It seems like Ryan Murphy and his team have really expanded upon the first season's concept of getting talented actors to commit for less, but memorable time on a TV series. Filming already started last week, but we have more casting news to report on.
Franka Potente (The Bourne Identity, pictured below) is the latest addition to the cast, although it will be more of a guest role. According to TVLine, she'll play a "mysterious patient" at the institution for the criminally insane in a two-episode arc.
Chloe Sevigny, James Cromwell, Lizzie Brocheré, Jenna Dewan, Adam Levine, Clea Duvall, Chris Zylka, Britne Oldford, Mark Consuelos and Joseph Fiennes make up the rest of the new cast members that will appear in American Horror Story Season 2. Season 1 actors Jessica Lange, Zachary Quinto, Sarah Paulson, Even Peters, and Lily Rabe are all returning as new characters.
The second season will feature a brand new story set at an institution for the criminally insane during the 1960's. A specific release date has not been set, but the show is expected to return in October. Interested in learning more about the new story? Here are some character and plot details Ryan Murphy revealed earlier this year (Spoiler Warning):
“It’s set in an institution for the criminally insane that Jessica Lange’s character runs, which is a really, really, really fun thing to do because you can write all these people locked up in it. And I guess if the first season was about infidelity, the second season is about sanity. What makes someone sane or insane? Sometimes the people you think are insane are actually the most sane of all. It’s fun to write about people who society throws away.
I haven’t said this publicly, but the new season is set in the sixties and Chloë Sevigny, for example, plays a character who was put in an asylum because she was a woman who likes sex, so her husband sends her away. At the time, you were able to put people away for that. Another character is institutionalized for being a lesbian. To me, there’s nothing more scary than somebody coming to you and saying they’re going to take you away and put you in a mad house and you have no legal rights and there you shall stay till the end of your days. That is a real horror. Everybody has felt people thinking, “You’re fucking crazy.” Even somebody saying that to you is scary.”