I’ll admit that I haven’t been this impressed by a character’s entrance since Henry Fonda appeared in Sergio Leone’s ‘Once Upon a Time in the West’ and managed to go against everything we had come to expect from the blue eyed superstar. And that’s just talking about the first scene of the upcoming FX drama series ‘The Beauty’.
“One shot makes you hot.” That’s it, that’s the tagline of the new Ryan Murphy series The Beauty, which will drop its first three episodes in the US this January 21st (22nd in Europe and beyond) on FX Hulu on Disney+. But while it would be easy to dismiss the show as one about beautiful people and those who wish to turn into them, The Beauty is a deep psychological drama, action thriller, body horror mix which makes for a spellbinding watch. It also doesn’t hurt that the series stars an ensemble cast, along with choice cameos, that read like a who’s who of contemporary cool.
Murphy’s Law
Murphy, the American writer, director, and producer known to TV audiences for his megahits such as the long running Glee, but also American Horror Story, as well as the Monster series on Netflix, started his career as a journalist. As such, and along with the show’s co-creator, writer and EP Matthew Hodgson they’ve tapped into the power of pop culture, the idea that when we watch something these days, particularly on our own screens, we want it all — food, fashion, beauty, locations and a gripping storyline. We also want to connect the characters to our own lives and with his latest, The Beauty, we can’t help but draw similarities between the villain(s) on the screen and our world leaders but also with the successful business men and women of today, most of whom seem to have signed an agreement with the devil, aiding them in remaining young and at the top of their games forever.
Susan Kesser, VP of Publicity at FX best recapped the basic premise of the show during a press conference earlier this month. “FBI agents Cooper Madsen and Jordan Bennett are sent to Paris to uncover the truth as international models are dying in gruesome and mysterious ways,” she said. “As they delve deeper into the case, they uncover a sexually transmitted virus that transforms people into visions of perfection, but with terrifying consequences. Their path leads them directly into the crosshairs of The Corporation, a shadowy tech billionaire who has secretly engineered a miracle drug called The Beauty.” She continued, explaining that “The Corporation will do anything to protect his trillion-dollar empire, including unleashing his lethal enforcer, The Assassin. As the epidemic spreads, Jeremy, a desperate outsider, is caught in the chaos searching for purpose as the agents race to stop a threat that could alter the future of humanity.” Concluding that “The Beauty is a global thriller that asks, what would you do for perfection?”
Casting perfection
Rebecca Hall (we all loved her in Vicky Christina Barcelona, among other films) and Evan Peters (from Murphy’s shows Monster and American Horror Story) play the two FBI agents, for whom, soon, things aren’t what they appear… Or appearances become deceiving, rather. I’m not going to give any spoilers away, but let’s just say that most actors appear in prolonged cameos, not as series regulars. Hall is so classy and beautiful in person (more on that later) that, I told her, well, I can’t say, or I’ll give away the plot. Let’s just leave it with the idea that any moment she’s not on screen, I missed her. And I missed her a lot. And Peters is way cuter in person than in the roles he plays. Probably because he’s played people like Jeffrey Dahmer, not exactly a heartthrob, right?!
The Assassin, a crucial character in the show, is played by Hamilton and In the Heights wonder Anthony Ramos. Ramos, a Grammy winner, GG and Emmy nominated actor, is so damn charming and dashing as the assassin that I told the actor, during the London event unveiling the first two episodes of the series for UK insiders, that if I ever need to be snuffed, I’d like his Assassin to knock at my door. Jeremy Pope stars as Jeremy, an incel man who finds within The Beauty treatment, which he receives as a sexually transmitted “disease”, a reason for living and who later comes to form an unlikely alliance with Ramos’ character.
Last but definitely not least is Ashton Kutcher playing The Corporation, AKA Byron Forst, a ruthless businessman who is probably the richest guy on the planet. And thanks to his own medicine, the best looking one too. He is married to Isabella Rossellini, who plays Mrs. Franny Forst and who despises Byron, insulting him any chance she gets. But as Kutcher told me, during a lovely chat we had at the London event on the rooftop of the Londoner Hotel in Leicester Square, “the opposite of love is not hate; it’s indifference” and Franny’s development in the story is one that will leave you breathless, as it did me. As usual, or rather as we’ve come to expect from Rossellini in her roles of late, she holds the “core” of the show in her hands — I’m trying to keep my piece here PG, but you know what I mean… And it’s her character, albeit it the one who is probably on the screen for the least amount of time, who holds the key, opening up the mystery of The Beauty. In the process, Franny also allows a few of the characters around her a development and arc like we haven’t seen in ages, at least not in television.
