There is a point while trying to explain “The Beauty” where the description simply gives up. FBI investigations. Global travel. Corporate greed. A miracle cure. Bodies everywhere, beautiful and horrific. Somewhere in the middle of all that, the sentences collapse, because the show isn’t interested in being neat or easily digestible. It wants overload. It wants provocation. It wants you to pause mid-thought and realize you’re not doing it justice.
Adapted from the graphic novel and brought to the screen by Ryan Murphy, “The Beauty” imagines a world where physical perfection is contagious. Beauty is a man-made virus, a commodity, and a power source capable of reshaping global economics and personal identity simultaneously. The story jumps between Paris, Venice, Rome, New York, and beyond, moving like an espionage thriller while constantly undercutting itself with body horror and satire. The show stars Evan Peters, Rebecca Hall, Ashton Kutcher, Anthony Ramos, Jeremy Pope, and more.
On this episode of Bingeworthy, Peters and Hall talk about what it was like stepping into one of Murphy’s boldest creations yet, and why neither of them needed convincing.
Hall recalled her first meeting with Murphy and the moment the series clicked for her. “He took me out for breakfast and gave me the pitch of what it was,” Hall said. “And it sounded wild and insane and completely unhinged in the best possible way. And I was like, ‘Who’s not gonna watch this?’ I mean, I can’t think of anyone who isn’t gonna want to watch this. So I was just excited to be a part of it.”
That lack of restraint carries directly onto the screen, particularly in how the series treats bodies as spectacle and statement. One might be tempted to call it, “Butts: The TV Show.”
“With Ryan, generally, there’s a lot of butts in the shows,” Peters laughed.
“I mean, fair enough,” Hall added. “You know, it’s on brand. He told me, and I was like, ‘OK, fine. I’m OK with it.’”
For Hall, the themes at the center of “The Beauty” weren’t unfamiliar so much as newly refracted. “These are things that I think about anyway,” she said. “Certainly as an actor, certainly as a woman. I was just intrigued and excited to see it dealt with in the way that it is.”
Peters was struck by how closely the show’s corporate elements mirror reality. “The corporation’s storyline and that side of things was pretty eye-opening for me,” he said. “Just thinking about the billions, hundreds of billions, trillions to be made off this industry. So it’s pretty mind-blowing.”
The series’ global scale isn’t decorative. Shooting in real international locations like Paris, Venice, New York, and more feeds directly into its tone. Hall described filming in Venice before sunrise as surreal. “Going to work in a water taxi in Venice as your method of transport at 4 a.m. when the sun is coming up over the Grand Canal is a pretty peak life experience,” she said.
Peters agreed that the constant movement shaped the storytelling itself. “It kind of did feel like a Bond movie,” he said. “It was exciting to go to these different locations. But it also just opened up the scope of the story. It raised the stakes. It became a global issue.”
By the finale, “The Beauty” makes it clear it’s laying groundwork rather than closing doors. Peters framed the season as an origin story. “The comic book series starts in a world that sort of already had The Beauty out in it,” Peters explained. “So this is really almost an origin story of The Beauty and how it all started. Hopefully there’s a season two, because I think that’s a really fun world that the comic book series explored.”
The conversation eventually turned hypothetical. If the Beauty existed without catastrophic side effects, would they take it?
“I’m not against whatever anyone needs to do to make themselves feel more like themselves,” Hall said. “But I suspect if I was to take The Beauty the way it pans out, I would just be a completely other person, which I’m not sure I’m comfortable with. So I’m kind of actually all right with me.”
Peters had a simpler wish. “I would just want it to cure the back pain,” he said. “That’s what I was latching on to. I’m the same person. Just fix the back pain.”
Franchise talk followed naturally. On returning to American Horror Story, Peters stayed deliberately vague, but did not rule out a series that brings multiple previous storylines together.
“I don’t know much,” he said. “I know that Jessica Lange is back, which is incredible. He’s getting all of the alumni back, which sort of maybe opens it up to that. But we’ll see.”
The pair also joked about Marvel’s flexible approach to death when asked whether either could ever return to their characters in the Marvel universe. Peters was beloved and highly underutilized as Quicksilver in the later “X-Men” films, while Hall played Maya Hansen in “Iron Man 3.”
“I’m technically dead, so bring him back,” Hall said.
“They can always bring you back,” Peters added.
“Yeah, I remember them saying that. And I remember hearing one of the Marvel guys in the back when I finished the shot at the end being like, ‘You’re never dead in the Marvel universe.” Hall recalled being told. “We can reassemble your particles in cyberspace.”
FX’s “The Beauty” premiered with three episodes on Wednesday, January 21, and is now streaming new episodes weekly on FX and Hulu. Whether the cure spreads into a second season remains to be seen, but as origin stories go, this one is a blast.
Listen to the full Evan Peters and Rebecca Hall interview below.
Bingeworthy is part of The Playlist Podcast Network, which includes Deep Focus, The Discourse, and more. We can be heard on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Soundcloud, and most places where podcasts are found. You can stream the podcast via the embed within the article. Be sure to subscribe and drop us a comment or a rating, as we greatly appreciate it. Thank you for listening.
Entertainment journalist, podcaster, and host of The Discourse and Bingeworthy podcasts, with bylines at Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, and IndieWire.
