American Horror Story has been thrilling and terrifying audiences since 2011.
Although shooting one of TV's scariest series can be a living nightmare, there aren't many
scenes that the American Horror Story cast would take back.
But for some of the actors, things on set got a little too real.
Usually, when an actor is struggling with their lines, their main concern is that the
dialogue won't be convincing enough.
But Gabourey Sidibe had a much more chilling problem in one scene of American Horror Story:
Coven.
In the episode "Go to Hell," Sidibe's character Queenie chants a Latin phrase that will summon
Papa Legba, the gatekeeper to the spirit world.
Given that Papa Legba is one of the American Horror Story characters based on real people,
Sidibe was understandably reluctant to disturb the actual spirit.
According to Sidibe, her concerns turned out to be well-founded.
In March 2015, during a panel titled "The Television Academy Presents: An Evening with
the Women of American Horror Story," Sidibe said that as she was chanting, the light fixture
in the room started shaking, and her back went out.
When they moved on to shoot a different angle, the light fixture crashed to the floor.
They resumed shooting, and that's when Sidibe felt a finger move up her chin to her lip,
which started to swell.
Waiting in the makeup trailer for a medic, Sidibe and the makeup artist could hear scratching
on the outside, which she described as
"[...] like something was trying to get in."
Sidibe decided the best approach was to pray, which seemed to work, as it put an end to
the noises.
Once home, Sidibe called her Catholic friend, who gave her a devil-banishing prayer.
Everything was peaceful until it came time to shoot the final episode of the Coven season,
which required that the rest of the cast say the words as well.
When some of the ensemble found themselves struggling with the Latin, Sidibe reluctantly
agreed to say the lines again.
This time, she felt a finger run from her forehead to her top lip, which immediately
swelled up again.
"Do not do this at home, you guys."
American Horror Story has treated us to many terrifying supernatural characters.
But one of the show's most disturbing monsters was actually a human — albeit one with a
psychotic disposition who did not respond well to not getting his way.
In American Horror Story: Freak Show, it initially seems like the most fearsome villains will
be Twisty the Clown, played by John Carroll Lynch, and Edward Mordrake, played by Wes
Bentley.
And to be fair, you wouldn't want to run into either of them on a dark night in the woods,
or even a sunny picnic.
But it was the spoiled, "freak"-obsessed Dandy, played by Finn Wittrock, who really upped
the violence and sadism — and who audiences most wanted to see get his deserved fate.
Unlike Twisty and Mordrake, Dandy's murders weren't inspired by vengeance for a lifetime
of abuse.
He killed out of petty vindictiveness and to feel a sense of power.
Freak Show was Wittrock's debut season of American Horror Story, and one particular
scene left him so shaken that he almost didn't want to return.
In 2015, he told Popsugar that the scene that bothered him the most was when Dandy massacres
most of the remaining cast of the freak show.
"That was actually the one day that I walked home like, 'Argh I really hate myself and
don't wanna do this.'"
He described his mental state afterward as "really despondent."
However, Wittrock got over that initial shock.
He's since become a main fixture of the series and the entire American Horror Story timeline.
Like his season-after-season co-star Sarah Paulson, Evan Peters has been a mainstay throughout
the American Horror Story anthology since the very beginning.
In fact, he's embodied some of the darkest characters the series has ever seen.
On the inaugural season, later subtitled Murder House, Peters played teenage ghost Tate Langdon,
who committed mass murder in his high school when he was alive and continued to do terrible
things as a ghost trapped in the titular home.
His characters on seasons 2 through 4 — Kit Walker, Kyle Spencer, and Jimmy Darling — weren't
exactly Tate-level terrifying, but his character on season 5, the twisted serial killer James
Patrick March, chilled viewers to their core.
They felt the same about the handful of characters he played on American Horror Story: Cult,
which was a mix of real-life and fictional murderers.
By his own admission, Peters has felt uncomfortable filming a number of scenes for American Horror
Story, and has felt personally affected by the subject matter at hand.
In a July 2018 interview with GQ, he sha red that shooting such sinister material is, quote,
"exhausting" to the point where he's questioned his own identity afterward.
Peters said,
"It's really mentally draining, and you don't want to go to those places ever in your life.
And so you have to go there for the scenes, and it ends up integrating it somehow into
your life.
You're in traffic and you find yourself screaming and you're like, 'What the hell?
This isn't who I am.'"
He added that nude scenes on American Horror Story have unsettled him as well — particularly
one that happened in season 5.
The actor shared,
"A strange one was when I was Mr. March [in American Horror Story: Hotel].
I was doing this butterfly razor cutting of this poor girl.
[...] It was just horrific and weird and sad.
[...] At that point, it was season 5, and I was more comfortable with the crew, so it's
like, 'Okay, I guess my butt will be out.'
There were some earlier ones that were very unnerving."
Peters has seemingly taken all the experiences on the chin and has done his best to separate
the chaos of his professional life from the calmness of his personal life.
The actor will be back for American Horror Story season 10, set to premiere sometime
in 2021, so clearly, any scenes he's regretted haven't kept him from the series that turned
him into a household name.
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