‘Grotesquerie' star Niecy Nash-Betts on that shocking coma twist, and Travis Kelce's ‘greedy' appetite
"I will probably be working with Ryan until the day they throw dirt on my face," Nash-Betts tells Gold Derby. "I love Ryan Murphy. I love him as a partner. I love him as a creator. I was so interested to see what was next, what was going on in his mind. And when I read that script — oh my gosh!"
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Nash-Betts won an Emmy for another Murphy project, Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, and she's soon returning to his universe in the upcoming Hulu legal series All's Fair, which will costar Kim Kardashian, Glenn Close, Sarah Paulson, Naomi Watts, Teyana Taylor, and Matthew Noszka.
After Nash-Betts read the Grotesquerie scripts, Murphy let her pick any character she wanted to play. "My heart just leaned into Lois so much," she revealed. "And I was like, it's Lois Tryon or nothing. That's my girl. I was excited to do it because it was a role I'd never played before. I've never played a woman with an addiction to alcoholism, and I just thought it was so interesting that she was chasing a demon while she was battling her own."
She added, "It is not an easy thing to play drunk, because it can come across as jokey if it's not really grounded. There are so many places to be on that wave, and Ryan was just a great partner to help me unpack it all." The actress joked that she "drank lots of tequila every day" to get into character. "No, just kidding!" she laughed out loud.
Football star-turned-actor Travis Kelce guested on Grotesquerie as orderly Ed Laclan, where he shared several scenes with Nash-Betts. "He did not bring a football, but he definitely brought a football player's appetite," she explains. "He is one of the greediest people I've ever seen in my life. He eats a lot, and he eats all day long. But he is so kind, and so willing and so eager to get it right. He didn't phone in a moment. He came very prepared."
Prashant Gupta/FX
But back to Grotesquerie's shocking coma twist. "My mind popped off," Nash-Betts confessed about finding out Lois was actually in a hospital bed for the first half of the season. "I was like, wait, what?! It just made the show even more delicious, you know?"
Nash-Betts reflects on her epic fight scene in the kitchen with Micaela Diamond as Sister Megan by shouting out her longtime stunt double. "Her name is Jeanette Branch, we call her JJ, and that woman makes me look good in a fight," she notes. "There were parts of the choreography that Micaela and I actually had to do, and then there were parts that our stunt doubles had to do, but we stayed with it the whole time. We looked forward to it so much. I was like, 'Why are we like this? Why do we want to scratch each other's eyes out?'"
Even though Grotesquerie is chock-full of corpses and bloody body parts, Nash-Betts is able to "compartmentalize" and "crack jokes" about the gore. However, "When I got home from work, I had to look behind the curtains, and make sure nobody was in there."
FX
The actress "would love" for the show to come back for Season 2, stating, "We need to find out who Grotesquerie is. Don't ask me if I know, because even if I did, I wouldn't tell you," she smiles. Nash-Betts theorizes that, in 10 years' time, Lois is "probably retired, maybe teaching a little bit," or even "living by a lake and learning how to fish, if she's lucky."
She concludes, "I feel like Lois is my best work to date, in my opinion. I'm very, very protective of her."
In addition to Nash-Betts, Diamond, and Kelce, the Grotesquerie cast also includes Primetime Emmy winner Courtney B. Vance (The People v. O.J. Simpson) as Lois' husband, Oscar nominee Lesley Manville (Phantom Thread) as Nurse Redd, Daytime Emmy winner Nicholas Alexander Chavez (General Hospital) as Father Charlie, and Spirit nominee Raven Goodwin (Lovely & Amazing) as Lois' daughter.
Also in our exclusive video interview, Nash-Betts reveals that Oprah Winfrey called her after she won the Emmy Award for Monster to tell her she gave one of the best speeches ever. "She said that there are very few speeches that people remember as an all time speech. And she was like, 'Good job.' Oprah-approved!"
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