Lily Rabe will play serial killer Aileen Wuornos in American Horror Story: Hotel – a character strikingly antithetical to her past role as Misty Day in Coven. Wuornos, the subject of the Oscar-winning film, Monster, will appear in the show’s two-part Halloween special. In the past, those episodes have been slightly tangential, but still involve most of the same characters, so it’s likely that the subject of Monster could, as Uproxx notes, meet the most iconized Monster of them all — Lady Gaga.
Gaga is one of the season’s stars, playing Elizabeth, the owner of the hotel, who series creator Ryan Murphy describes as a “wealthy social doyenne who is consumed with art and fashion and people. And she has nefarious plans revealed in the first episode, and plays out over the course of the season.” Murphy revealed this, and news about Rabe’s character during the Television Critics Association tour, reported by the LA Times. For the most part, he kept hushed about any big details regarding the Wuornos plot line, saying:
Lily Rabe is coming to that episode. And she’s playing Aileen Wuornos, which is really fun and bizarre. I don’t want to give too much away but I will tell you that she’s at the centerpiece of that, and that’s who she’s playing.
Murphy also disclosed that the hotel will actually be located in Downtown LA and that the series was inspired by chilling surveillance footage.
American Horror Story: Hotel will premiere on October 7 on FX.