FX’s The Beauty will be Ryan Murphy’s biggest show to date. So it’s fitting that this concept is a stitching together of various parts of the showrunner’s past work.
The series is based on the manga of the same name and follows two detectives investigating a new sexually transmitted disease that both beautifies and has the potential to silently kill those infected. Evan Peters, Jeremy Pope, Ashton Kutcher, and Anthony Ramos are all set to appear in the film, but it has yet to be revealed who will play who.
“I’ve always written about beauty culture in my work, ever since my first big piece called Nip/Tuck,” Murphy told Entertainment Weekly in an interview about this week’s big Grotesquery episode. “I’ve also depicted a lot of body horror in my work, primarily through ‘American Horror Story.’ What would you do for love? What would you do for beauty? It’s everything I’ve worked on my entire career rolled into one package.”
“Nip/Tuck,” “The Beauty,” “American Horror Story.”
FX; Image Comics; Suzanne Tenner/FX
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Murphy was completely unaware of The Beauty comic until series co-creator Matt Hodgson (Glee, 9-1-1) brought it to his attention. The original story, written by Jeremy Horn and Jason A. Hurley and published by Image Comics, is a science fiction novel centered on Detectives Foster and Vaughn. Half of America is infected with this mysterious sexually transmitted disease that causes symptoms like burning fat, chiseling chins, and sculpting muscles. What’s even more surprising, though probably not, is that the vast majority of those infected contracted the disease intentionally. Foster and Vaughn soon learn that the sexually transmitted disease is actually deadly and may even have been introduced to the population as part of a secret government conspiracy.
Season 1 of The Beauty maintains an 11-episode order at FX, with production set to begin in 2025.
“I’ve never done anything this big,” Murphy continues. “I’ve never done any international work other than Eat Pray Love.” (Murphy directed the 2010 romantic comedy starring Julie Roberts.) We’re doing all the casting, and we’re going to be traveling around the world next year to make it. It’s a very long shoot. It’s a big shoot. It’s fun to shoot. I think it means “May we live in interesting times.” I think that also applies to Grotesquerie. I’m always trying to understand how I feel. ”
The grotesque, he says, was his response to the feeling that we all live in a grotesque reality from which we cannot awaken. “Beauty,” he previously told Variety, is his reaction to Ozempic culture. “Just take a little shot and all of a sudden you’ll look and feel better and all your problems will be solved,” he told the trade. “But what are you really working on? What’s going on with you that you feel the need to do so? Sometimes it’s health and sometimes it’s vanity.”
