You can't accuse Ryan Murphy of getting overly sentimental about his characters: The "Glee" co-creator, who caused a serious stir with plans to overhaul the cast of the Fox show, plans a largely new cast and completely new setting for the second season of the FX horror drama "American Horror Story."
Murphy and FX President John Landgraf announced the changes Thursday, and Landgraf later discussed them in an interview with TheWrap. Plans for the second season include a new haunted building — the season that wrapped Wednesday night took place in a hellish Los Angeles home — as well as a mostly fresh cast.
Also read: Ratings: 'American Horror Story' Finale Hits Season High
Some actors from the first season may return as regulars, but in different roles. Murphy and Landgraf wouldn't say which actors will be back.
"The next year of the show — every season of the show — will be a different haunting," Murphy told reporters, saying it was the plan all along. He co-created the show with Brad Falchuk, who also co-created "Glee."
"None of the characters from season one will be regular characters in season two, nor will it take place in the same house, nor will it take place in the same state," Landgraf told TheWrap. "It won't take place in California."
He added: "Ryan's got some people he's targeting who are new to the show, as well as people he's negotiating with who are current members of the cast, (but) he doesn't want to say anything about his plan until he's ready to talk about it all at once."
Wednesday's finale earned a season-high 3.22 million viewers, and focused on a philandering psychiatrist Ben Harmon (Dylan McDermott), his wife, Vivien (Connie Britton), and their daughter, Violet (Taissa Farmiga). The theme of the season was infidelity — and the theme of the next will change, Murphy explained.
Landgraf noted that some criticized the show for moving too fast — without realizing that the story arc would be just one season long.
"And, of course, we could have corrected the record, but we didn't want to," he said. "We wanted the audience to experience it as it was intended to be experienced, without knowing the ending or having the key piece of information that all the story was going to be resolved this season and all the characters, their arcs were going to be over at the end of the season."
Murphy previously tormented "Glee" fans with news that he expected several characters to leave when they graduated, but later backtracked and said the characters wouldn't necessarily exit just because they no longer performed with the glee club.
"Horror Story" fans hopefully figured out from the show's bloody first episode not to get too attached to any of the characters. Not that death necessarily meant anyone was off the show — viewers soon learned that many characters who seemed to be alive weren't.