Rebecca Hall on new FX drama 'The Beauty' and life with her cats

Rebecca Hall, speaking by video call from her home in upstate New York, said she is content even when her cats wake her at 3 a.m. and discussed starring in Ryan Murphy’s new series, The Beauty.

Hall said she had never worked with Murphy when he pitched what she called “the most wild and fun and subversive wacky premise.” In the series, which she called thrilling and substantive, she plays an F.B.I. agent tracking a sexually transmitted virus that transforms ordinary people into specimens of physical perfection; the show’s tagline is “One shot makes you hot.”

She described a “permanent tension” between wanting to age gracefully and recognizing that appearance has mattered in her career, saying looks “got me jobs” but that her work is about reflecting people at all stages of life. Hall will also appear in Murphy’s upcoming Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story.

Hall also spoke about personal projects and comforts: a recent painting show at Half Gallery, her late mother’s white Danemann piano, her husband Morgan Spector’s seasonal “brown” and “green” drinks, gardening, vintage finds, photography books, small movie theaters and the domestic noise of cats she and Spector began keeping when they moved in together.

Key Topics

Culture, Rebecca Hall, The Beauty, Ryan Murphy, Morgan Spector, Upstate New York