As American Horror Story winds down and rumors abound that the series’ upcoming thirteenth season will (perhaps appropriately for a horror series) be its last, everyone’s wondering if any familiar faces will be returning to help close things out. One that won’t be returning though? Jessica Lange, who helped establish the series as an FX mainstay when it premiered in 2011, as she’s recently confirmed she no longer has anything to do with the show.
While at the Dublin International Film Festival for her latest movie, Long Day’s Journey Into Night, Lange was asked by SPIN 1038 if she could reveal anything about the latest season of the series, and whether she’d be in it, to which she responded, “Oh Christ, no. I haven’t done it for more than 10 years, 12 years, so, no, I’m not doing it.”
An extremely definitive answer, and an unsurprising one for the seventy-five year old actress, whose recent work has not only slowed down but also become much more serious, including her work in Long Day’s Journey Into Night, based on the Eugene O’Neill play which won her a Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Play in 2016.
Lange previously starred in five seasons of the horror anthology series, including its debut, titled Murder House, as well as Asylum, Coven, Freak Show, and Apocalypse. She also worked with creator Ryan Murphy on two seasons of his historical fiction Feud series, where she played Joan Crawford in Bette vs. Joan and Lillie Mae Faulk in Capote vs. The Swans, as well as his Netflix series The Politician.
American Horror Story’s last season, Delicate, was split into two parts over the fall of 2023 and spring of 2024, and little news about the thirteenth season has been revealed, except that franchise mainstays Sarah Paulson and Evan Peters are in talks to return. Whether season thirteen will be its last also has yet to be confirmed.
All twelve seasons of American Horror Story are available to stream on Hulu.
