Los Angeles — Seth Gabel is back as Jeffrey Dahmer in American Horror Story: 13, 10 years after first taking on the role in AHS: Hotel. His return begins with an unusual encounter: two versions of Dahmer riding in the back of a Waymo and browsing Grindr.
Warning: This article contains spoilers from American Horror Story: 13, episode 6, “The Return of Devil’s Night.”
The scene pairs Gabel with Evan Peters, who played Dahmer in Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story and returns to AHS as Mr. March from Hotel. Peters had already reprised his Murder House and Cult characters earlier in the season.
Gabel says he was initially “terrified” about sharing the scene with Peters. While Gabel portrayed a satirical version of Dahmer, Peters played a more realistic interpretation of the serial killer in Monster.
“I was terrified because I played the satire version; he played the very real version that deserved an Emmy,” Gabel tells Entertainment Weekly. Peters was nominated for Monster, while his performance as Dahmer won a Golden Globe.
Gabel said he was unsure whether Peters might feel protective of his portrayal of the character.
“I didn’t know if he was gonna be maybe territorial going into it,” Gabel says. “So I kind of approached cautiously, not knowing. ‘Is this gonna be a measuring contest of some kind?’”
Instead, Peters quickly made his attitude clear.
“And he made it immediately clear that time has come and gone for him, and this Dahmer is my Dahmer, and he has nothing to do with it other than just wanting to be fully supportive as a scene partner and actor,” Gabel recalls.
Gabel, who has also appeared in Ryan Murphy projects including The Watcher and American Horror Stories, first learned about the unusual scene during a costume fitting. After a decade away, he needed a new version of Dahmer’s familiar look.
“I kinda missed the old glasses,” Gabel says, noting that the original glasses had a real prescription. He enjoyed how putting them on and seeing through blurred lenses helped him become the character.
While Gabel was trying on the updated costume, Murphy entered and described the scene simply: “Two Jeffrey Dahmers in a Waymo.”
For Gabel, that kind of bizarre combination is part of what makes American Horror Story appealing.
“You just put the most insane things together,” he says. “You can put a hat on a hat and have it still be stylish.”
Gabel says his work with Peters was largely about staying in the moment and allowing their instincts to shape the scene. Some of the details that made it into the episode were spontaneous additions.
One example was Dahmer poking and tasting a dead bird beside the road. Gabel says that action was not in the script.
“I was like, ‘Well, it’s Jeffrey Dahmer. He can’t see something dead and not wonder what it tastes like.’”
Before the scene continued, episode director Crystle Roberson Dorsey checked that the prop and liquid effects were not poisonous.
Gabel acknowledges that portraying Dahmer remains an extremely dark experience. When he first played the character in Hotel, he researched the serial killer’s history to better understand his psychology. For season 13, however, he decided not to repeat that process.
“It’s just kind of too much,” he explains. Instead, Gabel relied on the physical familiarity of the role, trusting that putting the costume, glasses and shoes back on would help him recover the rhythm he established 10 years earlier.
That familiarity also informed some of his choices in the Waymo scene. Knowing Dahmer was an alcoholic, Gabel decided the character would want a drink from Mr. March’s flask.
“I just grabbed his flask and took a sip and immediately started coughing,” Gabel recalls.
He later discovered that Peters uses a substitute when scenes call for alcohol. The flask contained apple cider vinegar, which creates a burning sensation without requiring the actor to drink alcohol.
“It gives you that kick, which I think is a pretty brilliant tactic for not actually drinking but getting that kind of burning sensation in your throat,” Gabel says. “But at the same time, it threw me way off, and I was definitely coughing a lot.”
Gabel also made a contribution to the episode’s cliffhanger. As the serial killers from Hotel prepare to battle the witches of the coven, Mr. March leads Dahmer, the Zodiac Killer, played by Michael Worden, and Richard Ramirez, played by Zach Villa, in an assault on Miss Robichaux’s Academy.
Each killer carries a weapon, and the props team initially intended to give Dahmer a knife. Gabel had another idea: an electric power drill.
His reasoning was that Dahmer would use a drill to make holes in people’s heads.
“It’s kind of a signature thing,” Gabel says.
The episode ends with Mr. March driving a sickle into the back of Cordelia’s head, played by Sarah Paulson, setting up the next chapter of the story.
Gabel says episode 7 will escalate the action considerably.
“It gets really crazy,” he says. “We’re doing stunts with weapons and magic, which brings in a lot of special effects. It gets three-dimensional in terms of people flying in the air and all kinds of elements being used against each other.”
American Horror Story: 13 returns with two episodes, 7 and 8, Thursday, Oct. 8 at 9 p.m. ET/PT on FX and Hulu.
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