By Trent Moore, Source: Blastr.com
The creep-tastic FX series American Horror Story pushed almost every boundary it could reach, and followed some of the weirdest stories to some of the coolest tangents, but there were still a few threads left on the cutting room floor.
In an interview with the Huffington Post, consulting producer Tim Minear spilled a few tales that didn’t make the cut for the show’s first season.
Digging deeper into Ben’s abusive childhood
The writers had originally wanted to dig into family patriarch Ben Harmon’s abusive childhood, giving some more background as to why Ben was such emotionally damaged goods. Ben’s childhood troubles were briefly alluded to during one of his therapy sessions, but no more details were ever provided.
“It’s true we never got to Ben’s abused childhood,” Minear told HuffPost. “That’s something we wanted to do.”
The network only veto-ed one shot, and creator Ryan Murphry agreed
The series featured everything from brutal murders, rape, Frankenstein babies and (on-screen) crying masturbation—which really makes you wonder what didn’t make it to screen. According to Minear, the writers were given near-limitless freedom to go as dark as they liked, except for one unnamed scene that showrunner Ryan Murphy agreed to cut.
“No,” he said, when asked if the network ever vetoed any story ideas. “FX had a note on a shot that Ryan agreed about and we cut. But they pretty much—actually totally—gave him his space.”
Constance’s mysterious fourth child
The answer to a dangling mystery revolving around Jessica Lange’s character Constance was left on the cutting room floor when the creators were editing the season finale, Minear said. Early in the season Constance mentioned off-hand that she had four children—but viewers only got to meet three. This led fans to speculate her fourth child was everything from a spider monkey to Michelle Pfeiffer, but the answer never came. Minear said some more information about the mysterious kiddo was included in an original version of the script, but the line didn’t make it to the screen.
“At one point I had in Constance’s beauty salon speech in the last episode a reference to the mysterious fourth child that we never saw,” he said. “But that got cut.”
