Lena Dunham is set to join the cast of American Horror Story, Ryan Murphy’s huge horror anthology series.
Murphy, creator of AHS, American Crime Story and Glee, tweeted on Wednesday (July 19): “Thrilled that my talented friend Lena Dunham is joining the AMERICAN HORROR STORY family,” he wrote. “Always wanted to work together, and now we r!”
Her reps have confirmed that she will appear in one episode of the series.
There aren’t any other details just yet about what the Girls creator’s role will be on the show, but we do know the seventh season of AHS is inspired by the 2016 presidential election. Murphy recently posted a clue for the show on his Instagram, an image depicting a man covered in bees. The title will be announced today.
Murphy has said in an interview earlier this year that the season will be representative of both sides of the political divide; however, it will focus on “illuminating and highlighting” groups of people he believes to be “ignored by the current (Trump) administration and who are afraid and feel terrorised that their lives are going to be taken away.”
Murphy told The Hollywood Reporter that no actors would play Trump or Hillary Clinton, but they would be seen “on television”. “The first 10 minutes of the season takes place in a very eerie macabre way on Election Night and there's something terrible that happens in the lives of our characters on Election Night as they're watching it all go down," he detailed.
Dunham stayed consistently vocal throughout the election as a passionate supporter of Clinton and a vehement critic of Trump then and now, so it’ll be interested to see what kind of part she takes up. She joins Sarah Paulson and Evan Peters, the show’s mainstays, as well as Billie Lourd, who starred in Murphy’s Scream Queens.
American Horror Story has inventively made use of other major names: Jessica Lange starred in the first four seasons, playing everything from a sadistic nun turned psych patient to a no-bullshit witch supreme. Lady Gaga took part in the fifth and sixth seasons, as the vampiric Countess in Hotel and a witch in the woodlands in show-within-a-show Roanoke.
The show title will be officially launched today at the San Diego Comic-Con, and a short, creepy teaser has already been released – not that it tells us much.
Murphy has also been working on the third season of American Crime Story, chronicling the murder of designer Gianni Versace. Penelope Cruz stars as Donatella, and Ricky Martin plays Antonio D’Amico, Gianni’s boyfriend and model muse. The show will air in 2018.