions, her children come to see her? It was my favorite scene to shoot.”
She likes to work
On top of the role, Murphy also caught Lange at a good time. “He usually catches me when I’m sitting out here in the middle of nowhere, doing nothing and I think, ‘Oh, yeah, maybe I should work. Maybe I shouldn’t quit quite yet,'” she said. “That’s how it happens. He knows what I like to do and what appeals to me as an actor to play.”
So basically, it sounds like Murphy knows exactly how to craft a role for Lange that will get her to come back. She was on his Netflix show, The Politician, and his other FX show Feud. Murphy also said in an interview that he’s already contacted fan favorites for Season 10, the last season AHS is confirmed through. So Lange might show up on the horror show sooner than we think.
