Ashton Kutcher on The Beauty: "Every so-called villain can rationalise their behaviour"

Over the past 15 years, Ryan Murphy has become one of the major auteurs of TV and streaming. An Indianapolis native with Irish roots, the now 60-year-old Murphy first went supernova with American Horror Story, the brilliantly ghoulish anthology series that debuted on FX in October 2011, and which has since spawned numerous spin-offs.

Chief among these is American Crime Story, which commenced in 2016 with Murphy’s crowning masterpiece, The People v OJ Simpson. A stunning account of the titular case that starred Sarah Paulson (who delivered a career best performance as prosecutor Marcia Clark), Cuba Gooding Jr., David Schwimmer and John Travolta, the series – via a wonderful mix of drama and comedy – was a powerful examination of American culture, media and politics, and one of the finest shows of the 21st century.

Showing admirable quality control, Murphy has continued to deliver the goods, with a notable one-two of Netflix hits in the shape of The Watcher and Monster. Examining the lives of infamous killers, the latter series debuted to huge acclaim in 2022, with Evan Peters giving a truly chilling performance as Jeffrey Dahmer.

Peters is back in the saddle in Murphy’s latest series, sci-fi horror The Beauty, which has just arrived on Disney+. The actor stars as FBI investigator Cooper Madsen, who travels to Paris with fellow agent Jordan Bennett (Rebecca Hall), after international supermodels begin dying in various gruesome ways. When the duo delve deeper into the case, they uncover a sexually transmitted virus that transforms ordinary people into visions of perfection – with terrifying consequences.

As Madsen and Bennett come into the crosshairs of shadowy tech billionaire The Corporation (Ashton Kutcher), who will do anything to protect his secret miracle drug The Beauty and his trillion dollar empire, the show proves a rip-roaring affair, with Murphy – the co-creator along with Matthew Hodgson – providing his usual winning mix of lurid glamour and grisly horror.

So how do the cast feel the show reflects the current cultural landscape?

“Ryan Murphy has a nose for the zeitgeist,” says Rebecca Hall, the English actress whose impressive list of credits includes a particular Hot Press favourite, Ben Affleck’s brilliant 2010 thriller The Town. “He makes it subversive and provocative and, even more than that, worth discussing. There’s a lot to be said about the chase for perfection and what that means, and also the commodification of beauty. Because human beauty is conceptually complicated. It’s not like nature.

“It’s not like looking at a sunrise or something that’s objective – it’s subjective. The idea that you can pay for perfection – and therefore, you’re handing over your idea of it to someone who’s taking your money and might want more of it – is complicated. Like, what does that mean? Because frankly, I think keeping people in a place of inadequacy is more profitable.”

Ashton Kutcher picks up the theme.

“We’re living in a world where GLP-1s are pervasive,” he notes. “There is a  demand for Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro and all of these drugs. Some of them are for health complications, others are just for aesthetic outcome. Then we have this increasing demand for cosmetic surgery, including  cosmetic surgery tourism. People augment themselves to achieve a look – or a feel or a vibe – they think will give them some sort of advantage. Or maybe it will just make them happy.

The Beauty -- Pictured:
Evan Peters as Cooper Madsen, Rebecca Hall as Jordan Bennett. CR: Philippe Antonello/FX

FINGER ON THE PULSE

“You start to ask questions like, is that so wrong? Then you add on top of it gene editing, which is happening in the world today. It can make you healthier, or solve it for you, if you have sickle cell anemia or some other genetic defect. You amalgamate all of that into one thing. and it’s shot and called The Beauty. The question is, what are you willing to sacrifice for that? That’s poignant. As was mentioned, Ryan always has his finger on the pulse of the decisions we’re all making on a daily basis.

“Like, what skin-cream am I going to use? What kind of shampoo? This show gets underneath all of these things.”

As Kutcher further considers, the series also grapples with the thorny subject of how we define beauty.

“The show doesn’t try to define it,” he says. “It lets the audience define what it is. Reading the screenplay, I started to ask myself that question – what do you consider to be beautiful? It’s hard because every single person you would talk to probably has a different definition. For me, it’s imperfection that is beautiful. Because imperfection is a representation of the potential of something.

“Having worked as a model for a while when I was younger, I met what I thought were the most beautiful people in the world. Every single one of those people, if you ask them to look in the mirror, could find that one thing they wish they could change. 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. If anything, the show made me think about that, and find that honest place within myself where I became accepting of my own imperfections.”

Also at the centre of The Beauty is the relationship between agents Madsen and Bennett, which as Hall notes, is more than strictly professional.

The Beauty -- Pictured: Isabella Rossellini as Franny Forst. CR: Philippe Antonello/FX

“The dynamic is they work together and they’re best friends with benefits,” she says. “They both think there’s nothing more to it, although it’s a complete lie and they’re just refusing to be vulnerable with each other. So there’s a lot of unspoken nonsense and they should just get on with it!”

“Yes, I totally agree,” nods Evan Peters. “You’re kind of rooting for one of them to speak up and say, ‘Well, wait a minute, I don’t want you to see other people – I just want to see you. I love you.’”

“They’re both very prideful types,” adds Hall, “and they’re frightened of emotional intimacy, I think.”

“Also as characters, Cooper’s a bit straight-edge,” says Peters. “Jordan is very funny and they balance each other out.”

When considering his role of tech billionaire The Corporation, meanwhile, Kutcher emphasises the importance of conveying emotional complexity.

“I learned a very long time ago you can’t judge your character,” he reflects. “From 10,000 feet, I can look at the behavior of that character and go, wow, he’s doing some pretty abhorrent things. But you have to play them from the perspective that they believe they’re doing something right. They’re going, ‘You forced my hand, I have to do this.’ Or that there’s some benevolent necessity to their action.

“I’m in a banned book club where we read books that you would be embarrassed to read on the subway. So I was reading Ted Kaczynski’s manifesto, and you can follow his train of thought for a lot of it. I didn’t agree with a lot of his train thought, but you could follow it. And then you get to, like, Article 94, where he’s like, ‘... and so I needed to kill a bunch of people, so people would actually listen to what I was saying.’ You go, ‘Okay,  you jumped the shark there.’ But every so-called villain can rationalise their behaviour.”

PEAK MOMENT

With The Beauty being shot internationally, it looks visually sumptuous, while the cast were also afforded some memorable experiences.

“A peak moment for me was being a little grumpy that I had a 4:30am call,” says Hall, “but then leaving my hotel to get into a water taxi to go to work. We saw all of Venice as the sun was coming up. It was like, ‘Well, this isn’t a usual going-to-work experience.’”

Finally, as tradition demands, Peters considers the essential motivation of his character.

“The first thing is to figure out why people are exploding,” he says candidly. “Like, what is going on? So figure that out! And then it becomes personal. He sort of has to go rogue, and figure out how to do this thing without help, essentially. So it only gets more complicated – and the stakes get higher and higher.”

• The Beauty is streaming now on Disney+.