Grotesquerie is far from the first time Courtney B. Vance and Niecy Nash-Betts have worked together, but it did come after the actors had a conversation explicitly about getting back onscreen.
Vance, 64, plays Marshall Tryon, Nash-Betts’ character Lois Tryon’s husband, in the Ryan Murphy series — and he’s mostly seen in flashbacks as he’s comatose in a hospital bed in the present. The Tony winner tells PEOPLE that the actress’ participation in the show is part of what sold him on the part.
“Ryan told me she was aboard, and he wanted me to play her hubby, and we go way back,” Vance says.
“We did Cookie’s Fortune, [which was directed by] Robert Altman, back in the day. And about four or five years ago, we did Uncorked. So we go back,” he continues, referring to the two projects they’ve collaborated on in the past.
Vance had Nash-Betts, 54 on his mind to work with her and again, and he recalls, “A month prior to me getting the call from Ryan, I saw her at an awards event. And I walked up to her and said, ‘We need to do something. It’s been long enough. Come on, let’s do something.'”
“And she said, ‘Okay, what’s wrong with that?’ And then this conversation happened with Ryan about a month or two later,” he says. “So no, I was completely happy. Completely.”
Vance adds that Nash-Betts “made the set” as the cast’s leader.
“[She] makes the set nice and relaxed. That’s what she does. That’s what needs to happen,” he says. “You got to have a relaxed set.”
Vance was also full of praise for another one of his costars: Travis Kelce.
“It just lets you know the power of Ryan Murphy,” he says of Kelce, 34, being cast in the show — his scripted TV debut. “[He] just made a phone call and said, ‘Come on down.'”
“It was a nice choice,” Vance adds. “He was very wonderful. [It was] not a surprise, he was just prepared. He was just good. And if he needed some help, he was open.”
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New episodes of Grotesquerie air Wednesdays at 10 p.m. ET/PT on FX and streams the next day on Hulu.
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