Blood is thicker than water — unless you’re a scaredy cat like Julia Roberts, in which case the familial bond you share with niece Emma Roberts won’t be enough to get you anywhere near “American Horror Story,” in which Emma plays a leading part.
Nope, the Oscar winner is staying far away from Ryan Murphy’s gory FX anthology series — both on screen and off.
“You know everybody divides the world into two groups?” Roberts told Entertainment Weekly. “My two groups are people that like to be scared and people who don’t like to be scared. The first season of ‘American Horror Story’ came out and the way that I took my kids to school then, there was a traffic light that I always hit red and there was a poster for ‘American Horror Story’ right at that traffic light.”
Julia saw that and warned her good friend, “AHS” co-creator Murphy — who directed the actress in “Eat Pray Love” and “The Normal Heart” — she would not be tuning in for it.
“I called Ryan and I said, ‘I’m just going to tell you right now — I don’t think I can watch your show. I can’t support you. I don’t think I can do it,’” Roberts continued. “He goes, ‘Lady, you won’t get through the commercial.’ Okay, that’s a good friend. Someone who really knows me and so of course I would never watch that.”
OK, but what does she say to her poor niece — who has starred on several seasons of “AHS,” including the currently airing “Apocalypse” — about even watching her work?
“And then Emma’s on it and I say, ‘Emma, sweetheart, I don’t think I can watch this show that you’re in.’ And she goes, ‘Auntie, I was in this toy box at the end of this bed and they pulled my arm off.’ I go, ‘Okay. You just have to stop talking. I can’t handle it.’ So that is off the table for me. I don’t watch things like that.”
“American Horror Story” airs Wednesdays at 10/9c on FX.