The advent of fall usually marks the best time of the year for horror genre enthusiasts; this year’s selection is quite scary, with titles such as The Nun 2, Saw X, Pet Cemetery: Bloodlines, The Exorcist: Believer, and Five Nights at Freddy’s all scheduled to release just in time to make the upcoming Halloween festivities all the more fun and frightening. And, of course, as part of the Halloween entertainment tradition, creator and producer Ryan Murphy is gracing us with yet another season of American Horror Story.
However, in a casting decision that shook social media and AHS enthusiasts alike, Kim Kardashian — socialite, businesswoman, model, and all around “keep up” media personality — will be making her horror debut in the new season of American Horror Story. Now, to be entirely honest, horror and Kim Kardashian don’t typically go hand-in-hand. And yet, this is exactly what the upcoming season’s first-look posters boast — an unrecognizable Kim Kardashian donning a platinum wig, skin-tight leather, impossibly long lashes, and a giant spider. But what do we actually know about the role?
Unfortunately, not much, since details about her character are currently being held under tighter wrap than Mumm-Ra, and FX is doing a great job of preventing any information leaks. So, to further understand her role, we’ll have to dive into what’s known about the upcoming season of American Horror Story and what separates it from the previous seasons. Please note that the following discussion contains some spoilers, but we’ll try to keep those at a minimum.
Where previous seasons drew their inspiration from real-life horror or mystery events, like the Black Dahlia Murder or the “Vampire” Countess of Hungary Elizabeth Bathory, Delicate is actually based on the recently released book titled Delicate Condition by Danielle Valentine. This is actually the first season of American Horror Story to be based on a book whose narrative follows Anna Victoria Alcott (Emma Roberts), an actor who, after putting off procreation until her late thirties, now wants to have a child more than anything else in the world.
Various doctors tell Anna that there’s no reason why she can’t get pregnant, yet she continues to have problems with conception. Finally, after multiple failed attempts at in vitro fertilization, Anna finally conceives. However, in a tragic twist of fate that Murphy makes very clear in all promos for the series, Anna loses the baby in a heartbreaking and graphic miscarriage — possibly leaving a void for forces more sinister than viewers could ever imagine to exploit.
What’s even worse is that nearly everyone around her downplays the mental and physical pain of the loss of her child — which actually mirrors a much broader problem of women not being listened to by doctors. In fact, the women’s pain is often dismissed by doctors, and 1 in 5 American women report being mistreated while pregnant, with higher rates of maternal mistreatment reported by women of color. Furthermore, a CDC study found that more than 80% of all maternal deaths were actually preventable.
But we digress. Kim Kardashian plays American Horror Story: Delicate‘s Siobhan Walsh, Anna’s fellow actor, who ends up consoling Anna following her loss. However, things aren’t as they seem. Later throughout the narrative, Anna feels sudden movement — fetal movement.
We won’t spoil any further details surrounding the upcoming season, but there are some unsettling details surrounding the narrative that we can discern from the promotional material, such as posters and trailers, most of which are filled with imagery of spiders that resemble giant, black versions of the comb-clawed spider. For example, the first-look posters reveal Kim Kardashian holding a giant spider against her stomach in lieu of a baby bump, which is quite creepy considering the narrative of the novel and suggestive imagery of the season’s trailer implying her giving birth to something not quite human.
Unfortunately, none of this reveals much about the character the reality star portrays, apart from the fact that Siobhan plays a very significant role in Anna’s story. However, one clue might lie with the spiders, but not in the classical Alien-like spider monster kind of way. While such scenarios aren’t excluded, their appearance and prevalence in the upcoming season’s theme are most likely metaphorical.
The author of Delicate Condition, upon which AHS: Delicate was based, clarified that the novel is inspired by Alien, at least in part. However, AHS is known for using metaphorical imagery in its promotional material. So, the presence of spiders most likely represents traps, webs of lies, and deceit rather than chest-bursters from a galaxy far, far away. But that only begs the question of whether Kardashian’s Siobhan Walsh is in the center of the spider web and whether all the traps and deceit lead to her. Is she the Big Bad of the season, or is her role more benevolent?
American Horror Story: Delicate, starring Emma Roberts, Kim Kardashian, and Cara Delevingne, will premiere on FX on September 20, 2023, and will be available to stream on Hulu the following day.