Over the course of 10 days, Ryan Murphy released four new shows — “American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez” and “Grotesquerie” at FX, “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story” at Netflix and “Doctor Odyssey” at ABC — and premiered new seasons of returning hits “9-1-1: Lone Star” at Fox and “9-1-1” at ABC.
“Six shows in a month is a lot, but everybody in my company worked really, really hard, and miraculously, they all worked,” Murphy told Variety during a conversation on Oct. 1. “They all launched at No. 1 and individually, they’re all doing really, really well.”
Everything coming out at once “wasn’t really planned that way,” Murphy said, but happened as part of his new deal at Disney, which he’s a year and a half into.
“It was a combination of the writers strike and my new deal. They asked me, when we finally realized, six things are coming out over the course of 10 days, ‘How are you going to do this?’ I said, ‘Well, have a really great company. I work with really great people. I think we can do it,’” Murphy said. “It was important to me to get my crews back to work immediately, and to have a lot of shows, to employ a lot of people, and I have great gratitude for that. And many people who work for me roll from one job into the other, so it’s constant employment.”
And the number of Murphy’s shows is only growing. He has multiple shows in development including FX’s “The Beauty,” “American Love Story” and Hulu’s “All’s Fair,” the latter of which he starts directing this week, starring Glenn Close, Kim Kardashian, Naomi Watts, Sarah Paulson and Nash. “It’s my version of a law show, which I’ve never really done,” he said. “These are divorce lawyers so every week there’s a divorce of the week. It’s very heightened, it’s very glamorous, it’s very aspirational.”
“The Beauty” was written for Evan Peters and Jeremy Pope, Murphy said.
“It’s something I’ve never done before, which is a sci-fi medical show about a new virus that mutates and it’s sexually transmitted, that turns you into your absolute perfect self. And the question is, how far would you go to be beautiful? What would you sacrifice to that, and does that matter?” he said. “That show was looking at, I call it the Ozempic culture. One little shot, and suddenly you’re going to look better and feel better, and all your problems are going to go away. But what are you really working on? What’s going on with you that you feel you need to do that? Sometimes it is health, sometimes it’s vanity.”
He added that he’s always wanted to work with Anthony Ramos and Ashton Kutcher, so he’s excited to dive in — especially because of how big the production will be: “It’s very different. It shoots in Europe — Venice, Rome and Paris. It’s a very big budget, kind of ‘Game of Thrones’ in its scale.”
With any of his future projects Murphy has set a high bar for success.
Monsters: The Lyle And Erik Menendez Story
MILES CRIST/NETFLIX
Globally, “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez” story has been the No. 1 series on Netflix for two weeks in a row, debuting with 12.3 million views in four days before rising to 19.5 million in its second week. The series has also made the Netflix Top 10 in 89 different countries.
Last Thursday also marked the series premiere of “Doctor Odyssey” and the Season 8 premiere of “9-1-1,” with both turning in solid numbers for ABC. “9-1-1” was the biggest broadcast program of the night, averaging 4.9 million viewers. “Doctor Odyssey” aired directly after and maintained 86% of that audience, hitting 4.2 million viewers and marking ABC’s best drama launch since “Big Sky” four years ago. Meanwhile, “9-1-1: Lone Star” returned to Fox with 3 million viewers for its fifth and final season premiere on Sept. 23. Measured across 3 days of viewing, that number rises to 4.2 million on broadcast and 4.9 million accounting for streaming, becoming the network’s biggest scripted telecast in Live + 3 since the “Lone Star” Season 4 finale in May 2023, excluding post-NFL telecasts.
“Doctor Odyssey,” “9-1-1” and “9-1-1: Lone Star” have all hit the Hulu Top 15 since their debuts, as have two more Ryan Murphy series: “American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez” and “Grotesquerie.”
All five of those are part of his overall deal with 20th TV; when re-joining as part of a new deal, he wanted to show just how much he could do — again.
“The person I’m closest with in the world is Dana Walden, and I’ve worked with John Landgraf since God was a boy, so I did feel an obligation to my partners — let’s hit the ground running with some big whoppers, some big swings,” Murphy said. “They’re all four-quadrant shows, or at least that’s what we’re trying to do. So I did feel an obligation to deliver, and I felt an obligation post-strike to get my crews back to work, which I did.”
Usually, Murphy tries to do the opposite of what he just did, alternating between “horror and happy,” which is why he worked on “Grotesquerie” and “Doctor Odyssey” back to back. The Nicey Nash-led drama was a personal project for him, but important to release pre-election.
“It’s really based on how we’re all feeling in the world. It does feel like a very dark, chaotic time. This is a show about an African American woman who’s taking on maybe the biggest boogeyman of all time, which is very applicable to our election. When we started making it, that became quite apparent,” said Murphy. “I feel that it’s a statement about how bleak things seem, but more than that, it’s a statement about how the way you get through it is together and ultimately with love. And that’s what Niecy’s character is doing. She’s trying to get up every day and — along with dealing with all of these horrifying things — trying to keep her family together, trying to have a relationship, trying to be a leader and be optimistic. I don’t know. I deeply related to that idea at this point in time, and I think Niecy did too.”
