Just when you thought Ryan Murphy was out of tricks, he pulls something that is truly shocking. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Kim Kardashian has joined the twelfth season of American Horror Story in a role reportedly written just for her. Kardashian will star opposite AHS alum and frequent Murphy collaborator Emma Roberts in the season, titled Delicate.
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Murphy is handing over the reins of American Horror Story: Delicate to actress and playwright Halley Feiffer, who will write and showrun. Reportedly, it’s at least somewhat based on Danielle Valentine’s upcoming novel Delicate Condition. “Kim is among the biggest and brightest television stars in the world and we are thrilled to welcome her to the AHS family,” said Murphy in a statement to THR. “Emma and I are excited about collaborating with this true force in the culture. Halley Feiffer has written a fun, stylish and ultimately terrifying role especially for Kim, and this season is ambitious and unlike anything we have ever done.” Details about the series are being held close to the chest, but a cover blurb from author Andrea Bartz describes Delicate Condition as “the feminist update to Rosemary’s Baby we all needed.”
Kardashian announced the news on social media, sharing a teaser trailer for the series with her 357 million Instagram followers with. Her caption: an eye emoji and a red teardrop emoji.
While not an actress by trade, Kardashian has plenty of experience in front of the camera. She starred on the reality show Keeping Up With The Kardashians for 20 seasons on E!, and now stars on its sequel, Hulu’s The Kardashians. Still, one has to wonder how Kardashian will fare when she’s playing a role that isn’t herself. True, she acquitted herself rather nicely when she hosted Saturday Night Live last year, earning mostly positive reviews and apparently impressing her friend Murphy enough for him to develop a project with her in mind. But hosting one episode of SNL is a different beast than leading a season of television.
Of course, Kim has also acted before. Who could forget her a multiple episode arc as Nikki LePree on the Lifetime series Drop Dead Diva in 2012, where she somehow ends up behind bars because of parking tickets? Or her turn as con artist and murderer Debbie Fallon in CSI: NY in 2009, opposite a pre-Love Is Blind Vanessa Lachey? Kim’s also made cameos on 2 Broke Girls and 90210, but both times she was playing herself. On the big screen, Kim played Ava, co-worker and friend of Journee Smollett-Bell‘s adulterous Judith in Tyler Perry‘s The Temptation in 2013, and recently voiced Delores, a poodle, in the animated feature film Paw Patrol. She is set to reprise the that role in an upcoming sequel. The range!
Kim should be right at home in Murphy’s American Horror Story, considering that she has already been featured as a character on Murphy’s other America franchise show, The People v. OJ Simpson: American Crime Story. David Schwimmer played Kim’s late father, the lawyer Robert Kardashian, on that series, and there was even a scene in which the Kardashian clan—including a child version of Kim—ate together at a restaurant. If Kim has trouble getting into character, she can also always seek the counsel of her sister Kourtney, who graduated from University of Arizona with a degree in Theater Arts (and a minor in Spanish), and once appeared on the soap opera One Life To Live.
American Horror Story is no stranger to some starry stunt casting, having given Lady Gaga her first major acting role and eventually winning the pop star a Golden Globe. Will Kim follow a similar trajectory, or will her acting be the scariest part of the twelfth season of American Horror Story? We’ll just have to wait and see.
