Despite playing a hot priest on Grotesquerie, Nicholas Chavez didn’t watch Fleabag for inspiration.
“I was told to watch Fleabag. I did not watch Fleabag,” Chavez, 25, exclusively told Us Weekly while his costar Micaela Diamond quipped that watching Andrew Scott‘s performance on Fleabag “would not have helped” him bring Father Charlie to life.
Chavez took a different approach when preparing for Father Charlie’s scenes.
“We talked about Charles Manson a lot,” he teased. “I love the music of Chris Isaak. I formed this really strange nexus of a lot of different primary and secondary research sources. Like sometimes the weirdest paintings that I’ve ever seen or music that I had found.”
There wasn’t one specific source that Chavez pulled from. “All of these things just culminated into the character that you see on the screen,” he explained to Us. “I just pulled from a lot of different places and tried to [find] my way into an interesting character.”
Grotesquerie, which premieres on Wednesday, September 25, follows Detective Lois Tryon (Niecy Nash) as she works with a local nun named Sister Megan (Diamond) to figure out who is behind a series of heinous crimes in their community. The trailer for the FX series teased a romance between Sister Megan and Father Charlie.
“One of the most interesting journeys that Sister Megan and Father Charlie get to take together is how they negotiate their own desires. When you put it in the context of religious iconography, it can get complicated very fast,” Chavez explained. “But I think that it’s between what they feel inside and what they feel their responsibilities to their community are that makes them compelling characters and make it a compelling journey for them to take together.”
Diamond’s research for the role mirrored Chavez’s approach.
“I was really inspired by Lynette Alice ‘Squeaky’ Fromme and the whole Charlie Manson family. I watched a lot of cult documentaries before leaving for L.A.,” Diamond, 25, shared with Us. “I was just immersing myself in this world of people — who at their core really believe what they’re doing is right for their God. [That] is something that feels a little far from me.”
She continued: “I think a lot of it was being in this Ryan Murphy world where you just have to make super bold and risky choices. [It also helped] having scene partners like Nicholas to just take a swing and trust that if it was wrong, they won’t use it in the final cut.”
For Diamond, it was intriguing getting to play a nun who moonlights as a journalist.
“When you are veiled in holiness, there’s a temptation to sin in a way that is confusing and rebellious. She’s really struggling with that desire,” she teased. “There’s also part of this relationship that she’s almost found a loophole in. If she does good work in her journalism and receives affirmation on it, she can almost get off on it without crossing some ungodly line that she’s drawn in her head. That kind of works until it doesn’t.”
Grotesquerie (yes the Ryan Murphy show that includes Travis Kelce) premieres on FX Wednesday, September 25 at 10 p.m. ET. New episodes stream on Hulu the next day.