American Horror Story’s Leslie Grossman On What Makes Double Feature Authentic

As American Horror Story digs deeper into the second half of “Double Feature”–a time-jumping alien tale set both in the ’50s and present-day–one of the show’s stars is reflecting not only on her major role in the first half of the season, “Red Tide,” but how that character compares to who she’s playing in the extra-terrestrial tinged “Death Valley.”

Warning: The following contains spoilers for Season 10 of American Horror Story.

Speaking to GameSpot, Leslie Grossman (Ursula in “Red Tide” and Calico in “Death Valley”) admitted that this particular season was quite different from others because the pandemic led to a longer preparation process. “Every time we start a new season, we don’t necessarily have all the scripts,” she explained. “So because of the pandemic, they had time to really write and bank some scripts. So I got to read the first few and see where it was going.”

Of course, she didn’t know how it would all end–where would the fun in that be? However, even after seeing just how vicious her Hollywood power agent character could be, it didn’t seem all that unrealistic to Grossman. “I, frankly, don’t think what she did is so extreme in terms of this world,” the actress said. “I think there would be plenty of people who would do exactly what Ursula. Everything is a means to an end. And I also think she’s a complete sociopath, so it’s easy for her to do what she did. So she is based on real people that I have known over the years, kind of a mishmash, that there have been times where I’m like, truly rendered speechless by someone’s behavior, like this cannot be real. And it is real.”

Calico is a different story altogether, though. Her character in “Death Valley” debuted in this week’s episode as a woman who has seemingly been held captive by aliens for decades, continuously giving birth to new offspring. While not based in any sort of familiar reality to Grossman, she does have strong feelings about the character.

“Calico has led a really sort of interesting existence, “she explained. “I will say that she’s in my opinion sort of the diametric opposite of an Ursula. I have a lot of compassion and love for Calico and you’ll see why.”

So while you may have hated Ursula by the end of “Red Tide,” it sounds like you might get pretty attached to Calico. Here’s hoping she makes it out of “Death Valley” alive.

American Horror Story airs Wednesdays on FX and the next day on FX on Hulu.

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