Spoiler Alert: This post contains storylines from the two-part Season 1 finale of “The Beauty,” now streaming on FX on Hulu and Disney+.
FX’s body-horror odyssey “The Beauty” spent its first season reveling in the gooey, rebellious transformations produced by the ingestion of a drug that can transform hum-drum beings into sculptural expressions of perfection. Average people who were once encased in their own veiny skin bags carve out a whole new lease on life with chiseled abs, symmetrical faces, and enough confidence to take on the world.
The series from co-creators Ryan Murphy and Matthew Hodgson has shown time and time again why people want to take The Beauty, despite the side effects. But the season 1 finale offered the most compelling reason why not. In the first part of the two-episode finale, viewers are introduced to Bella (Emma Hallin). Bella is a perfectly normal high school student who watches a beauty craze take hold in her world. Her well-endowed best friend emerges from a satisfying nose job, takes medication, and appears on the runway the next day as a tanned blonde. Emma craves the same instantaneous achievement of seeming perfection, even though her parents refuse to consider it and even if they did, they had no money.
Director Michael Appendaal says the decision to shift the focus of the series at the 11th hour to a teenage girl the audience has never met was a decision about who among us would be the best commentator on a global sensation.
Emma Hallin as Bella, Annabelle Wachtel as Lucy
Providing FX
“The litmus test for the nation is always the 16-year-old girl,” Uppendahl told Variety. “They’re very committed to everything. They’re in a big transition period in their lives. Especially at that age, they’re smarter than the boys. I mean, they’re still smart, but I think they’re a measure of what any society is going through. This is an uncomfortable thing to confront, and that’s why they’re perfect for this story.”
With no choice but to take The Beauty, Bella takes matters into her own hands. One of the technicians who gave her friend the injection offers Emma an alternative. In exchange for the cash obtained by pawning her mother’s jewelry, Emma will be given “The Beauty,” a sexually transmitted disease. Throughout the season, The Beauty’s dealer, callous billionaire Byron Forst (Ashton Kutcher), has been pushing the release of the drug, fearing the one thing he can’t control: second-hand distribution. Vera justifies Byron’s concerns.
Bella not only loses her virginity, but also proceeds to administer a sexually transmitted disease, despite the fact that the knight of shining beauty reveals that he took the second shot without knowing the result. What she experiences is a nightmare scenario and unfortunately her mother (Maria Dizia) comes home and discovers it. Upon reincarnation, Bella was deformed beyond recognition and repair, becoming a mass of bleeding mouths, mutated limbs, and distorted bones. It’s hard to watch, and that’s exactly what Appendaal wanted. The team insisted on Hareen wearing Bela’s post-beauty monster suit, keeping her hidden from Disia until the moment Bela found her in the closet at the end of a trail of blood and mucus.
“Maria is a great actor, so we need to take her seriously to make sure we impress the audience,” he says. “I thought about what would be the worst thing to see. Everything that happens to your child is terrible, but completely compromising the anatomy and skeleton adds an extra layer of horror and horror.”
To convey the visual pain and disgust of Bella’s transformation, special effects makeup designer David Presto and his team created a set specifically to house the utilitarian suit.
“Emma had a spinal injury, so we actually raised the set and then dug it out so they could lower Emma down into it,” Appendahl says. “She was mostly in a full suit, but she had a team in the closet with her. Emma is the root of the performance, and that’s her voice, but we had a puppeteer who operated aspects of her, and I think there were six of us. I worked with Emma quite a bit to figure out how to give us an understanding of her physical appearance, and then the puppeteers expanded on the rest in an incredible way.”
michael upendahl
Providing FX
In the end, Hareen had to wear a suit for one reason. “The eyes were important to me, to Ryan, and to Dave Presto, to make sure there was the real Emma there, and that was the real connection between her and Maria,” Uppendahl says. “They’ve done a great job as believable mother and daughter, and it was both terrifying and wonderful to see them come to an end.”
Ultimately, this scene becomes the basis of a warning that will bring major changes to Byron’s world. At the beginning of the second episode of the two-part finale, Byron’s wife Frannie (Isabella Rossellini) is forcefully given The Beauty by her sons Tig (Ray Nicholson) and Gunther (Brandon Gillard). Refusing to let go of the battle scars of her life and age, she wakes up (as guest star Nicola Peltz Beckham) to learn that her sons have decided to override that wish against her will. Protesting her changes, she digs a broken pottery shard into her neck, attempting to end her life in exchange for her unwanted rejuvenation. Now she is once again placed on life support at the Golden Ball, against her wishes.
