Difficult People/Billy on the Street‘s Billy Eichner is moving from the Streets of New York to…wherever the hell the next season of American Horror Story — whose storyline will in some way tackle the 2016 U.S. election — will take place. Deadline’s report on the news featured a rumored detail from their sources, revealing, oh-so-informatively, that Eichner “is playing a close confidant of Paulson’s character and mostly will be wearing mysterious tank tops.” This sleeveless role is recurring, with Deadline also rumoring that Eichner will be in six or seven episodes. Evan Peters is also set to return to the series, but whether or not he’ll wear mysterious tank tops remains to be seen.
Most details about the season are unknown, barring that the first episode is set on Election Night. And since AHS has never been afraid (often to its detriment) to juggle numerous places and times and plots, the potentials for rendering the 2016 election through the very amorphous AHS mold are infinite, as are the types of mysterious tank-topped characters Billy Eichner might be able to play.
Ryan Murphy recently told the Hollywood Reporter:
American Horror Story is going to be about the election that we just went through. And what I’m interested in doing is not just the obvious, single-minded point of view but rather express all sides of that equation. And then all of the stuff that I’m developing now is going to be about illuminating and highlighting people who don’t have a voice in our culture — people who are ignored by the current administration and who are afraid and feel terrorized that their lives are going to be taken away.
The publication noted that there had been rumors about Kathy Bates playing Donald Trump in the season — but that she denied it in an interview; and, in fact, it’s not certain, particularly given the quote above, how much of a role Trump/Hillary Clinton will even play in Murphy’s presumably fantastical vision of recent events.
The season will likely air late this year; look out for a tall, loud man in mysterious tank tops.