For ‘American Horror Stories’ Matt Bomer, Going to Murder House Was Like Meeting a Hero

When Ryan Murphy approached Matt Bomer about possibly shooting an episode of American Horror Stories inside Murder House, that’s what made the actor say yes. That’s the power American Horror Story‘s first and arguably most memorable season. Fittingly, it’s also where the horror anthology’s new spinoff series begins.

“Rubber (wo)Man” Part 1 and 2 follows a young couple (Matt Bomer and Gavin Greel) and their teenage daughter (Sierra McCormick) as they move into the most haunted house in all of Los Angeles. But the more time they spend there, the more this trove of murderous ghosts starts to take advantage of Scarlett’s already dark psyche. What’s left is a story about a passionate and dangerous teenage romance, murders galore, and every parents’ worst nightmare.

It’s that latter theme that American Horror Story alum Matt Bomer really dug into while tackling the part of Michael. Bomer spoke to Decider about what it was like to dive into this twisted story as a parent himself and whether he will return to the AHS universe. The actor also revealed what it was like to meet what he jokingly called one of his on-screen heroes, the Murder House.

Decider: My first question has to do with your reputation on American Horror Story. Out of three of your characters, two of them have gotten somewhat happy endings, which is rare for this show. American Horror Stories’ Michael gets a semi-nice afterlife with his husband, and Hotel‘s Donovan gets to make amends with his mother from beyond the grave. Why do you think Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk selected you for these rare nice endings?

Matt Bomer: That’s interesting. I never really thought of Donovan’s ending as a very nice one, although he did get some kind of nice closure with his mom and with The Countess before he died. But certainly every time I’ve been on the show, I’ve died in a pretty pretty grisly fashion. I guess we’re talking about a happy ending on a relative scale.

Oftentimes when you become involved in one of these shows, you don’t really know what the ending is. I don’t know why they chose me or if it’s something that’s occurred to them in between when they hire me and when they write the ending. But I didn’t know the ending to this. When I agreed to be a part of it, I didn’t know the ending of Hotel. The only time I’ve known the ending of what would happen on American Horror Story is when I did Freak Show with and got killed in my tighty-whities by Finn Wittrock.

Did you know when you signed up for American Horror Stories that you were going to be in Murder House? 

That was actually a big reason why I wanted to be part of it. That’s how I came to know and love the show was through Murder House. It’s still one of my favorite seasons. When I heard that this particular story was going to take place there — Ryan [Murphy] gave me a loose pitch that wasn’t exactly what ended up happening, but a loose pitch of what he thought the story might be. The Murder House is relatively close to where I live, and I’ve been watching our kids for the past year during the pandemic. I just thought maybe it’s time to step out and get to work on a really iconic set and adventure out into the world a little bit.

What was it like to actually work in the Murder House?

I’ve had a couple of these more surreal experiences where you suddenly find yourself on a set you know and love. Whether it’s like The Sinner and all of a sudden you’re getting questioned by Harry Ambrose or being on the set of Will and Grace or whatever shows that you already know and love, and suddenly you’re in them. This was definitely one of those experiences.

It’s such a gorgeous house, and I hate sometimes peeling away this sort of charade that I’ve been tricked into watching it on our screen. It’s like if you ever meet your heroes then all of a sudden it demystifies everything for you when you see “Oh, this is actually a really beautiful house.” They use effects and beautiful set decoration to make it appear a lot scarier than it is. Then all of a sudden you’re running around the halls in this iconic place, screaming and being chased by monsters and like, “All right, this is actually really great.”

It’s so funny you mentioned the beauty of the house. I think it’s because your character Michael and his husband Troy (Gavin Creel) are flipping houses, but I spent a lot of these first two episodes thinking, “Yeah, this house does have really good bones.”

The only thing I can think of is that they had been through the pandemic, like everybody else, and maybe lost certain sources of income and had to make some kind of extreme decisions in terms of like, “OK, are we going to like really go for our dream here and take a big shot? Pick up, take a big swing at something? Or not?” I think that’s what they decided to do. I don’t know if this is ill-advised. But we’ve all been pushed to pretty extreme places in terms of our decision making in the last year.

Speaking of extremity in general, I have to talk about Sierra McCormick’s character, Scarlett. How would you describe Michael’s relationship with his daughter?

First of all, I love Sierra McCormick. I loved getting to play her parent, because I love her so much. A lot of it was just building their history together.

