Lizzie Borden, the woman at the heart of this season of Monster, is a young heiress chafing against her family’s expectations. When a new housekeeper arrives at the Bordens’ Fall River, Massachusetts home, Lizzie is swept up into a torrid relationship that will end in blood. 
 

Lizzie is the first female subject of a season of Monster, a position Beatty took seriously. “I felt incredibly lucky to be the first woman monster,” she says. “I also knew from the beginning that Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan were really interested in exploring the reasons why women kill, specifically. Every season of Monster has been an exercise in understanding the person’s psychology. Are they born or are they made?”

Co-showrunner Ian Brennan knew that Beatty was the right actor for the role almost immediately. “We cast a super wide net and nobody could do it until we saw her,” he says. “They say you can tell within the first five seconds if the actor has the role, and that was completely the case here, after watching very good actresses try.”

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Bridget “Maggie” Sullivan is the Bordens’ housekeeper, and she introduces Lizzie to a world of pleasure. Together, the pair will plot a new course for their lives, one that falls far outside what 1890s society deems acceptable. Lizzie’s father and stepmother think so little of Bridget that they refer to her as “Maggie” — the name of their old maid.

Beatty was thrilled to work with Krieps. “Vicky is the most incredible partner in crime, no pun intended, that a girl could ever ask for,” she says. “Vicky’s commitment to truth and her barometer for when something feels real are absolutely indispensable. And she created such a joyful, fun, exploratory dynamic between our two characters that I just loved delving into with her.”

Krieps was cast based on of her work in the third season of Monster, but she nabbed another role late in production: bloodthirsty Countess Elizabeth Báthory in fantasy flashbacks. “That was all shot in Italy, so we knew that that would be at the end of the schedule anyway, and we just couldn’t think of who would do it or who seemed right,” Brennan says. “It was Ryan’s idea. He pitched it to her and she loved it. Now it seems like such an obvious choice, but it actually came very late in the process.”

Phantom Thread, Old, Hanna, Corsage, The Girl in the Spider’s Web, A Most Wanted Man, Bergman Island

Lizzie’s father Andrew has been bitter and unkind since the death of Lizzie’s mother. He now works as an undertaker and prides himself on a diabolically sharpened collection of axes. 

Hunnam previously nabbed an Emmy nomination for bringing Ed Gein to life in the third season of Monster, which made him an invaluable source of advice for Beatty. “Charlie had just played Ed Gein not even a year prior,” Beatty says. “And so he had so many wonderful words of advice about stepping into a complicated person’s psychology.”

Brennan was thrilled to work with Hunnam again. “We just didn't want to say goodbye to him,” he says. “It was really crucial for that character to not come across as just stereotypically awful. We knew that if we cast Charlie, you’d just understand and like that character more. After staring at his face as Gein for all those hours in the editing room, it was really arresting to see him in the beard and the wig.”

Sons of Anarchy, Crimson Peak, The Lost City of Z, Pacific Rim, King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, Children of Men

Lizzie’s uptight stepmother Abby has her own complaints with the life she’s inherited as Andrew’s second wife. All too often, she takes out that frustration on odd duck Lizzie.

Hall, too, gave Beatty a piece of advice that stuck with her. “She is such a wise, wise person,” Beatty says. “She gave me some words of advice on the series that I really checked in with often about just staying with what your character’s needs and intentions were on that given day: to not try to film the entire series in one day, but to stay with the specific emotional intentions of the day.”

Hall brought another side to Abby, one that Brennan was excited to build. “She is herself in a bit of a cage in the show, which was a good counterpoint to the journey that Lizzie goes on,” he says. 

The Prestige, The Night House, Iron Man 3, The Gift, The Town, Resurrection, Christine, the upcoming Robert Langdon series

A hundred years after Lizzie’s parents are murdered, Aileen Wuornos is accused of a string of violent crimes. A drifter and sex worker, Wuornos finds solace in the story of Lizzie Borden, even going so far as to stay in Lizzie’s former home, now a bed and breakfast.

Beatty and Paulson already had a working relationship when they were cast in Monster. “She’s one of my best friends in the world,” Beatty says. “We met doing a play together three years ago [Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s Appropriate, for which Paulson won a Tony Award] and became very close. She was such a part of the creative process for me from the very beginning.”

For Brennan, Paulson’s performance as Wuornos ties the season together. “It seems second nature that Sarah Paulson comes in and whips out a performance like that, but it’s really breathtaking and really stunning,” he says. “It points to this thread of rage that runs through the female experience from history to now.”

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Emma is Lizzie’s older sister who finds it much easier to fit into her parents’ world. She and Lizzie don’t get along, but they have the saME headstrong attitude. 

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Nance is a touring stage actress who is sucked into Lizzie’s world after meeting her after a performance. She offers her friend assistance in presenting herself to the world during the trial of the century.

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John Morse is Lizzie’s uncle, the brother of her late mother. He enters the Bordens’ lives looking for a quick paycheck and instead briefly becomes a murder suspect. 

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