The surreal new trailer for American Horror Story: Delicate features Kim Kardashian alongside Emma Roberts. The 12th season of the horror anthology series created by Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk for FX is based on the book Delicate Condition by Danielle Valentine and stars Cara Delevingne, Matt Czuchry, Billie Lourd, Denis O'Hare, Leslie Grossman, and Michaela Jaé Rodriguez.
In AHS: Delicate, Roberts plays Anna Victoria Alcott, an actress who wants an Oscar just as much as she does a child. Kardashian plays Siobhan Walsh — some helicoptering presence-advisor-friend-colleague-succubus — who says to Anna in the trailer, “You have a peculiar penchant for turning dreams into nightmares.” After Anna gets pregnant, terrifying things happen, suggesting that this season's theme is “pregnancy is horrifying.” Kardashian and Roberts look into a broken mirror with red letters scrawled on it that read “Don't Do It, Anna,” and there are images reminiscent of Alien, Rosemary's Baby, and Dead Ringers throughout the trailer.
Delicate Condition Author Danielle Valentine Cites Alien as an Inspiration
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Valentine says Alien, starring Sigourney Weaver, inspired her when writing Delicate Condition. “It's really a movie about pregnancy, but it's been written by a man who doesn't understand that that's what he's writing about,” Valentine says. “It's what happens when a guy thinks, What's the scariest possible thing I can come up with? And it's this idea of, what if you're growing this creature inside of you and it's using your resources to get bigger and you can't control it? It has a mind of its own, and then one day it just bursts out of you in this gruesome, bloody mess. When I first saw it when I was a kid, it didn't occur to me that that's basically what pregnancy is, but at six months pregnant, I'm like, ‘Oh, wow! That's just a pregnancy story without the pregnancy.' That was the seed right there.”
Valentine also lists The Silence of the Lambs as an inspiration because, as in Alien, the movie features a woman (Jodie Foster) surrounded by men who don't listen to her.
“I am such a fan of Ryan Murphy and that whole team that I just have utter faith that it's going to be glorious,” says Valentine of AHS: Delicate. “So it's been really easy for me to feel entirely excited for that.”
The first part of AHS: Delicate premieres on FX on September 20. Part two is not yet filmed because production got shut down when the SAG-AFTRA strike began.