Heeere’s Ruby!
I wanted to go back to the entrance I mentioned in the sub header above, which unveils a new talent for the already multi-talented Bella Hadid. The supermodel, activist and businesswoman gives her turn as Ruby, a Balenciaga clad supermodel who steps off the runway of the latest fashion show in Paris and chases refreshment, desperately, all around Paris, riding a motorcycle which brings her to her final destination — a French Bistro, where an older lady is sitting quietly and refined, eating her lunch. In a scene worthy of Skyfall or The Bourne Legacy, Hadid rides the bike up the steps, around the bends and speedily through Paris boulevards, only to then turn that super heroine performance into one worthy of a zombie movie, or perhaps a cyborg one. All the while The Prodigy’s 1996 anthem ‘Firestarter’ plays on, haunting and taunting us. Hadid is just one of the choice cameos in the series, which also include Ben Platt, Vincent D’Onofrio, Lux Pascal and Nicola Peltz Beckham.
Before the London event, unveiling those two first episodes, we were given the chance to watch all 11 chapters of this story. Featuring a cliffhanger as stunning and mind blowing as Bobby’s death in Dallas in 1984, but oh so different and 2026 cool. The show has a wondrous arc, and the characters become so familiar and fascinating that I seriously can’t imagine living a whole year without knowing what happens, or just without them. I may have to watch the whole first season all over again…
References to fashion are plentiful, and a funny one comes in episode 2 when there is word of another casualty of the Beauty shot inside the Vogue (Conde Nast) cafeteria in New York. “Did they eat too much of that cabbage soup?” says Jordan, or it could be Cooper. And the chuckles from the London audience came the fashionista crowds on that line.
Beauty is only skin deep… Or is it?
As Hall pointed out during an online press conference, “human beauty is a sort of conceptually complicated thing. It's not like nature. It's not like looking at a sunrise or something that's objective. It's subjective. So the idea that you can pay for perfection and therefore you're handing over your idea of it to someone who is taking your money and might want more of it, is complicated. Like, what does that mean? Where does it— How does it shift? What does it change? Because frankly, I think keeping people in a place of inadequacy is more profitable.” It is this idea of absolute beauty, based on what society today has taught us that is, which is questioned in the viewer during their watch of The Beauty.
Kutcher added, wisely, “I think we're living in a world where GLP-1’s are pervasive.” He continued explaining there is a “demand for Ozempic, and Wegovy, and Mounjaro, and all of these drugs, and some of them are for health complications, others are just for aesthetic outcome. And then we have this increasing demand for cosmetic surgery, including tourism for cosmetic surgery and people augmenting themselves in order to achieve a look or a feel or a vibe that they think will give them some sort of advantage, or maybe it will just make them happy. And you start to ask questions like is that so wrong?” You amalgamate all of that into one thing, he further explained, including gene modification “and it's a shot, and it's called The Beauty. And the question is, what are you willing to sacrifice for that? What risks are you willing to take? And I think that's incredibly poignant. And I think Ryan always has his finger on the pulse of the decision that we're all making on a daily basis.”
Peters jumped in and said “I think there's also a throughline through a lot of Ryan's projects, which is that the thing that makes you unique is the thing that makes you interesting and is to be celebrated. So I think that, at the end, there's some episodes that really hammer that in and I think that nobody better than Ryan [can] spread that message. So yeah, it makes you question it.” It being the idea of human beauty and perfection. Writers, like Albert Camus for example, have been questioning in their work our pre-conceived ideas of what societal norms are, so why not question physical appearance in such a visual medium like television!