So much of it goes back to the fact that she was kidnapped when she was very young. That’s created all kinds of hyper-vigilance around her, codependency around her, kind of mania around her. They had an incredibly close relationship, and she’s now, like many teenagers do, starting to really pull away and head into some dark waters. One of the things that this show does so well is play on very real fears that we have and sensationalize them. It’s almost impossible to be a parent in 2021 and not worry about all the pitfalls and terrifying things that are out there, traps for your kids to fall into these days.

Do you think that hyper-vigilance and mania translates to how Michael and Troy respond to Scarlett’s many murders? 

I think that Michael is very much a family man. His whole MO in the entire piece is to keep his family together, whether that means this new venture that’s going to provide them a source of income or keeping his daughter from going completely off the rails or keeping his husband from straying and cheating on him. His whole and all is just to try to keep everybody together. So in a weird way — when he dies in the house and realizes that he’s now stuck there together forever with his husband, which Troy may hate, I don’t know, and he’ll get to see his daughter at least once a year and he has this whole new surrogate family there — in a weird way, that’s kind of a dream come true for him. Plenty of time to figure out how to process and forgive all of Scarlett’s crimes.

This is bizarre to say about American Horror Story, but Michael and Troy actually seem like good parents. There’s some good parenting in an otherwise insane couple of episodes.

Honestly, I think they are a little bit more permissive and patient than I would be in certain circumstances. There are times when I would have definitely been like, “All right, we’re going to need a real professional, real intervention here, before our daughter really ruins our entire lives.” But that’s one of the fun things about being part of a show like this is getting in the skin of the character and finding out why they react and behave the way they do.

I also felt that, even though it’s kind of crazy circumstances, it’s not often we get to see gay parents on TV. These relationships, if nothing else, they deserve a great deal of respect and emotional commitment. I guess the lesson is gay families have just as many issues and problems with strict boundaries. We’re all in the same boat together when we’re families.

Was any part of Michael’s parenting style reminiscent of your own parenting style?

As an actor, you’re always trying to figure out how you’re similar to your character and how you’re different from your character. I’m one of those people who believes that the more interesting thing to me is how you’re different. The things that are similar will kind of take care of themselves. As a parent, like I said, there are so many parental fears, and the zeitgeist right now that this draws on, that any parent can relate to. But I was more interested in how Michael was different from me. Not that I’m not an open-hearted person, but he is just so open-hearted and so family-centric and all about keeping everybody really close together. He’s also a very sensitive soul. So I was more interested in trying to see the world through his eyes.

You’ve touched on this a little bit, but by the end of “Rubber (wo)Man Part 2” your character dies and is trapped in the pseudo hell that is Murder House. Did Ryan Murphy or any of the writers talk to you at all about what that afterlife is like?

No. No, is the really simple answer.

I think they trust their actors to do their own imaginative work with that. In terms of Michael’s psyche, it seems like it was very much a win-win. He gets to have all the people he loves around him and gets to do all the things he loves in a place he loves. So I think he’s very much in his element, at least at the beginning of the afterlife. We’ll have to check in with him again in about 50 years and see how he’s doing then.

This question may be hard for you because two of your characters have been murdered in ways where they can’t return. But would you want to come back to American Horror Story?

Yeah, if it were a fun world and an interesting character and all those things, I think it’d be really fun. One of the great things about being part of Ryan Murphy’s world and certainly a part of the American Horror Story world is that once you’re in, you’re an alumni. You’re part of this great ensemble of actors, and you’re kind of on call. One day, Ryan will call you and say, “We’re going to do this, and this is the world I’m working on.” If your schedule and everything else permits, then we jump in wholeheartedly. It’s rare in this day and age to get to have a boss who is that loyal, a creator who is that loyal. Oftentimes you’re getting to work with similar actors, or in this case a director (Loni Peristere) I’d worked with before in American Horror Story, and just get to know people in a way that you don’t when you’re going set to set. One of my favorite things about working with Ryan is his loyalty.

What would be your ideal season of American Horror Story?

I feel like so many of them have been fleshed out in such a great way. I’m at the beach right now. I’m looking at the ocean as I’m talking to you, so I’m thinking it would be sirens, it would be sharks. It would it be something to do with living in a beach community, something like that.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

New episodes of American Horror Stories stream Thursdays on FX on Hulu.

Watch American Horror Stories on FX on Hulu