Jessica Lange on Returning to ‘American Horror Story’—and Mary Tyrone

The way that Hollywood operates nowadays, it can be challenging as an actor to find a good part in an original story—a struggle that even the two-time Oscar winner Jessica Lange knows all too well.

“As far as film, there’s nothing right now that really excites me that much,” Lange tells Vogue.

It’s part of the reason that, for her two latest projects, the star decided to revisit prior roles. Out this week is a Jonathan Kent-directed film adaptation of Long Day’s Journey Into Night—a play that Lange did in the West End in 2000 and on Broadway a decade ago (winning her the best-actress Tony in 2016). Yet the project marks the first time Lange has brought her Mary Tyrone to the big screen.

The classic Eugene O’Neill drama follows Mary, her husband James (played by Ed Harris in the film), and their two sons as they grapple with addiction and other familial traumas. “It’s one of the most extraordinary plays ever written,” Lange says. “The play is classic and powerful because it’s ageless.”

This fall also saw Lange return to the cast of Ryan Murphy’s American Horror Story—now in its 13th season—to reprise four different characters from seasons past. “I had never imagined that I would do another season,” says Lange, who departed the show after Season 4. “I didn’t want to create another character—I was finished.” But revisiting the likes of southern belle Constance Langdon from Season 1 or the witchy Fiona from Season 4 was a different proposition.

Below, Lange talks with Vogue about filming both projects, reuniting with some of her former cast mates—stay for the Sarah Paulson story!—and what she looks for in a script. (When you’re Jessica Lange, it had better be good.)

Vogue: You’ve performed Long Day’s Journey Into Night on both the West End and on Broadway. What excited you about bringing this project to film?

Jessica Lange: It’s been a gift from the gods to play Mary Tyrone in this play. Whenever the possibility came up—first on the West End, and then on Broadway—I immediately said yes. And while we were doing the Broadway production, [director] Jonathan [Kent] and I spoke about how wonderful it would be if we could film it. As you can imagine, getting something like this done in this day [and age] was extremely difficult. But six years later, I got a call from Jonathan, and he got the wonderful writer David Lindsay-Abaire to do the [screenplay] adaptation, and we cast it.

You say it was a struggle to get this film made. How so?

We were all set to shoot. We rehearsed for two weeks, because Jonathan is a theater director, and everybody working on it was used to doing theater. We came to our first day of shooting, which was fabulous and exhilarating—and then the second day the producer came on set and told us we were shutting down. The money had fallen out. So for three weeks, everybody scrambled to try to get enough money—and believe me, this was a small budget. But just by chance, an old producer friend of mine in London, who I had done the original production with, came to our rescue. It was a long and arduous process. But it’s done, and it’s going to be released, and it was thrilling to do. We ended up shooting in Ireland, which was great. The house that was built for this was extraordinary.

And it’s well worth the wait. What has kept drawing you back to Mary?

I really feel that Mary Tyrone is one of those roles that comes along once or twice in your career. There’s no limit to her. I think it’s because O’Neill was writing from a place of great love and truthfulness that this character—and all of his characters in this play—is inexhaustible. Mary Tyrone is like a bottomless well: You’ll never come to the end of her. In O’Neill's introduction, he says he wrote the play “with deep pity and understanding and forgiveness for all the four haunted Tyrones.” When you come from that deep of a place, it's an extraordinary experience to be able to say his words and to discover his characters.

What has it been like to play her in such different contexts each time?

Well, a big part of it is age. I first played it in London 25 years ago, so I was considerably younger. My life experience was different then than what it was now, doing the film. There’s been a lot more loss and sorrow, as O’Neill says. Doing it on film as opposed to on stage was also different. On film, you tend to draw the camera into you—it’s a whole different way of working—whereas on stage, you’re projecting out. Doing it on film, there were moments where you could really sink deep into it, in ways that may not have registered on stage.

It still felt to me like it was shot as a play, rather than a traditional movie.

I think we had to with this play. When David and Jonathan were working on the script, they cut an hour and a half from O’Neill’s original text—it’s now a two-hour film, as opposed to a three-hour-and-45-minute play—however, not one word of O’Neill’s was changed. We still got to play out those moments. The camera had to be present with what’s happening internally between the characters, and how they are connected to one another. You can’t do that with this kind of frantic editing that has become so prevalent—where you stay on something for 10 seconds, and then cut to something else, which drives me crazy.

I loved your subtle approach to depicting how Mary Tyrone begins to unravel. What was your process for developing that?

It’s interesting, because a lot of characters stay with you. This one in particular—because it’s the greatest role I have ever played, and one of the greatest roles available to an actress—all of the emotions that I experienced on stage were still there. And when you call upon it, a lot of the times, all you have to do is get out of the way. Everything that I experienced eight times a week for months still resided somewhere inside. You just need to give it a channel. Let it reside. And O’Neill gave the most intricate stage directions: She changes from one moment to another. She laughs, then she’s angry. I always paid attention to that, even though it was overwhelming. When you’re playing at that kind of heightened emotional state, the body just goes along with it.

I also wondered if the set helped drive your performance. To me, the Tyrone house almost serves as a secondary character.

You’re absolutely right. I always thought of the set as the sixth character. The house embodies this idea of the present and the past—it holds emotional memory. For the men, they get out of the house—they leave and come back, so it remains on a different level for them. But for Mary, she really is captured by this house, and held there. The set was an entire functioning house, on a cliff overlooking the Irish Sea. Of course, it was meant to double as the coast of Connecticut in 1912. But the house itself had such an emotional power. All you had to do was give into it, especially with Mary, because that’s her confinement. It added another layer to the character.