Pope was also on hand at the press conference, and at the London event wearing a fluid off-white suit. “I love a piece of art that asks the audience themselves the question, what would you do if there was a drug or something that you could take that would make you feel like the best version of yourself?” He said during the online press conference, “and I think the show starts off in a very vain, physical way. But then we talk about a kid that maybe has, you know, a disease or something where they haven't been able to live their full life, and as a parent or as a person who is observing that, what would you give to see someone step into their beauty and their light? I think that's an interesting conversation to be having because like, hey, and everyone's saying there are a lot of things that are being projected onto us via social media, via the news, there's always a medication that you can take that can change this or do that if you have that.”
“We're all these fabulous, beautiful works in progress…”
When asked how his relationship with his own body and the idea of perfection changed following the role he plays in The Beauty, Kutcher was not at a loss for words. “When I first decided to do this, I did a lot of thinking about, like, what is beauty? And this show doesn't try to define it. It lets the audience define what that is. And, just as a spectator of the screenplay that I was looking at, I started to ask myself that question, like, what do [I] consider to be beautiful? I think every single person that you would talk to probably has a different definition of what that is.” The tall, handsome actor continued, “for me, it's imperfection that is beautiful. Because the imperfection is a representation of the potential of something. And I think we're all imperfect and it doesn't matter.” Having worked as a model and worked in the fashion industry for a while, when he was younger, Kutcher added, from an insider’s POV, “I met the most, or what I thought were the most beautiful people in the world. And every single one of those people if you ask them to look in the mirror, they could find that one thing they wish they could change. And whether it's the way you look physically, the choices that you made, how you behave, we're all these fabulous, beautiful works in progress that are learning and changing over time. And I think that's beautiful. So I think if anything, the show made me think about that and [how to] find that honest place within myself where I became accepting of my own imperfections and ambitions about changing.”
“Sailing, takes me away…”
I put Christopher Cross in the title, because his 1979 hit ‘Sailing’ makes a prolonged appearance in the series. It is sung by Ramos, whose voice and interpretation turns it into an anthem for the third episode, and begins to explain his character to both the audience and Jeremy, who is, at that point, his hostage. The Assassin goes on to explain to Pope’s Jeremy why Cross — who BTW still tours and performs and is scheduled to hit towns in the UK and the US in 2026 — disappeared so quickly from our radars, once MTV hit the airwaves. His looks, gentle but a bit common, made him obsolete, before he could release a third hit. It’s moments like these in the series that make it such an exciting watch. Because you also start to reexamine within yourself pop culture and the eras we’ve passed through, and how beauty, at least core beauty, is evaluated, and reevaluated. While the goo, super goo to you (you’ll have to watch the show to know what I mean) and the gory bits and fights make The Beauty a spellbinding watch, it’s these quiet moments that truly make it my fave show of the season.
A scene, a La Dolce Vita
While I could write up a whole thesis about The Beauty, I’ll avoid that and leave you with a fun fact about one of the scenes filmed in Rome for the series. While principal shooting took place in NY, the team also traveled to Rome, Venice and Paris for additional bits and found joy in front of the iconic Trevi Fountain Fellini made famous, at three in the morning. “There was no one there,” Ramos commented, of a spot where, the last time I passed it in October, I couldn’t see my feet because of how many people were there. And Hall chimed in that the fountain “is so loud! All that water, it’s noisy,” which is also something I’ve never experienced as crowds are usually noisy too and drown out the splashing water. So there you have it. Another bit of insight from a thoroughly cool crew.
I’ll add my own little bit now and say that chatting with the cast at the London event turned out to be a dream meeting. Kutcher is a joy, and told me he was a little intimidated when he had to film his first scene with Rossellini, which is the moment on the boat in the third episode when he’s donning a Versace speedos-like, clingy swimming suit and she comes into the scene all couture-wearing chic. “That’s Ingrid Bergman’s daughter,” he almost shouted while telling me the story, excitedly. There was the Iowa boy that his publicist told me about, which makes the actor a joy to work with, as she talked about their long-lasting collaboration. Hall is taller than I imaged and even more softly beautiful and was donning a Courrèges shirt with tiny white belts stacked one on top of the other. And Peters gave out this really calm and collected vibe. And ladies, he uses Cerave as his beauty regiment of choice. A keeper, methinks!
I’m sure I’ll find more to say about The Beauty, but for now, I urge you to watch it, as soon as possible. No time to thank me, do it now! Thank me later, maybe with a beauty shot, or a booster.
All images courtesy of FX, used with permission.