Nicholas Chavez has been inducted into Ryan Murphy‘s TV universe with not one but two roles — and Grotesquerie could not be more different than Monsters.
“[Playing] Lyle Menéndez [on Monsters] necessitated more thoughtful preparation because you want to be careful and diligent with a character like that,” Chavez, 25, exclusively told Us Weekly. “This is someone who is a real person and who is still alive today.”
The experience was extremely different for Grotesquerie.
“With Father Charlie, I let my impulses lead the way. We were just talking about how this show to me feels very Shakespearean. The language just leads you in the direction that you need to go,” Chavez hinted about his role as a priest on the upcoming FX series. “So I just operated with complete and utter reckless abandon in all of my scenes.”
Chavez noted that it was no holds barred for him when it came to playing Father Charlie, adding, “I let the words take me where they were going to go and let the scenes take me where they were going to go. And I was fortunate enough to have scene partners who were comfortable with every take being different.”
Before taking on two roles of a lifetime, Chavez rose to stardom as Spencer Cassadine on General Hospital, which earned him a Daytime Emmy Award. Chavez was cast as Lyle opposite Cooper Koch playing Erik Menéndez in Netflix’s limited series about the infamous murder trial. He filmed Monsters shortly before booking Father Charlie on FX’s Grotesquerie.
“What felt really special about this is that I got to build on a foundation that I established during Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menéndez Story. I had already worked with [executive producers] Max Winkler, Alexis Martin Woodall and Ryan,” he shared with Us. “The fact that we weren’t starting from zero and that we had shared a language already meant we had already gotten a sense of who we are as artists and as collaborators.”
It was easy for Chavez to hit the ground running with Grotesquerie.
“It felt really cool and it gave me some sense of why people work with the same artist time and time and time again,” he continued. “It’s because [of] that connection that you have and that understanding that just starts to become innate after a little while. And [it is about feeling] known not only as who you are as a human being but also as an artist. That makes for a really streamlined process. So it was cool to start to experience that for the first time.”
Grotesquerie, which premieres on Wednesday, September 25, follows Detective Lois Tryon (Niecy Nash) as she works with a local nun named Sister Megan (Micaela Diamond) to figure out who is behind a series of heinous crimes in their community.
Almost all details about the show and the characters have been kept under wraps, but Chavez teased how Father Charlie crosses paths with Sister Megan — to surprising results.
“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,” he 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.”
Grotesquerie premieres on FX Wednesday, September 25 at 10 p.m. ET. New episodes stream on Hulu the next day.