At that moment, the selfish and boastful villain Byron has a change of heart and decides to stop the shipment of The Beauty and repay families who, like Bella’s, have been devastated by its horrific side effects. His lawyers suggest that nearly 500,000 people suffer from severe complications. But given Byron’s track record, will he really change tack just because his wife denies him what he previously considered a gift to humanity?
“I think he’s definitely changed,” Uppendahl says. “I think he really loves Franny. Who wouldn’t if it was Isabella Rossellini? She’s always seen right through him, and that’s been the driving force for some really fun banter between them. He loves that tension with her. It’s great to finally be able to dig into something really deep between them. This is the only thing that can change a guy like that.”
Or maybe Byron was just hypnotized by the series’ clever nod to Rossellini’s “Death Becomes Her” character as a seducer who offers the elixir of eternal life. After the makeover, Beckham introduces her new Franny, wearing a top with chunky jewelry barely held together. This is a clever recreation of the iconic outfit worn by Rossellini in the 1992 film. Uppendahl said she’s not even sure Rossellini knew about the fashionable allusions to her role, given that she wasn’t in the scene. But he jumped at the chance to pay tribute to her.
“This was Ryan’s idea and I knew it was great as soon as I heard it,” he says. “Recently, someone has started making those jeweled tops again. It’s kind of coming back as a fashion. It’s at a very high, pretty high-class level, and even Franny can afford it.”
As the season draws to a close, “The Beauty” has many complications for future seasons, but FX has yet to renew it. Director Upendahl said he would like to see Lux Pascal return as Carla, the transgender technologist who took the drugs she stole from Bryon, originally played by Reverend Yolanda. The audience has good reason to worry about Carla, as her friend Mike (played by Joey Pollari in beauty form) has already been assassinated for lifting a chute.
“She deserves to be feared,” Uppendahl says. “Pastor Yolanda was so great, and so was Lux. She didn’t have a lot of screen time, but she was transcendent. I felt like there was room for her in my ideas for Season 2.”
Jessica Alexander as Jordan Bennett, Hudson Barry as Cooper 2, Anthony Ramos as Assassin, Jeremy Pope as Jeremy
Providing FX
In the final episode of the two-part series, Detective Cooper, played by Evan Peters, also accepts drugs through a sexually transmitted infection with his partner Jordan (Jessica Alexander), only to discover that his perfect self is actually a 12-year-old boy. Soon, Cooper, Jordan, and their reluctant new allies, Byron’s assassins Antonio (Anthony Ramos) and Jeremy (Jeremy Pope), find themselves in the crosshairs of a war brewing within the Forst family. Just because Bryon wants to stop the spread of The Beauty doesn’t mean those with financial interests, including his son Tig, are going to throw in the towel as well. Tig teams up with disgruntled robot designer Dr. Diana Starling (Ari Greiner) and strikes a deal with Cooper, Jordan, Antonio, and Jeremy. Dr. Starling has synthesized an untested treatment that could restore Cooper or cause further problems. Cooper accepts the blind deal, but the others reject it and are forced to admit that they prefer younger, toned bodies.
“They’ve been given so much, and they don’t want to give it up,” Uppendahl says. “For a variety of reasons, the idea of going back to what you were when you changed to something you perceive as better is not very appealing to people. It’s not necessarily the wisest course of action, but it’s interesting when everyone is faced with the choice of rejecting it. This is a deep question, given that they know this horror.”
The audience does not yet know what will happen from the so-called treatment. Cooper’s dose envelops him in yet another cocoon, but the series fades to black before he can be reborn again. The season ends with Jordan, Antonio, and Jeremy watching him emerge. Upendahl says he wanted to make sure to capture the reaction to anything that might come out of that chrysalis, even some unlikely scenarios.
“When we were shooting the scene, I walked them through the scene and told the actors that when they came out, he would appear as a different person to get a reaction,” Uppendahl says. “At one point I told him it was Shaquille O’Neal. Probably not, but you never know!”
