A cutting-edge drug delivers physical perfection at a high cost in the latest from the creator of American Horror Story
The unexpected implosion of a supermodel (Bella Hadid) in the streets of Paris sends FBI agents Cooper Madsen (Evan Peters) and Jordan Bennett (Rebecca Hall) to the City of Light to uncover the truth about international models dying in gruesome ways. Yet “Operation Catwalk Carnage” is only the beginning in this new Ryan Murphy series that scratches (and scratches) at what lies beneath our human desire for physical perfection.
As in typical Murphy fashion, subtlety is not what is on the menu, but when it comes to exploring a cultural phenomenon, his cast believes this particular auteur feeds the conversation in a way no one else can. “He creates worlds that are really socially relevant,” says Ashton Kutcher, who plays tech billionaire Byron Forst, whose company — The Corporation — is behind a drug that achieves “the transformation” at a cost that goes beyond the monetary. “I think Ryan has his finger on the pulse of what’s happening in pop culture and the conversations that people are having in the background, that they really wish they could talk about publicly.”
Who better to tackle a societal dilemma — especially one as topical as striving for perfection — than the creator of American Horror Story and Nip/Tuck. “I think that Ryan Murphy has a nose for the zeitgeist and what we’re all talking about,” says Hall. “There’s a lot to be said about the chase for perfection and the commodification of beauty. I think human beauty is a conceptually complicated thing. The idea that you can pay for perfection and therefore you’re handing over your idea of it to someone who is taking your money and might want more of it, what does that mean? Frankly, I think keeping people in a place of inadequacy is more profitable.”
What Murphy also does, according to Kutcher, is create a true playground for his performers to express themselves in this heightened reality. Jeremy Pope discovered this early on in the series, when his character transforms from a man who does not meet the ideal societal beauty requirements to a specimen of male perfection. “When Ryan gets in the room, you have to be ready to make adjustments. You can’t be too locked in, physically, to what’s happening because it can change,” says Pope. “On my day of transforming, we thought it was going to go one way, and he had a different vision. It required me to use my physical body, and it became more of a ballet. It was about expressing this person feeling their body, their skin, the muscles, and how instead of playing the body horror or the pain of it, there can be beauty in finding this true perfected self.”
Fictional Jeremy, in his new and improved vessel, soon crosses paths with Antonio, a Christopher Cross-loving 65-year-old assassin in a 30-something-year-old’s body. Events send The Corporation’s Antonio and Jeremy on a turbulent road trip. Played by Anthony Ramos, the one-eyed assassin is the Hamilton star’s first foray into the world of Ryan Murphy. “When Ryan explained the role to me, he just said, ‘Anthony, I want to build the character that you’ve always wanted to play,’” recalls Ramos. “I don’t know if anyone’s ever said that to me, to be honest. I was excited that this guy, who’s built an entire world on television, is telling me, ‘Hey man, I see you, and I really want to show off all the parts of you that you may not have had the opportunity to show.’”
Ramos’ friend of 15 years, for whom this marks his third project with Murphy, could not have been more excited to play with his college buddy. “It was cool to be able to do a show that was stretching us both creatively but felt safe doing it with someone that you love and really respect,” says Pope. “For me, each iteration of a project I’ve done with Ryan is very different. I think he’s a champion for artists to shine and do what it is that they feel called to do. We’ve had many conversations where he goes, ‘What do you want to make?’ And this was about exploring this wild world centred on a proposed question that I think is very evocative and will make people uncomfortable.”
The question that is being asked is, of course, how far would we go for beauty? Although society might not scientifically be in a place where one vial fixes everything, there are a lot of solutions available that all carry a certain risk. “We’re at a place where you can buy a shot that’ll make you skinnier — and people are afraid of taking shots, but they’ll take that shot. You can get shots in your face to make you not have wrinkles. You can get hair treatments for more hair. You can get Invisalign to get your teeth straight. We’re right at the precipice of babies being born with gene edits that eliminate diseases that would shorten their lifespan,” lists Kutcher.
Kutcher points out that The Beauty isn’t a sci-fi show set in a distant future. “This is happening now. And that is the brilliance of Ryan Murphy. He’s like, ‘I’m going to take it five minutes into the future, where there’s actually just one shot that does a bunch of these things and then let’s consider what the secondary and tertiary side effects of that kind of thing are.’ That’s what makes this show poignant. It will get people to ask a lot of questions, so that maybe five minutes from now we make the right choices.”
For Peters, there is a clear message to take away from The Beauty that’s not too different from Murphy’s other shows. “There’s a throughline through a lot of Ryan’s projects, which is that the thing that makes you ‘you,’ and makes you unique, is the thing that makes you interesting and is to be celebrated,” he says. “There are some episodes that really hammer that in, and I think that there is nobody better than Ryan to spread that message.”
The Beauty, streaming on Disney+