Ryan Murphy is having a banner fall.
The viewership numbers for his buzzy Netflix series “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story” are very good. In its second week of eligibility, the true crime drama created by Murphy and Brad Falchuk secured 19.5 million views on Netflix, holding on to the No. 1 English-language TV series from last week and becoming the most watched Netflix title of the week. This comes after the second season of the crime series saw 12.3 million views in its first four days of availability.
In fact, the numbers for nearly every one of the super producer’s fall shows spanning four different networks and streamers have been, well, monster hits. In the past 10 days, Murphy launched or returned five different series across network and cable including the new “American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez” and “Grotesquerie” on FX and the new “Doctor Odyssey” on ABC as well as the returning “9-1-1” on ABC and “9-1-1: Lone Star” on Fox.
“I had a brief moment of being tired last night where I said, ‘I’m very tired.’ And my husband said, ‘Well, no s—t you’re tired,’” Ryan Murphy joked while talking to TheWrap for an interview on the heels of the big numbers.
Though he’s lived through a near fever dream of television success over the past couple of weeks, it’s the rewarding nature of the work that keeps him going. “I only write shows that I want to watch. So they were all designed to hit different parts of my brain,” Murphy said.
“It was a really daunting task to launch six shows in a space of two weeks — four of them new — and then have all four of them work and debut at No. 1 and be hits. It was unexpected, but I’m thrilled I did it,” he said. “I don’t know that I would ever do it again. But it’s been rewarding to have so much of my point of view and my brand and what it stands for and what I’m interested in. But the fact that other people want to watch these shows is very rewarding. And, you know, a lot of them have caused a lot of public conversation and discourse that I always find that interesting.”
Repeatedly, the super producer emphasized that he has “a lot of gratitude” for everyone who works at his company as well as his corporate partners such as Disney’s Dana Walden, FX’s John Landgraf and Netflix’s Ted Sarandos.
Diving into the numbers, on the network side, the Season 8 premiere of “9-1-1” was last Thursday’s most-watched broadcast program. Created by Murphy, Brad Falchuk and Tim Minear, the beloved drama saw 4.77 million viewers in live plus same day viewing and secured a 0.5 in the 18 to 49 year old demo, which marked a total audience improvement compared to last season. This growth is especially remarkable considering that Season 7 received a substantial marketing push from ABC following the network picking up the disaster drama from Fox.
The Season 5 premiere of “9-1-1: Lone Star” saw similar results for Fox. The Sept. 23 episode was the network’s most watched linear and largest total multiplatform audience for a scripted telecast in a year and a half. By the way, the previous show that held that honor was “9-1-1: Lone Star” Season 4. Though the series from Murphy, Falchuk and Minear is scheduled to end with its fifth season, that premiere scored 4.2 million viewers and 4.9 million viewers when accounting for its same day multiplatform audience.
As for “Doctor Odyssey,” ABC’s other dip into Murphy’s expansive world, the show became ABC’s most-watched drama debut in four years following the David E. Kelley drama “Big Sky.” It was also ABC’s best drama launch in the 18-49 demo in a year, securing a 0.38 rating. When accounting for total views, the cruise ship drama held 87% of its lead-in audience, an insider familiar with the matter told TheWrap, and delivered 7.59 million total viewers in live plus three day viewing. The drama comes from Murphy, Jon Robin Baitz and Joe Baken.
Murphy also recently premiered two new shows on his longtime cable home of FX. “American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez” was created by Stu Zicherman with Murphy serving as an executive producer. As for “Grotesquerie,” the serial killer thriller comes from the “Doctor Odyssey” team of Murphy, Baitz and Baken. It’s always a bit more difficult to track FX’s performance since the network looks at its cable viewership as well as its streaming viewership on Hulu and Disney+. But there’s reason to believe these series have also been performing well.
