John Carroll Lynch's role in the highly anticipated "American Horror Story: Freak Show" is so scary that even series' co-creator Ryan Murphy is terrified of it.
Lynch, 51, is playing Twisty the Clown, the season's main antagonist. He is a murderous clown and he is furious that Elsa Mars (Jessica Lange) has put up a freak show in Jupiter, Florida, where he - the most evil clown of all time - has retired, Murphy told Entertainment Weekly.
"We said in the writer's room that if we were going to do clowns, we were going to create the most terrifying clown of all time," Murphy told BuzzFeed. "That was our goal when we were writing him."
But Murphy said that he is worried about viewers being "too afraid" of him. "It's heart-stopping what he does. I'm worried. I'm worried that people are going to have cardiac arrests... The clown's intro in the first episode is ... even I was terrified of it. It's brutal."
Since Lynch stands 6-foot-3, his portrayal of Twisty the Clown becomes even more frightening. "I have a physical presence that has to be dealt with," Lynch told BuzzFeed on set. People are honestly terrified of me. Just standing around in the makeup, not even filming. They're freaked out."
"His actions are horrific, but his motives are really strangely, oddly pure. And that's what is most human and most disturbing about it," Lynch said of his villainous role. "As an actor, I've given up judgment of evil, as long as it's human evil - we have to see ourselves for what we really are, and we're capable of horrific things. I don't intend to advocate for the horrific characters, but I hope they reflect humanity at its most vicious because we need to really look at ourselves and see it. Otherwise, we're deluding ourselves into thinking we're not capable of it.
Murphy also dished to BuzzFeed that two crew members told him that they have had nightmares about Twisty the Clown since they began filming, and what made the story more worrying was that they are not even scared of clowns.
Apparently, Emma Roberts, who plays a fortune teller named Maggie, told E! News that she was also having bad dreams but not solely because of Lynch's character.
"I have to say, 'Freak Show' is really scarier...I read the script and I was having nightmares," she told E! News.
"American Horror Story: Freak Show" premieres on Oct. 8 at 10 p.m. on FX.