Paris Jackson Was Shocked by Her ‘American Horror Stories’ Character’s Cruelty

Paris Jackson shocked even herself by delivering such a mean performance in the latest installment of American Horror Story, largely because she had no idea her character would be so evil. Jackson, who stars as mean girl character Maya in the “Rubber (Wo)man Parts 1 and 2,” tells The Wrap she was unaware of her character’s cruel nature before she signed on. “I didn’t know anything about what this season was going to be, they’re very top secret about that when you’re auditioning,” she revealed to the outlet on Friday. “And when they told me that I was going to be in the show, they hadn’t really given me much information on the character. They just told me the name of the character and then I was going to be playing a mean girl. But they definitely didn’t tell me how mean I was going to have to be.”

“So when I read the script the first time, I was honestly pretty horrified at how cruel and just evil and vindictive the character is,” Paris added. “But overall, it was an incredibly amazing experience.” In the episodes, Maya shows off her mean nature by tricking Scarlett (Sierra McCormack) into believing that she has feelings for her. Once Scarlett shows some reciprocated feelings, declaring the list of sexual things she had fantasized about, Maya shows the video off to the entire school. Because she felt a responsibility to accurately portray the high school queen bee, she asked the director for the character’s motives behind her anger. “It made more sense to be like, yeah, Maya actually does have feelings for Scarlett and she does question her sexuality,” Paris said. “And she doesn’t know how to feel about it and doesn’t know how to behave about it. And obviously, her friends hate that idea. So she’s got to be the top dog of this rich-b––, mean-girl crew.”

The role was certainly out of Jackson’s nature. She went on to explain that once she and her co-star were off-camera, she spent much of her time apologizing for her acting. “They’d call cut and I’d be like, ‘I’m so sorry. I promised I don’t hate you’ to Sierra. And she’s like, ‘It’s fine, it’s fine.’ And then when it came time for her to kill us, she kept saying, ‘I’m so sorry, I promise I don’t hate you,’” she shared. “It was a really cute constant interaction of us apologizing to each other, especially because she’s very believable. She’s very convincing. I think she felt the same way about me.”