Ryan Murphy has long specialized in evoking physical dread in his teasers for American Horror Story . And it seems like he might be having trouble dialing down the body horror for his next project, the upcoming American Crime Story, which presents the O.J. Simpson murder trial “from the perspective of the lawyers.”
This teaser contains our first glimpse of John Travolta as Simpson attorney Robert Shapiro, and the results are unsettling to say the least. American Crime Story’s makeup department has constructed a visually jarring monster that is neither Travolta nor Shapiro; if anything, he looks like Special Agent Sean Archer if Face/Off had ended with Castor Troy living out the rest of his natural life in Archer’s body (and if director John Woo had forced the actors to swap faces in real life).
Meanwhile, a second teaser features tight shots of O.J. (Cuba Gooding Jr.) being put into a polygraph machine, and being asked if “the person who killed Nicole Brown Simpson is in this room.” While the strapping in is slightly dehumanizing, it mercifully does not feature John Travolta, or any other human-shark hybrids.
American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson will air on FX this February.