Ryan Murphy: American Success Story

The prolific producer opens up about the future of American Horror Story, his plans for more Broadway and the real reason an American Crime Story season centered on Hurricane Katrina won’t be quite as depressing as it sounds. 

- Lacey Rose

RYAN MURPHY IS USED to hearing the name of at least one of his projects uttered on Emmy nomination morning, but 30 mentions — as happened July 14 — was stunning, even for him.

In addition to Emmy perennial American Horror Story, which nabbed eight noms for its Lady Gaga-fronted Hotel season, his The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story earned 22, including outstanding limited series and mentions for each of its stars. Murphy took a break from prepping new seasons of both series, as well as a second installment of Fox’s Scream Queens and his latest FX anthology, Feud, to speak with THR about the surprising response to O.J., his plans for more Broadway and the future of his franchises.

What surprised you most about the reaction to The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story?

When people first heard we were doing it — when they heard O.J., and it’s a spinoff of American Horror Story — they were convinced, as they always are with my work, that it was going to be a certain thing. We’d hear, “Oh, it’s going to be exploitative,” or, “It’s going to be a bloodbath.” But the thing I’m most proud of is how it helped change the public perception of Marcia Clark. It showed her as a human being, and the thing I hear people say now is, “Boy, was I wrong about Marcia Clark.” I look at her as a feminist working-mother heroine who’d been widely misunderstood and blamed for something that was not her fault, and because of the power of the scripts and Sarah Paulson’s performance this became sort of a revisionist take on her. I hope it’s how she’ll be remembered going forward.

Shortly after your series wrapped, ESPN ran its doc