‘American Horror Story: Delicate’ Trailer Creates Monstrosity Out of Motherhood
No lullabies could soothe the horrors revealed in the first full-length trailer for American Horror Story: Delicate. In the preview, Emma Roberts stars as an A-list actress whose life in front of the camera is more glamorous than the one behind it — the one in which she struggles to get pregnant and finds herself being stalked by a strange woman in red gloves and a trench coat. “You have a peculiar penchant for turning dreams into nightmares,” Kim Kardashian’s character tells the young star. The season’s first installment, set to premiere on Sept. 20, will explore that transformation.
The two-minute clip is unsettling at best. There are horrific visions of an uncertain future and long needles used for insemination in sterile rooms with glass walls. “You just rest up, my dear,” the leading physician tells Roberts in what’s meant to be a calming tone that ultimately comes across as purely menacing.
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But she wants this, or at least she thinks she does. Her husband has told her: “All this will be worth it once we meet our perfect baby.” But the monstrosities of motherhood that await could never be predicted by a copy of Parenthood for Dummies.
American Horror Story: Delicate also stars Cara Delevingne, Matt Czuchry, Billie Lourd, Denis O’Hare, Leslie Grossman, and Michaela Jaé Rodriguez. Creators Brad Falchuk and Ryan Murphy based this season on Danielle Valentine’s thriller novel “Delicate Condition,” published earlier this summer.
“The ways that we describe pregnancy—delicate condition, bun in the oven, she’s in a family way—it’s so infantilizing for something that is among the most dangerous, life-changing experiences that a human being can go through,” Valentine told Vanity Fair in a recent interview.
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