Spoiler warning: this story covers plot points through Episode 12 of “American Horror Story: 13.”
Joey Pollari isn’t promising fans a tidy ending. “This is a really fun finale. It’s not over until it’s over,” the season’s lead told The Hollywood Reporter in an interview published Oct. 28.
The finale, Episode 13, airs Thursday, Oct. 29, at 9 p.m. ET on FX. It streams the next day on Hulu, according to Disney+. FX titled the episode “Devil of a Good Time,” Dread Central reported when the episode list came out in September.
Pollari plays Ben DeSoto. Ben starts the season as an anxious hospice worker who’s terrified of the number 13, and Jessica Lange’s Constance Langdon trains him to care for a rich, mysterious patient. Later episodes revealed he’s the son of Satan, played by Paul Anthony Kelly and Fedor Steer, TheWrap reported.
Jessica Lange’s Fiona, Constance and Sister Jude Turn Out to Be Family
Lange is playing three of her old characters this season, and Episode 12 tied them together. Fiona Goode from “Coven” and Constance from “Murder House” are sisters who were separated at birth, THR reported. Sister Jude, her nun from “Asylum,” is their biological mother. Their father is Satan.
“There was a great deal of excitement to have lore explained,” Pollari said. He wouldn’t say where it goes next. “But it certainly points to everything not being what it seems, and there is more yet to come!”
Episode 12 ended with Cordelia and Queenie in danger again, and things didn’t look great for Ben, either. Pollari kept quiet. “I’m grateful for the experience I’ve had so far, and mum’s the word on fates!”
He was blunter with TheWrap on Oct. 22. “The rug is being pulled. Hold on tight to whatever ground is beneath you,” he said.
How Ryan Murphy Picked Pollari to Lead Season 13
The offer came by phone. “Ryan [Murphy] called me,” Pollari told THR. Murphy told him he’d be “the lead of the next American Horror Story.”
“I was rendered speechless,” Pollari said.
He knew very little about Ben at first. “I only knew that he would be the entry point for meeting these characters,” he said. Then a script showed up with a “616” branded on Ben’s lower back.
Pollari’s path into Murphy’s shows began behind the scenes. During the long pandemic stretch, Pollari worked as an event production assistant, greeting guests on red carpets at premieres. Then he got a call to audition for “Monster: The Ed Gein Story.” It was “my first in-person audition in four years,” he said. About five weeks later Murphy called to say he’d landed it.
Murphy also told him to expect “many, many scenes with Jessica Lange.” He worked with Angela Bassett too.
Ben’s Fear of 13 and His Romance With Emma Roberts’ Madison
Pollari doesn’t share his character’s phobia. “A lot of people are superstitious, and I don’t feel that,” he told THR. “It was fun to play one, though, and to find meaning everywhere and be deeply paranoid.”
Ben also fell for Madison Montgomery, Emma Roberts’ witch from “Coven.” “It’s so perfect that Madison would fall in love with the son of Satan,” Pollari told TheWrap. He’d barely met Roberts before they shot their scenes together. “I now call her a very close friend and I adore her,” he said.
Gayety covered the season’s first trailer in September. The season premiered Sept. 24 with three episodes, and the finale is the 13th.
