“It’s really mentally draining.”
Evan Peters has quit the upcoming season of American Horror Story after saying that playing such dark characters is “exhausting.”
The actor said this week that he was going to “sit a season out” when asked whether he would be returning for series nine of the horror anthology show.
His response was shared on Twitter by a journalist for US entertainment site, Extra.
https://twitter.com/CandidlyCarlo/status/1113165762493997056
This is the first time that Peters will not star in the series since its debut back in 2011.
Since then, he has played a school shooter, a cult leader, and a mass murderer. His roles have required him to shoot scenes that involve gruesome killings, sexualised torture, and mental deterioration.
Last year, Peters said that playing such dark roles had been “mentally draining” and that he felt “exhausted” by his work.
He told GQ:
“It’s really mentally draining, and you don’t want to go to those places ever in your life.
“And so you have to go there for the scenes, and it ends up integrating it somehow into your life. You’re in traffic and you find yourself screaming and you’re like, What the hell? This isn’t who I am.”
Later on, Peters confirmed that he had planned to “take a break” from AHS and focus on some other projects.
“I think it was a full-on burnout,” he said. “I’m going to take a break, regroup, decompress, get back in touch with what I feel like I want to do.”
“Not that I didn’t want to do any of those roles – they’re exactly what I wanted to do. It was just zero to 100 instantaneously. I want to play music.”
American Horror Story season nine will debut some time later this year.
