In FX’s The Beauty, perfection isn’t aspirational. It’s grotesque, deadly, and deeply unsettling.
Created by Ryan Murphy and Matthew Hodgson, the series leans fully into Murphy’s signature blend of body horror, black comedy and social commentary, dropping viewers into a glossy, high-fashion nightmare where international supermodels begin dying in gruesome and mysterious ways. What starts as a murder investigation quickly spirals into something far darker, as FBI agents race across Paris, Venice, Rome and New York to stop a sexually transmitted virus that transforms ordinary people into visions of physical perfection, with terrifying consequences.
Gayety sat down with the cast, including Anthony Ramos, Ashton Kutcher, and Jeremy Pope, and asked them to define “true beauty.” Ramos said, “Acceptance.” Ashton Kutcher followed with “imperfection,” while Jeremy Pope described it as “an abundance of self-love.”
However, those ideas couldn’t be further from the reality of the characters they portray.
Kutcher plays The Corporation, a shadowy tech billionaire who engineers the miracle drug known as The Beauty and will do anything to protect his trillion-dollar empire. The show repeatedly examines how beauty and sex dominate people’s lives from a young age, and Kutcher, who has been in the spotlight himself since he was 20, reflected on how he personally steps away when that noise becomes overwhelming.
“I really like silence,” he said. When he isolates, he asks himself a simple question: “What do you miss?” The answers bring him back to small, grounding moments. “I miss seeing my kids smile. I miss my wife holding touch of my hand. I miss a Coca-Cola. I miss driving in a car on a hot day with the windows down. I miss the smell of a gravel road.”
We could all use a reminder like this: to slow down and focus on what actually matters in a world that often feels overwhelming and disconnected.
Out actor Jeremy Pope’s performance as Jeremy, a desperate outsider searching for purpose as the epidemic spreads, is one of the show’s most disturbing elements. His character’s unpredictability, paired with moments of vulnerability, makes him impossible to look away from. Pope said approaching the role meant resisting easy labels.
“I think it’s important… not judging your character, but being able to try to understand the psyche,” he explained. “There obviously was a layer of darkness… but important, there was this brokenness.”
Ramos, meanwhile, brings both menace and dark humor to The Assassin, the lethal enforcer protecting The Corporation’s interests. His character embodies the show’s black comedy edge, where violence, beauty and absurdity collide in ways that are as unsettling as they are darkly funny.
With a stacked cast that includes Evan Peters, Rebecca Hall, Bella Hadid, Isabella Rossellini, Ben Platt and Vincent D’Onofrio, The Beauty doesn’t just interrogate beauty standards. It weaponizes them.
And just when it feels like the series has gone as far as it can, The Beauty delivers a killer cliffhanger that leaves the future of its world, and humanity itself, hanging in the balance.
If perfection is the goal, Murphy’s latest reminds us just how horrifying the pursuit can be. Watch our full interview with the cast below.
