Lady Gaga Dominated ‘American Horror Story’ Long Before ‘A Star Is Born’

This weekend the world is going to fawn over Lady Gaga as it should have been doing every weekend since The Fame was released in 2008. By almost all accounts, A Star Is Born is a masterful and beautiful film that’s sure to dominate Oscar conversations and fill our need to see beautiful people falling in love. But we need to stop acting like Gaga being a great actress is a novel thing. Ryan Murphy knew that Lady Gaga was destined for the screen long before Bradley Cooper wiped off her makeup.

To date, Lady Gaga has starred in two seasons of American Horror Story, and she has stolen the spotlight in both. Gaga made her debut in the Murphy-verse as The Countess, the bloodthirsty owner of Season 5’s Hotel Cortez who loved orgies almost as much as she loved blood. At first glance The Countess was one of the most on-brand Ryan Murphy characters ever created. She was a gorgeous old Hollywood diva with a mean streak and a love of sexual exploration and taboos. But Hotel turned Gaga’s Elizabeth into more than just a glamorous set piece. She was also a deeply tragic figure who allowed the music icon to explore her range.

Throughout most of Hotel The Countess/Elizabeth was little more than an impressive and imposing statue. She was never seen without a new, elaborate wardrobe and her perfectly sculpted eyebrows as she passively leered over her domain. But the season’s seventh episode “Flicker” chipped away at the emotions lurking beneath Elizabeth’s chilly exterior. The episode dived into her backstory, telling how she came to marry the hotel owner James Patrick March (Evan Peters) and what ever happened to the movie star couple she fell in love with, Rudolph Valentino (Finn Wittrock) and Natacha (Alexandra Daddario).

Seeing Peters and Gaga perform together was like watching two players who know the rules to a very secret game. Every aspect of their old Hollywood characters, from Peters’ ’20s way of talking to Gaga’s comically wide eyes felt out of place. But that was the point. Hotel was a season that reveled in antiquity and the true emotions lurking between the sculpted facades of the past. In Gaga’s Elizabeth that duality took the form of a battle you could see playing across her face from scene to scene. Elizabeth wanted to be emotional, she wanted to express the actual grief and horror she felt, but she was too bound to her carefully crafted character to do so.

The singer-songwriter’s second Murphy role was a complete roundabout from her debut. Roanoke‘s immortal Scáthach was practically a being of pure id. She did whatever she pleased, and her status as the AHS‘ first Supreme witch allowed her to get away with everything consequence-free. Scáthach’s human sacrifice-filled arc wasn’t nearly as rich as Elizabeth’s but it did show off Lady Gaga’s unique ability to commit her body to the role. At times in American Horror Story, when Lady Gaga is speaking you can feel her acting. Seeing as how the anthology series was one of her first roles, that’s forgivable. But when she’s moving, that knowledge vanishes.

In the coming weeks Lady Gaga is going to get a lot of deserved love for her performing prowess. But in the middle of all of this hype, let us not forget the man who knows how to turn pop stars into screen star, who turned Gaga into a witch and Ariana Grande into an excellently campy murder victim in Scream Queens. Let’s not forget Ryan Murphy saw Lady Gaga’s onscreen potential years ago… And he let her keep her fabulous makeup on while he was filming.

Where sot stream American Horror Story: Hotel