As the American Horror Story: Hotel cast list swells to monstrous proportions, the AHS franchise as a whole grows as well, with Ryan Murphy recently teasing that the show could possibly pull double duty with both a fall season and a spring season next year. But although seemingly every human being on the terrestrial plane will appear in AHS: Hotel, there’s one name missing from the expansive roster: Jessica Lange. Hotel will be the first chapter of the AHS anthology that Lange won’t be a part of, and Murphy has been busy trying to fill the gaping hole left by her departure ever since the news became official. But Entertainment Weekly reports that the woman who has played a husband-killer, the devil, The Supreme Witch, and a freak show manager all in one series could, eventually, be returning to the fucked-up fold of AHS.
“I’ve been talking to her,” Murphy told EW. “It’s always possible. I’m trying to deal with her play schedule. Jessica is always about the character. She’ll be back—she’s not gone forever. But that’s the fun and fresh thing about the show: Sometimes somebody has to go away before you realize how much you miss them. She wants to come back, we just have to come up with something.”
Lange can play just about anything, so it shouldn’t be too hard for the AHS team to come up with something for her. In her AHS hiatus, Lange has returned to the Broadway stage and will star in the spring 2016 revival of Long Day’s Journey Into Night, which is being produced by Murphy. The entire AHS universe is connected, and EW has also reported that Hotel will find its way back to Murder House, so the door is certainly open for Lange to return.