AMERICAN HORROR STORY: COVEN at TCA: Live-Blog

AMERICAN HORROR STORY: COVEN will be debuting this fall on FX (the third installment of the horror anthology), and to tease a bit of what’s to come, FX is paneling the show with some of the cast and executive producer Tim Minear.

Be sure to follow along for our live-blog of what they have to say!

2:21 PM: No footage because they just started shooting last week, so we’re going straight to the panel. Kathy Bates calls the first two seasons worth of work that she witnessed “an actor’s dream.” She says, “You just get like a little kid; you want to play, too.”

2:22 PM: Who do they play this season? “I can? Really?” Sarah Paulson says of being told she can say things about her character. She reveals that her character, Cordelia, is Jessica Lange’s character, Fiona’s, daughter. Angela Bassett is playing Marie Laveau, who is based loosely on her. Kathy Bates is playing Madame LaLaurie.

Tim Minear says some of the cast will play witches, but not all will.

Lange confirms, “I do play a witch.” She says the season will move back and forth in time and will “encompass different stories.” She says she doesn’t really know who her character is yet, because she’s barely shot anything yet. Lange calls working this way a “huge adjustment” from her movie work, but notes, “in some ways, it’s kind of wonderful, because it allows you to work very much on the fly. The great thing about this entire cast is you have to be brave. you just have to jump in and do it and not be cautious. You have 12 episodes to create this character and you don’t always know what the next episode is going to present for you.”

2:27 PM: Lange loves that even with last year’s arc, she got to play all sorts of extremes in one character and getting “the big sweeps of emotion.” She says, “it was a wonderful character for me,” pointing out she got to sing, dance, spank people, and go mad.

2:29 PM: “Well, I for one thought last year was hilarious,” Minear jokes of reports the show is a bit funnier this year. “We are embracing a kind of velocity and fun this year.”

2:32 PM: “I think some of the bigger themes of this season are oppression of minority groups of all kinds,” Minear says, including the fact that minority groups going after each other. There will also be a lot of focus on mother-daughter relationships.

2:33 PM: “One of the things I enjoyed reading about her is that my great great grandfather came from Dublin to New Orleans” and he worked at a plantation next to Madame LaLaurie’s plantation. She wonders if they ever met, because the timing should have overlapped.

2:35 PM: Bates is not over NBC canceling HARRY’S LAW, saying she thinks the network treated them like shit, they disrespected their fans, and now they’re getting what they deserve.

2:37 PM: Bassett has been doing some research on her real-life character, too. She shares she has filmed one scene with Bates so far.

2:39 PM: How many friends of Lange’s friends ask for jobs on AHS aside from Bates? “I can only give out one a year,” Lange jokes. She says New Orleans has a “power, an authenticity that is lacking in a lot of places” in this day and age. She says there is something about the city that will inform all the characters, calling being on the street somewhat hypnotic and drug-like. “It’s like a great gift,” Lange says.

2:43 PM: Minear calls New Orleans a very production-heavy town, but he says he they’re the only ones who are filming this month. (When it’s very humid.)

2:44 PM: Will there be a lot of New Orleans cliches in the show? Not really, but Minear notes there will be the normal horror cliches. “There is only so much room for cliches in our show!” he jokes.

2:45 PM: Should we read into name Cordelia by either looking towards King Lear or the ANGEL character? “I would read more into the [King] Lear than the BUFFY spinoff,” Minear says.

2:48 PM: Bates points to the visually stunning look of last season’s AMERICAN HORROR STORY as something that impressed her. “I can’t wait to see it [on season 3],” she says.