Angelica Ross claimed that American Horror Story cocreator Ryan Murphy yelled at her after she tweeted about a racist incident that occurred on the set of the anthology horror series.
“He starts off not, ‘Are you OK?’ Not, ‘What’s going on?’ He starts off: ‘What’s your f—king problem?! Are you serious?’” Ross, 42, claimed during a Friday, September 22, interview with The Hollywood Reporter. She explained that the phone call took place after she expressed concerns to director John J. Gray about a crew member who allegedly repeatedly wore T-shirts containing racially charged language to set. According to Ross, she was told that the crew member was exercising his right to free speech.
“So, I then tweet. ‘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,’” Ross recalled, claiming that a producer asked her to delete the tweet. “[And Ryan] goes, ‘You think that I would f—king silence you after all I’ve done and I’ve been an advocate and done nothing but uplift trans Black women?’”
Despite her long history with Murphy, 57 — Ross worked with Murphy on three seasons of Pose before joining the AHS franchise — the actress noted that she wasn’t surprised by the producer’s reaction.
“I’ve dealt with this before. This is not my first time at the rodeo of dealing with that energy of white people who think that they are doing good but won’t check their own selves when someone Black or of the people they’re trying to help is telling them, ‘You have a blind spot,’” she said.
AHS producer Tanase Popa told THR that she was standing next to Murphy during the phone call in question and claimed she “did not hear him cuss at [Angelica] or say, ‘After all I’ve done, for you, why would you do this?’” Popa added that Murphy “Basically said, ‘I don’t understand why you would go to Twitter instead of coming to us.’” Us Weekly reached out to Murphy for comment.
Ross claimed that her former AHS costar Emma Roberts was also “aware of the T-shirts.” Days before her interview with THR, Ross took to Instagram Live to detail an alleged incident where Roberts misgendered her on the set of American Horror Story: 1984. One day later, on Wednesday, September 20, Ross confirmed via X (formerly known as Twitter) that Roberts had called her to apologize.
“It was a bumpy conversation,” Ross told THR of Roberts’ apology call. “She apologized and she said, ‘I hate that you walked away from our experience together feeling like that. I see in hindsight what I did and how stupid that was. I’m an ally.’ I was like, ‘No, you’re not. You can’t call yourself an ally. … You were being messy.’” Us reached out to Roberts for comment.
Ross added that she wasn’t surprised that Roberts reached out to her. “The truth of the matter is, I know Emma’s got big balls. I’ve seen them on set,” she said. “This girl is no damsel in distress, ever.”
In addition to the phone call allegations, Ross also claimed that Murphy suddenly “stopped communicating” with her in July 2020 about plans they’d had to collaborate on a season of AHS with a Black-led cast — and contributed to her decision to leave Hollywood.
“It’s sort of a ‘Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me,’ situation,” she told the outlet of losing faith in the industry. “I thought that Ryan Murphy was going to be my champion. I thought he understood.”
