Jamie Lee Curtis has a long and varied acting resume, but for many horror fans, she’ll always be Laurie Strode, the doomed but plucky heroine of Halloween. Luckily for them, Ryan Murphy feels the same way, and he’s writing a part for her in the upcoming series Scream Queens that will see her fighting the bad guys rather than running away.
“Yes, if you’re going to hire Jamie Lee Curtis, you want to see her kicking a*s and fighting back and doing all of those things that you loved her doing, so we’re writing a scene right now where she’s fighting three killers. I come at the stuff from a real fanboy place,” Murphy said recently at Comic Con.
The series–which premieres this September–will also star Emma Roberts, who worked with Murphy on American Horror Story, and will feature a large ensemble cast similar to that show. Murphy says it won’t just be straight horror, but rather will mix comedy and “classic horror” elements with a modern twist. The show reportedly opens on a college campus, where a series of murders have the students in fear for their lives.
“This is first off a comedy. A lot of things pretend to be comedies, want to be called a comedy, there are comic situations, but they don’t make you laugh. This makes you laugh from the beginning. And then, it’s really scary. The horror trope is well-served here – the classic use of camera, sound, visuals – to convey real terror. So, there’s a sequence that’s generally scary, but then in the middle of it, there’s something really funny that happens that you laugh at and then it just gets incredibly dark, violent and scary,” Jamie Lee Curtis said.
Scream Queens will premiere on Fox on September 22.
