This is a preview of our pop culture newsletter The Daily Beast’s Obsessed, written by editor Kevin Fallon. To receive the full newsletter in your inbox each week, sign up for it here.
What if Kim Kardashian is the greatest actress of her generation?
Scoff if you must. Roll your eyes so dramatically, Liz Lemon herself might applaud you. Scream into a pillow at the thought of such absurdity. That’s what I did when I discovered this.
But I am also a person who values and upholds the tenet upon which our great nation was founded, and which is too often under attack today: the truth. And so, difficult as it may be to come to terms with—and as much as it might upset everything we thought we knew and understood about the world—we all must band together, support each other, and not only acknowledge but embrace that truth. Kim Kardashian’s acting is going to be all we talk about this fall.
The reason for this proclamation—an event so monumental and surprising that Meryl Streep herself is rumored to have called three emergency sessions with her therapist—is the newest teaser for American Horror Story: Delicate, the next installment in Ryan Murphy’s horror anthology series. (It premieres Sept. 20 on FX.)
Watch the teaser here.
Delicate marks Kardashian’s first series regular role on a TV show, a crowning achievement of stunt casting for a series that thrives on buzz (and from a creator who turned the practice into an art form). For Kardashian, this is a bit like sprinting up Mount Everest after having just hiked Runyon Canyon a few times, in terms of acting.
Her first foray into the field was a supporting part in the 2008 parody Disaster Movie, a film which lived up to its name. She played herself on How I Met Your Mother, a series that took the celebrity stunt-casting torch from Will & Grace and turned into a veritable inferno, as well as on Tim Allen’s Last Man Standing. (Gotta appeal to both sides of the aisle if you’re gonna be a profitable brand.) In one of her greatest acting challenges yet, she pretended to actually eat a cupcake on 2 Broke Girls.
And on an episode of CSI: NY, she played a character named “Debbie Fallon,” a touching tribute to me and my family. (Just kidding. Ol’ Deb Fallon turned out to kidnap and kill homeless people. The Fallon family rebukes her.)
But the characters of homicidal Debbie and “Kim Kardashian” were mere warm-ups for what’s in store with Delicate.
From what we know and have seen from the teaser, Delicate gives off strong Rosemary’s Baby vibes. The season is based on Danielle Valentine’s novel Delicate Condition, and centers around an actress named Anna (Emma Roberts), who becomes convinced that dark forces are going to great lengths to ensure she doesn’t give birth to a healthy child. Kardashian plays Anna’s friend and professional confidante. Her name is Siobhan Walsh, already hinting at what a remarkable feat Kardashian is setting out to accomplish in this, her first dramatic role: She’s… Irish?
Everyone is gaslighting Anna into thinking nothing’s wrong with her pregnancy, from her husband (Good Wife Hive rise: Cary Agos himself, Matt Czuchry, plays the role) to her doctor (Denis O’Hare) and Siobhan. “You have a peculiar penchant for turning dreams into nightmares,” she tells Anna in the trailer, our first hint at Kardashian’s dramatic chops. The delivery of the dialogue sounds perfectly human. Emmy alert!
But then comes the line reading that, once this teaser dropped, inspired the ghosts of Uta Hagen, Konstantin Stanislavski, and Sanford Meinser to rise from their graves and deliver a standing ovation. “Do you want an Oscar?” she says, speaking to Anna on the phone. “Do you want it as much as a baby?”
What is acting if not the art of moving your audience? Friends, I got chills.
This is a moment that will be memed within an inch of its life, and deservedly so. The line is campy and ridiculous, which only works if it’s delivered with a grounded seriousness—which Kardashian, to her credit, does.
This is all fun and silly, much like the whole ordeal of imagining what in the world a Kim Kardashian performance in an American Horror Story series would possibly be like. But I think it’s more fun that, at least based on this teaser, this performance doesn’t seem to be a trainwreck—which will make it more thrilling to watch when the show itself inevitably becomes one.
Lastly, for all the passionate opinions about Kardashian, her celebrity, and whether she deserves to be so famous, maybe it shouldn’t be a surprise that she would succeed in an acting endeavor like this. Reportedly, she and Murphy decided to work together on this after her ace turn hosting Saturday Night Live in 2021. She was hilarious—un-self-conscious, ready to play, self-effacing, and committed. That may seem like a low bar, but it’s one that even some of Hollywood’s biggest stars don’t meet when hosting that show.
There’s a goofiness to American Horror Story that somewhat mimics that of SNL. And this role in Delicate doesn’t seem like the world’s greatest departure from Kardashian’s own persona. Maybe I’m delirious because of this godforsaken heatwave on the East Coast, but Kim Kardashian, Primo Actress? I’m excited.
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