I felt a stir in the air, like the displacement of a raven’s wings in the sticky humid heat of the approaching autumn equinox, and I knew—Ryan Murphy has a new TV show.
His latest is Grotesquerie, and the teaser dropped yesterday. It’s Southern Gothic by way of bisexual lighting, set in a small town where a detective and a nun set out to solve a string of murders that hit close to home. Niecy Nash-Betts stars as the detective, Micaela Diamond stars as the nun. The series was co-created by Murphy, Jon Robin Baitz, and Joe Baken, and it also stars Courtney B. Vance, Lesley Manville (?!?!?), Raven Goodwin, and Taylor Swift’s boyfriend, Travis Kelce.
That is the face of a man who has been sucked into a cult via a wellness scam.
Like all Ryan Murphy shows, Grotesquerie looks good in trailer format. Ryan Murphy shows make excellent trailers. I’m especially susceptible to the small town/Southern Gothic aesthetic of Grotesquerie, I love a good devil show and/or movie. Witches in the woods is extremely my jam. But when it comes to Ryan Murphy, there’s always a game I play with his shows, which I call “How Many Episodes Can I Get Through Before I Cannot Watch Anymore”. It’s usually 3-4 episodes. Ryan Murphy’s productions look great, and I have to give the man credit for writing juicy parts for women of a certain age and giving opportunities to queer actors and filmmakers that barely exist anywhere else, but it’s rare that I make it all the way through his TV shows.
The last Ryan Murphy show I watched all the way through was 2020’s The Boys in the Band. Before that, it was season one of Pose in 2018. And before that, the last Ryan Murphy thing I finished was season one of Scream Queens in 2015. So will I watch all of Grotesquerie? Probably not. But I’m glad it exists, because no one else is writing these kinds of parts for Niecy Nash-Betts. I’m never going to be mad about Niecy getting more work.
Besides, this is the acting debut of Travis Kelce. He previously played himself in Moonbase 8, a Showtime comedy series starring Fred Armisen, Tim Heidecker, and John C. Reilly which no one saw. But that was stunt casting, and while Travis was fine in his one episode of Moonbase 8, this is a proper character, he can’t just do “Travis Kelce”, he actually has to act this time. He’s playing another season of football, but he’s already made his Hollywood plans clear. This is the first real step in determining if Travis Kelce can make the leap from football to Hollywood. It has been done before, but audiences are always skeptical of athletes turned actors, at least at first.
Appearing in a Ryan Murphy show to start was probably a good idea, because most of us won’t be expecting much anyway.
