American Horror Story will bring Michael Chiklis back to FX next season. This news seems to be the first bit of confirmed new casting this year for the FX drama, which is poised to return for Season 4 this fall, under the title American Horror Story: Freak Show.
This casting actually gives us a tiny bit more info about the plot for the series beyond the carnival backdrop, as Variety says Chiklis will play "the former husband of Kathy Bates' character and father of Evan Peters' character." I did say a "tiny bit," right? It gives away almost nothing about the type of character Chiklis is playing, but it confirms Bates and Peters' involvement in the plot in some significant way, and sets up a family dynamic.
So are they carnival folk? Are they a family that visits a carnival? Are they involved some other way? We can only guess, though Peters is getting to the point where he may be more believable as a young adult than a teen -- he played a college student in American Horror Story: Coven -- so I have a hard time picturing him visiting a carnival with his mom and dad.
Bates was a newcomer to American Horror Story in Season 3, and she joined the series to play the slave-torturing, eventually immortal Madame Delphine LaLaurie in Season 3. Peters, on the other hand, has played a key role in every season of American Horror Story so far, as Tate Langdon in American Horror story (the Murder House season), Kit Walker in American Horror Story: Asylum, and then the franken-fratboy Kyle Spencer for Coven. It's great to know that both actors will be featured, and Chiklis may prove to be another excellent addition to the ensemble.
Chiklis has remained present on television since playing Vic Mackey in The Shield from 2002-2008. The actor has starred in a couple of new series, but has yet to get one to stick. He played the powerful Jim Powell in No Ordinary Family, and then Vincent Savino in CBS' short lived drama Vegas. AHS will be a shift of genres for him, but it seems to be for most actors who board the dark and creepy drama, and so far, that's been a good thing. Will Chiklis' character be a nice guy? Or a not-so-nice guy? This series seems to favor extremes, and it's not hard to picture Chiklis on either end of the good-evil spectrum.
It's especially exciting whenever the series adds new actors. While Jessica Lange, Sarah Paulson, Evan Peters and others have helped to anchor the anthology drama, returning each season to play new characters in a new story, each season brings in a few new players. For Coven, that included Bates, as well as Angela Bassett, Emma Roberts and Gabourey Sidibe. The females definitely outnumbered the male characters during Season 3, but that was to be expected, considering the series centered on witches. We may expect to see a more gender-diverse set of characters for Freak Show.
