American Horror Story has made many high-profile casting choices over the years, including launching Lady Gaga to a Golden Globes for her star turn in and offering Kaia Gerber her first major acting role in American Horror Stories. Amid those successes, though, there was at least one call the show’s casting director looks back on bittersweetly.
Back in 2012, Margot Robbie came thisclose to landing a role in the FX show’s second season, which also featured splashy premiere cameos by Maroon 5 singer Adam Levine and star Jenna Dewan.
Looking back on the star’s bid for AHS, casting director Eric Dawson — who has worked with AHS creator Ryan Murphy for more than two decades — said: “Margot is probably one of my favorite auditions of all time.”
The audition happened “right before she broke out” in 2013’s The Wolf of Wall Street, Dawson said Thursday on Backstage magazine’s In the Envelope: The Actor’s Podcast.
“She was such a star. It was crazy, her star appeal when she walked in the room,” he recalled of Robbie, now 33. “Even though she didn’t get that role, that was one of those things as a casting director where you go: This is a star, what do we do with her? “
At the time, Dawson said Robbie was “out of our realm of possibility of hiring,” though he didn’t go into further detail. But he did have the sense that her career was “just rising” and called the chance to see that ascent the “fun part” of being a casting director.
Then and now, Dawson affirmed, “Margot has a lot of ‘it’ factors.”
While Robbie has gone on to score two Oscar nominations and is currently making bank thanks to her star turn in Barbie, Murphy has gone on to helm 10 more seasons of American Horror Story since Asylum.
Season 12 slated to premiere next month with a few more bold-faced names in the mix: Kim Kardashian and Cara Delevingne will join AHS mainstay Emma Roberts in AHS: Delicate. This latest installment of the anthology series is based in part on Danielle Valentine’s novel Delicate Condition about”a woman who becomes convinced that a sinister figure is going to great lengths to make sure her pregnancy never happens,” per The Hollywood Reporter.
In a sneak peek released Monday, all three women wear eerie outfits with spider legs webs popping forth as a blood-chilling version of “Rock-A-Bye-Baby” sets a menacing tone.
Ahead of American Horror Story: Delicate’s premiere Sept. 20 on FX, previous seasons can be streamed on Amazon Prime Video.