Ryan Murphy’s most standout talent might be as a grand impresario of casting. From Glee through his various linked limited series, he has breathed new life into the careers of established actors (Jessica Lange and Sarah Paulson) and given much larger platforms to rising talents (Lea Michele and Darren Criss). He also has a special fondness for the children of Hollywood. In his series American Horror Story (and its Stories spinoff), Murphy can’t help but sprinkle insider youths with recognizable last names into the credits to the chagrin of fans, who’ve complained online about the show being the “revolving door of nepo babies.†Is it because he wants to get in with the Establishment, or because he likes getting the Establishment to participate in his twisted plots, or a little of both? Here are his most notable AHS nepo castings, from least to most employed.
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Paris Jackson
AHS episode count: 3
A musician, a model, and the daughter of Michael, Jackson has acted in Murphy’s AHS spinoff series playing a high-school bully who livestreams herself egging on her friend to share violent sexual fantasies. Murphy has a habit of casting nepo kids as bullies — members of the in crowd playing the villain.
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Kaia Gerber
AHS episode count: 6
As the daughter of Cindy Crawford, Gerber is naturally a successful model, but her acting career came about almost entirely via Murphy, who has cast her as both a lovesick ghost and a living college student who gets abducted by aliens.
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Grace Gummer
AHS episode count: 7
You can’t make a long-running American television series without hiring one of Meryl Streep’s daughters. In the larger of her two AHS roles, Gummer played Lizard Girl in Freak Show, a prelude to Murphy casting Streep herself in the musical The Prom.
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Chaz Bono
AHS episode count: 13
Bono, son of Cher and Sonny Bono, has played an actor in Roanoke and a grocery-store employee who becomes a radical Trump supporter in Cult, an ironic role for the child of a famous Hollywood liberal mom.
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Emma Roberts
AHS episode count: 46
If you’re going to cast someone as the head of a clique, why not use the actual niece of Julia Roberts? Murphy loves a bitchy blonde and has found many roles for Roberts both in and outside the AHS universe, from a junior witch to the cruel Chanel in Scream Queens.
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Billie Lourd
AHS episode count: 47
The daughter of Carrie Fisher and granddaughter of Debbie Reynolds, Lourd is a nepo child twice over (not to mention her father, Bryan Lourd, who’s one of the most powerful agents in Hollywood). Murphy deploys
her for her comedy chops and often drops in Fisher Easter eggs; on Scream Queens, she wears earmuffs that resemble Princess Leia’s hairdo.
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Lily Rabe
AHS episode count: 61
Rabe, the daughter of David Rabe and Jill Clayburgh, is a Tony-nominated actor who has played a nun, a witch, a serial killer, and Amelia Earhart in Murphy’s absurd Grand Guignol. She has appeared in the fourth-highest number of AHS episodes of any actor — behind Evan Peters, Sarah Paulson, and Denis O’Hare.
More on the year of the nepo baby
- We’re Making Nepo-Baby Merch for Actual Babies
- These Magazines Ran on Nepo Babies
- How a Nepo Baby Is Born