Was it fun working with Ed Harris again, after doing Sweet Dreams together in 1985?

Ed is such an extraordinary actor. We worked together quite a long time ago, but it was a very powerful piece about this love affair between two people, running the entire gamut of emotions. There’s a familiarity after you’ve worked with somebody. I love working with actors that you don’t know what they're going to do, and that’s always been the case with Ed. It keeps you present when things haven’t been discussed, intellectualized, or predetermined. It's just raw and in the moment.

Okay, let’s switch gears and talk about your glorious return to the American Horror Story franchise. What enticed you to rejoin that world?

I had never imagined that I would do another season. I didn’t want to create another character—I was finished. I had done the first four seasons of the show, and I enjoyed every one of them. I thought they were well-written and well-directed. We had a repertory company, which was wonderful, to work with the same group of actors and travel from one story to another. I found it really interesting. The characters that were written for me were very baroque and overblown a lot of the times, but they were great to do, because there was no limit to them. You could basically take them to the extreme, and that was fun. So when Ryan asked me to meet with him and discuss this, I though, “Well, all right, but I’m not going to do a brand-new character.” That didn’t interest me at all. I wanted to revisit all four characters from the four seasons I did, and we agreed on that. It became an interesting project because I got to work with the same actors I’d worked with many times—Sarah [Paulson], Evan [Peters], Angela [Bassett], Kathy [Bates].

The first three episodes have aired, and in them you step back into the part of Constance Langdon. She’s quite the character—a real southern belle. How did it feel to play her again?

She’s a big one, yeah. It was interesting because, oddly enough, I don’t remember that much about the storyline of those early episodes. It was kind of a rediscovery. But the voice and physicality came back. Working with Evan [Peters], Jamie [Brewer], John Waters, and Joey Pollari…I wish we had a little more time. Sometimes you’d get the script on the day you were shooting it. You were flying by the seat of your pants—and boom, you were off! In a way, that also allowed you never to overthink it, because you didn’t have time to overthink it.

This season, you’ll also be playing Sister Jude, Fiona (the supreme!), and Elsa. Were any of them challenging to get back into?

They actually came pretty naturally. A lot of times, I work from the voice as a way back into a character. I would listen to old episodes, and that was my way back into it. I worked that way to a great extent on Grey Gardens, when I was playing Big Edie Beale. I would come into my trailer in the morning, put on a recording of her voice, and then the character would start to settle in. I did that with these four characters: When I rediscovered their voices, the characters came alive.

Do you have a personal favorite to play of the four?

Well, my personal favorite season—I think the best season we did—was Season 2, Asylum.

That’s my favorite!

It’s my favorite story that we’ve told. But as far as my favorite character, that would be Elsa in Season 4.

Speaking of Elsa, who is a singer…I recently realized you’re only a Grammy away from the EGOT. Is there a musical world or production you’d ever consider jumping into?

[Laughs.] I can’t sing.

I disagree!

Well, you’re kind, but I won’t be getting a Grammy for my voice recordings anytime soon. With Elsa, it was fun, because I got to sing David Bowie’s “Heroes” and “Life on Mars?” or Lana Del Rey’s “Gods & Monsters.” Those were great songs, and so exciting to do. I won’t go into detail, but Elsa sings in Episode 4, airing later this week. When I [sing] within the context of a character, and a character as big and wild as Elsa—or Sister Jude, with “The Name Game”—then sometimes I can do it. But as far as being a singer, I am so not.

“The Name Game” is still so iconic. And speaking of iconic: I saw in a Ryan Murphy interview that you will be recreating your fan-favorite “Knotty Pine” scene this season. What can you tell us?

That was fun. Some of these characters are so wild, and that was one of those moments. I actually had to watch the scene from the original episode just to hear the voice again, and ground myself in something real. That scene played wonderfully because of Danny [Huston] and the relationship that we had during that season. It really is a kind of wild and wonderful moment.

Are you surprised by just how viral these scenes have gone? I mean, every Halloween Gen-Z fans post so many clips from Coven on TikTok.

I really don’t know. I’m not on any kind of social media, so I have no idea what people are doing, talking about, or thinking.

Sarah Paulson recently said in an interview that you both went out dancing in New Orleans after filming this season. I simply must know more about this.

I believe it was Sarah’s birthday dinner. We were down in New Orleans—we did two seasons down there—and it was fabulous. I don’t remember all the particulars. I do remember going out and having a birthday dinner, and then it just went on and on and on and on. We walked home when it was already light out. I hadn’t done that since the days when I lived in Paris.

Obsessed with that visual of you two. Well, Halloween is coming up, and I’m curious if you’ll be celebrating.

The only time I’ve been really interested in Halloween was when my children were little—making costumes or taking them trick-or-treating. Things like that. But no, Halloween isn’t one of my favorite holidays of the year.

You’ve played so many incredible characters that lend themselves perfectly to a Halloween costume, though. Have you ever met a Jessica Lange in the wild?

No, I have not. Thank God.

What are you looking for in the next project? What does it take for a script to intrigue you these days?

It’s hard to say. I would love to do something on stage again. It’s been a couple years. I did a wonderful play two years ago called Mother Play, which was a great experience. As far as film, there’s nothing right now that really excites me that much. And you’ve got to be excited, because it’s a long, long haul. The idea that you would start something, and then regret your decision to do it would be terrible. So, maybe I’m done! [Editor’s note: We doubt it.]

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.