Macaulay Culkin has become steadily more visible over the last couple years, most recently covering Esquire for no real reason except to let everyone know he is doing okay. Now, however, he has taken his biggest step back into the spotlight yet as he is joining American Hororr Story for season ten. Ryan Murphy announced the cast on Instagram, with Mack as the second-billed person after AHS fixture Kathy Bates.
I play a game with all of the Ryan Murphy shows which is called “How Long Can I Watch This?”. It goes like this: I start watching a Ryan Murphy show, and I see how long I can watch it before I simply must stop. For instance, I made it through 1.5 episodes of The Politician, and through 4 full episodes of American Horror Story 1984. Sometimes I make it all the way through, like with Pose and Scream Queens, but a lot of the time I quit almost immediately, like pretty much every season of American Horror Story. I only made it so far into 1984 because of Billie Lourd’s irrepressible presence, and even then, I still had to quit before it was over.
Will Macaulay Culkin make American Horror Story more watchable? Probably not, the issues with that show are bigger than any one actor. But it’s a good fit for him. It’s a strange show, and strange will always be Macaulay Culkin’s lane. And it’s an ensemble, so even if he is a main character, as billing suggests, it’s not like he’ll have to carry the whole thing on his own. This will, however, be the most visible he’s been to viewing audiences since the 1990s. He has worked on television, such as the short-lived political drama Kings, and more recently he had a recurring role on The Jim Gaffigan Show. But neither of those were big audience draws. American Horror Story, despite its wildly unreliable nature, remains a popular show. People are definitely going to notice that Mack is back. But the question remains, is this just another one-off random thing for him to do for a while, or is it the start of the Culkinaissance?
