Conception Creators Murphy and Falchuk began working on
American Horror Story before their Fox series
Glee began production. Murphy wanted to do the opposite of what he had done previously and thus began his work on the series. He stated, "I went from
Nip/Tuck to
Glee, so it made sense that I wanted to do something challenging and dark. And I always had loved, as Brad had, the horror genre. So it just was a natural for me." Falchuk was intrigued by the idea of putting a different angle on the horror genre, stating that their main goal in creating the series was to scare viewers. "You want people to be a little bit off balance afterward," he said. The dark tone of the series is modeled after the ABC soap opera
Dark Shadows, which Murphy's grandmother forced him to watch when he was younger to toughen him up. He also cited ''
Rosemary's Baby, Don't Look Now, The Amityville Horror'', and
Stanley Kubrick's version of
The Shining as influences for the series. Murphy and Falchuk planned that each season of the series would tell a different story from the beginning. "The people that are coming back will be playing completely different characters, creatures, monsters, etc. [The Harmons'] stories are done." In July 2011, FX officially announced the project had been given a series order consisting of 13 episodes. In August 2011, it was announced that
Tim Minear,
Jennifer Salt,
James Wong, and Jessica Sharzer had joined the series as writers.
Crossover with Coven (AHS: Apocalypse) On October 30, 2016, Murphy announced that a future crossover season of the series would continue the
Murder House and
Coven stories, merging their characters and themes. He did not state which season it would be but that he had already reached out to actors from both seasons to reprise their respective roles. Murphy later confirmed one of the
Murder House characters would be moved in the season finale of
Coven. However, on January 5, 2018, it was initially announced that the crossover season would be taking place in the ninth season. Still, on June 14, 2018, the crossover was moved to the eighth season, titled
Apocalypse.
Casting Casting announcements began in March 2011, with
Connie Britton first to be cast, portraying female lead Vivien Harmon. Britton stated that she took a risk in taking the role of Vivien. When Murphy presented the role to her, he said, "This is something we've never seen you do before. It will be turning what you've just been doing on its ear." She was intrigued by what he had presented her and ultimately decided to take the part. In an interview with
Entertainment Weekly, series co-creator
Ryan Murphy stated that he had told Connie Britton, early on, that her character Vivien would die in the first season. "We've really had the whole season mapped out from the beginning," he said. "In the meetings with the core actors, the three leads being Connie, Dylan [McDermott] and Jessica [Lange], as we tried to snare them, we were able to say this is where you start, this is the middle, and this is where you end up. So, yes, I was able to tell Connie really the whole run of the series."
Denis O'Hare joined the cast in late March 2011 as Larry Harvey.
Jessica Lange joined the cast in April 2011 as Constance, marking her first regular role on television. Lange was attracted to the role because it didn't require a 22-episode commitment like a series on a broadcast network. "That was huge for me!" she said. "I wasn't about to commit to, you know, six months. It was cable, rather than network... I've been offered network [shows] before, and determined not to do it, just because I can't make that kind of time commitment."
Dylan McDermott was cast as the lead Ben Harmon in late April 2011. His character was initially described as "a handsome and masculine but sensitive therapist who loves his family but has hurt his wife." McDermott stated that he wanted to do the role to break away from his previous role as Bobby Donnell in the ABC series
The Practice. "This was exactly why I wanted to do this show – to change it up and do a different kind of character. People think of me as the guy from
The Practice... I wanted to turn that [notion] on its head, and hopefully, I'm doing that [with this show]", he said. In May 2011,
Taissa Farmiga and
Evan Peters were the last lead actors to be cast, portraying Violet Harmon and Tate Langdon, respectively. Farmiga said that she loved Violet "immediately" and that "she had spunk to her, she had attitude." Murphy has described Tate as the "true monster" of the series, adding, "To Evan's great credit and the credit of the writers, I think Evan's done an amazingly difficult job making a monster sympathetic."
Filming was shot on location in a house in
Country Club Park, Los Angeles, California, which serves as the
haunted house and crime scene in the series. Designed and built in 1902 by
Alfred Rosenheim, the president of the
American Institute of Architects' Los Angeles chapter, the
Tudor or
Collegiate Gothic-style single-family home was previously used as a convent. An adjoining
chapel was removed from exterior shots using
CGI. The series is filmed on sets that are an exact replica of the house. Details such as
Louis Comfort Tiffany stained glass windows, and hammered bronze light fixtures, were re-created to preserve the look of the house. Due to a "very aggressive" production schedule and the series' pilot shoot having to wait for co-creators Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk's other show,
Glee, to wrap its second season production, it was announced that the show's first-season finale, the thirteenth episode, would be thirty minutes shorter than planned. Finally, the thirteenth episode was dropped and they made the twelfth episode 10 minutes longer (52 minutes). The finale aired on December 21, 2011.
Title sequence The opening title sequence was created by
Kyle Cooper and his company
Prologue. He also created the title sequence for the
AMC series
The Walking Dead and the 1995 film
Se7en. The theme music was composed by sound designer Cesar Davila-Irizarry and musician
Charlie Clouser. The sequence is set in the Harmons' basement and includes images of postmortem young children, unborn (or aborted) babies in jars, skulls, a christening dress, a nurse's uniform, and a figure holding a pair of bloody hedge clippers. Murphy described the sequence as a mini-mystery and stated, "By the time you see the ninth episode of this season, every image in that title sequence will be explained." ==Reception==