Warning: This post contains spoilers for the Oct. 16 episode of Grotesquerie.
Niecy Nash-Betts has been holding onto a big secret for quite some time now.
The actress leads Ryan Murphy’s Grotesquerie, which, up until the seventh episode, seemed to see her character, Detective Lois Tryon, investigating a deeply disturbing murderer plaguing her town.
The Oct. 16 episode turned all of that on its head, though, as it was revealed that Nash-Betts’ character has actually been in a coma all along — and the storyline that’s been played out was happening inside her head.
“Lois was in a coma this whole time, and what we saw prior to [this episode] were her dreams,” Nash-Betts, 54, tells PEOPLE. “Now that she’s awake, what is going to happen?”
Calling the reveal “a very major plot twist,” Nash-Betts says, “What you think the beginning of the series is [about] is not really what it is.”
“We start off at horror. We segue into family drama, and then we end on a whodunnit?” she teases of what’s still to come in the final three episodes.
The actress has known since signing onto the show that this twist was in the works. In fact, it’s part of what swayed her to join the project. “I was like, ‘Oh, wow, and we never see it coming?’ [And he said] ‘Nope, never see it coming.’ I was like, ‘Yes, please, and sign me up. I want in on this.'”
Along with the reveal that Lois has been in a coma the whole time, episode 7 also saw a complete role reversal for the rest of the cast, which includes Courtney B. Vance, Micaela Diamond, Raven Goodwin, Nicholas Alexander Chavez, Travis Kelce and Lesley Manville.
“I knew that we were all, as artists, going to get to play a duality of characters,” she says, referring to the fact that all the characters are not actually who viewers thought they were.
“Every character, [I] was like, ‘Say what?’ Travis Kelce went from being smooth and charming to having a mullet and working at the mall. My daughter went from wanting to be on a reality TV show for obese people, and ends up being the head doctor in charge of a medical facility,” she says of Kelce’s character Ed and Goodwin’s character Merritt.
“My husband, played by Courtney B. Vance, really wasn’t in a coma — I was the one in the coma. So every character — even Nurse Redd (Manville). She went from being this tough-as-nails nurse to doing OnlyFans in her living room. It’s like, ‘Wait a minute, what?'”
The episode ended with Lois waking up from her coma — right after Marshall (Vance) had decided to pull the plug on her life support, despite Merritt’s opposition.
“She wakes up and has to deal with the fallout from her dreams,” Nash-Betts says of what’s to come for Lois. “Then, dealing with that, there are a few more twists and turns.”
And there’s “still more to come,” she teases. “I would just say — nothing is what it seems.”
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Grotesquerie airs Wednesdays at 10 p.m. ET/PT on FX and streams the next day on Hulu.
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