The difficulties facing Hollywood super-producer Ryan Murphy’s TV empire

While that might have been a relief for Murphy, he could have had greater difficulties to contend with in recent weeks. Angelica Ross – who previously appeared in two series of American Horror Story and another Murphy series, Pose – used her platform on X (formerly known as Twitter) to complain about Murphy and his shows. First she claimed that she had been ignored by Murphy after he said he wanted to go ahead with her idea for an American Horror Story season starring black women. She then followed up by claiming this had potentially cost her an opportunity working on a Marvel production.

Ross also made allegations about what happened on the set of American Horror Story: 1984. In an in-depth interview with the Hollywood Reporter, she claimed that she had to leave the set due to a crew member who was operating the vehicle she had to drive on camera “wearing a racist T-shirt” every day. She further claimed that after she tweeted “It’s a shame that I do all this work out in the world on anti-blackness and racism and have to come to a set and do the same work”, she was told by producer Tanase Popa that Murphy wanted her to take the tweet down.

Next, Ross alleged, Murphy himself rang her and angrily took issue with her feeling of being silenced, pointing to his advocacy for black trans women. In a statement to The Hollywood Reporter, however, Popa countered Ross’s account, saying that he overheard the phone call in question and what Murphy “basically” said was “I don’t understand why you would go to Twitter instead of coming to us”. BBC Culture contacted Murphy with regards to Ross’ allegations about her interaction with him and the behaviour on the American Horror Story set, but he has not responded.

This was surely not the publicity Murphy would have wanted for his longest-running series. But these events are just the most recent difficult headlines related to the TV empire of the industry’s golden boy, who was said to have secured one of the biggest ever deals for a TV producer in 2018 when he moved from Fox and FX over to Netflix in a contract reported to be worth as much as $300 million.

During the summer, amid the Hollywood writers’ strike, filming of the new season of American Horror Story was picketed by members of the Writers Guild of America (WGA) and Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFRA) as it was one of the few productions still up and running despite the strike, on the basis that the scripts had been submitted prior to the union action. “[Murphy is] a member [of the writers’ guild] and it just feels like keeping these things up and running is counterproductive to our overall mission,” WGA strike captain T Cooper said to the New York Times.

Murphy was then forced to deny an allegation on X, formerly known as Twitter, from WGA strike captain Warren Leight, who wrote that crew members for AHS would “be blackballed in Murphy-land” if they observed the picket. A spokesperson for Murphy told Variety this claim was “absolute nonsense. Categorically false” and then Leight did a follow-up post apologising and retracting his claim as “unsubstantiated” and “completely false and inaccurate”.

The rise of a super-showrunner

Murphy has had a remarkable rise to the top in Hollywood: having started off as an entertainment journalist writing for publications like the Los Angeles Times and Entertainment Weekly, he moved into screenwriting in the late 1990s, co-creating the teen drama, Popular, in 1999 for The WB. It was cancelled after two series, but he then went on to create the hit plastic surgery drama Nip/Tuck for FX, which ran from 2003 to 2010. Its watercooler success opened doors for Murphy, marking him out as someone who would begin to lead the TV zeitgeist.