On this most recent season of American Horror Story, Kathy Bates has been seen running around, drenched in blood, screaming bloody murder, and also crowing about the importance of being an actor. Naturally, Ryan Murphy saw that and thought, “Yeah, that’s not too far from what it was like being friends with Bette Davis.” TV Line reports the showrunner and sentient combination of ADHD and a drag queen’s storage closet has hired Bates to join his latest limited series for FX, Feud, in which the actor will play Hollywood actor and Davis confidante Joan Blundell.
It’s a fitting bit of casting: Like Blundell, Bates is a renowned actor with more than 100 credits to her resume. And in Feud, which revolves around the heated real-life rivalry between screen icons Bette Davis and Joan Crawford (to be played by Jessica Lange and Susan Sarandon, respectively), she’ll get to experience the white-hot intensity of the pair’s vituperative relationship, something Bates knows a little about, having played Annie Wilkes in Misery. Already a regular staple of Murphy’s roster of actors (Bates has been in the past four seasons of AHS), she’ll join fellow Murphy muse Sarah Paulson, already cast as similarly acclaimed Hollywood royalty Geraldine Page. Now, if Murphy can just figure out what scene-stealing role to give Angela Bassett, we’ll be all set.