Spoiler alert: This story contains details from episode 3 of “The Beauty,” currently streaming on Hulu.
Amelia Gray, the 24-year-old model and daughter of Lisa Rinna and Harry Hamlin, is not surprised to be making her acting debut in Ryan Murphy’s project The Beauty.
“My family was very much a Ryan Murphy family,” Gray told me. “Growing up between ‘Glee’ and ‘American Horror Story,’ it was like every Tuesday night we would all crawl into my parents’ bed and watch one of Ryan Murphy’s shows. So it was really crazy that that was my first experience. It’s not just a Ryan Murphy show, it’s a Ryan Murphy show that he was directing.”
She only appears on “The Beauty” for a few minutes, but it’s literally an explosive performance.
Gray plays a model who is having lunch in a Condé Nast cafeteria, but suddenly starts vomiting, begins violently attacking people (including characters played by Ben Platt and Megan Trainor), and eventually explodes. She is also a victim of The Beauty, a fountain of youth treatment for sexually transmitted infections that can have potentially fatal side effects.
Gray barely auditioned for the role. Amelia was working in Paris despite having a fever when her mother told her she had received an email from a producer asking her to make a self-tape. “I didn’t feel like doing anything that day except what I had to do, which was get up and walk down the runway,” she recalls.
But then she read the email. “The description said, ‘Supermodel, seriously ill, but still looking healthy,'” Gray says with a laugh. “I thought, ‘Oh, damn, I have to do it. I don’t know if I look good or not, but I’m definitely awfully sick.'” I’d never taken a self-tape in my life, and I didn’t know how, but it was one of those things where I was like, “What a universe, if it’s meant to be, then it’s definitely going to be.” I was feeling so bad that I set up my iPad in my hotel room in Paris and just read the lines. I only sent one take and forgot about it. ”
Four months later, she was offered the role. Gray said her acting agent told her not to take acting lessons. “He said he wanted me,” she explained, adding that she plans to enroll in acting classes if she finds more fulfilling work. “I talk about it every time I see Kaia Gerber at Pilates, because she’s a model turned actress. People don’t understand how much respect I have for actors. It took over 16 hours and two days to shoot a three-minute scene. Baby, it takes a whole day to shoot the whole campaign, right? So I don’t know. I’m very grateful for my work and I have a lot of respect for the actors. I don’t know if that’s really true, but it’s still my life.
Gray did all his own stunts, except for one in which he threw Traynor’s character out of a building through a window. “There was the Met Gala two days later, and I went to the set and there was what looked like real glass,” she says. “They were like, ‘Glass might cover you.’ I was like, ‘Oh, no, I’m leaving.’ ”
“The Beauty” hadn’t even premiered yet, but it was already sparking debate about beauty standards and the lengths to which people go to achieve so-called perfection, and the series was quickly drawing comparisons to “The Substance,” an Oscar-nominated thriller about an aging actress played by Demi Moore who abuses a rejuvenating serum after being fired from hosting an aerobics TV show.
Ms. Gray has her own experience with cosmetic surgery and cosmetic treatments. Regarding speculation that she may have used lip fillers, she explained, “I’ve always had lips like this,” and has never used fillers. “I’m doing this thing right now called SkinVive. It’s not a filler, it’s a moisturizer injection.”
She has been open about having had a nose job and medically necessary breast reduction surgery to prevent sepsis from infection caused by nipple rings. She also said she later had breast implants, but the surgery went horribly wrong. “When I was younger, I dated a man who was older than me, and I allowed his perception of beauty to influence my choices,” Gray says. “I wasn’t necessarily happy with the scars left by the breast implants, so I decided to get them again.” “I woke up in a state I didn’t consent to, that’s all I can say.”
But she continues. “It became an emergency surgery because my breasts literally couldn’t withstand what was being put into me. I couldn’t even pump soap because the implants compressed the nerves. I ended up having to have 14 hours of reconstructive surgery.”
Although Gray may appear to be an open book, she says she has no desire to return to reality TV since she first appeared on her parents’ reality series “Harry Loves Lisa” on TV Land in 2010 and later appeared on “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” with her mother. “That would never happen,” Gray says. “You can tell people to stop coming at me about me. I’ve had enough.”
She also did not try to follow her mother in watching “Traitor.” “It’s fun to have a game to play, but I also see what it does to people… having to lie and cheat for weeks and months,” Gray says. “It does something to your brain.”
Rinna asks if things were different when she came back from the reality show. “She definitely needed time to heal,” Gray said. “But it’s a journey for herself to explore and pass on when she’s ready.”
