Ryan Murphy has spoken exclusively to ew.com following the debut of American Horror Story: Hotel on FX in the US last night, where he revealed that one of the lines that got everybody talking from Lady Gaga - 'Your boy has a jawline for days' - was actually ad libbed by the musician-turned-actress, after she was asked by Murphy to 'say something else!' during filming of the scene.
"It was the last take. I think what was scripted was, 'Your boy is beautiful', or something," Ryan explains. "I said, 'Say something else!' She's sitting there like a spider and she ad libbed that. Poor Matt Bomer who was supposed to be comatose I believe almost died from holding in his laughter."
The writer and creator also spoke about asking Gaga back for the sixth season: "That's something that she has to deal with and announce or not announce when she feels comfortable based on her schedule. I never expect an answer right away and I don't expect an answer about this right away. But I think she's just so great in it."
He went on to say how Gaga's professionalism scared some of the other cast: "It's pretty amazing when somebody like Kathy Bates calls me up and says, 'I just did a scene with Gaga and I'm shaking because she's so convincing and I'm so terrified of her.' Gaga gets that all the time on our set. I'm very thrilled by her."
Though viewers will immediately jump to the conclusion that The Countess and Donovan are vampires in the show, Murphy was hoping to do something "a little different".
"I liked doing vampirism but I didn't wanna do vampires. Gaga has a big line in the second episode where she turns somebody and they ask her all questions," he explains.
"I was interested in it being some sort of weird, almost biblical virus that has its own good and bad properties. It leads to a super-charged immune system. But we're not doing the thing about, you can only kill them with a silver bullet or a stake. If you walk in front of a car, you die. They are very much mortals but they have this virus that impedes the aging process. It's based on stuff that's happening right now with stem cell research and all that stuff. It's really not to me that crazy or fantastical of what could come in the next couple of years. The show always plays with mortality and the idea of aging and beauty."
In regards to the Ten Commandments Killer, Murphy confirmed: "It's obviously someone who's staying in the hotel", who is linked to every character on-screen.
Teasing next week's second epiosde, he said viewers will be taken "deeper into the mythology of the characters" whilst meeting more people.
"You get to meet Mr. March who is Evan Peters. I think this is Evan's best role we've ever done. Usually Evan is the tortured good guy or the tortured ingénue. But this year we decided to go a very different route and just make him perhaps the worst human being to have ever lived. So he's the bad guy and you get to really meet him and how he built the hotel. It's loosely inspired by HH Holmes and that hotel of horrors he made.
"It gets into the romantic exploits of Gaga and Matt Bomer. You also get to meet Finn Wittrock's character who is a tortured crystal meth-using male model, so that's always fun. You meet Naomi Campbell who's brilliant and hilarious. She plays a bored Vogue magazine editor.
"Also in the second episode, is an amazing sequence where we get to see Gaga's character in Studio 54 in the late 70s. The hilarious thing about that is where we shot that three months ago, we used that Chic song, 'I Want Your Love'. Then this weekend, I clicked on the Tom Ford thing and there it is! I was like, 'Why didn't you tell me you covered that?' So I would like to just stake my claim that we did it first. I joked with her and Tom is a good friend. I was like, 'Did you get that idea from that?' She wouldn't say - she just smiled."
American Horror Story: Hotel continues Wednesdays, 10pm on FX in the US, and comes to the UK on October 20, on FOX.
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