Three of Murphy’s shows — “American Sports Story,” “Grotesquerie” and “Doctor Odyssey” — all hit the No. 1 spot on Hulu’s Top 15 Today list their first full day on the network, an insider told TheWrap. In fact, “Doctor Odyssey” has been No. 1 on that list for the past three days, followed by “9-1-1” in the No. 2 spot.
Since launch, “American Sports Story” has spent 10 days on the Hulu list. “9-1-1: Lone Star” and “Grotesquerie” have both spent five days on the same list, and “9-1-1” and “Doctor Odyssey” have spent four days. Four of those shows —”9-1-1: Lone Star,” “Grotesquerie,” “9-1-1” and “Doctor Odyssey” — were still on the Hulu metric as of Sept. 30.
What’s remarkable about this array of shows is that they’re all over the map. “American Sports Story” and “Monsters,” for example, are more somber reflections on true crime cases that ask what really caused these dark stories. “Grotesquerie” is a wholly original thriller that “was sort of cloaked in mystery. We hadn’t shown it to anybody,” Murphy said.
“I wrote it with Robbie Baitz and Joe Baken, and I loved writing about something that I was feeling, which is ‘Why is the world on fire? Is nobody going to restore order?’” Murphy explained. “It does feel like the serial killer in ‘Grotesquerie’ is a metaphor for all of the anxieties that we feel.”
Then there are the more light-hearted and action-packed worlds of “9-1-1,” “9-1-1: Lone Star” and “Doctor Odyssey.” In fact, “Doctor Odyssey” came from one of Murphy’s first conversations with Dana Walden, co-chairman of Disney Entertainment, upon his return to the company after his Netflix deal. Wanting to pay homage to one of his favorite shows as a kid, he pitched the idea of “The Love Boat” meets “Nip/Tuck.”
“I wanted to do something fun, aspirational. We built a whole ship on the two sound stages. It’s a Paramount lot. It’s — I think — the biggest set I’ve ever been involved with, if not in the history of ABC,” Murphy said.
But some of the work Murphy is most proud of has to do with “Monsters.” “I really love working on it and making it as long as [Netflix] wants to do it,” Murphy said. “They seem to love it.”
Murphy explained that he feels sometimes people get “confused” by the show and revealed he was not “at all” interested in writing about the Menendez brothers in the first place.
“I wasn’t interested in them as people. What I was interested in is the topic of sexual abuse, particularly male sexual abuse, and how, back during those trials, it was misunderstood. I wanted to talk about that. I wanted to launch conversations about that, and I did,” Murphy said.
He likened the intense response “Monsters” received to the one he got with the series’ first installment, “Dahmer.” “I wasn’t interested in Dahmer so much as I’m interested in the topic of who gets justice in our culture? I was really interested in the Glenda Cleveland character,” Murphy said. “So every season of ‘Monster’ is about a larger cultural, sociological thing, which I like writing. Sometimes they’re really hard to nail down, and it has to be something that I want to talk about.”
When it comes to any abundance of film or TV content, the term “oversaturation” starts to creep up. But that’s not an issue Murphy is concerned about in the least. Part of that is because he knows his many, many shows coming from various creative partners are so very different. Part of it comes from his past as a journalist, which taught him that there’s “no such thing as writer’s book in my life.” But it’s also because of his own introduction to and relationship with Hollywood.
“I come from a scarcity mindset. When I started in this business, I was a gay man who could not get a job. I could not get a job, I couldn’t get arrested. That was not that long ago, that was in the late ’90s,” Murphy said. That changed in 1999 when Murphy’s first series was greenlit, the short-lived “Popular,” which he called a “brutal” experience. The series lasted two seasons on The WB before its cancelation.
“I’m somebody that will always take the ‘Yes.’ I will always take the green light,” Murphy said. He is also highly conscious of his role as a job creator. The WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes last summer pulled that into sharp focus.
“Post-strike, my shows have given thousands of jobs to thousands of people who were out of work, who were suffering, who were having trouble putting food on the table for their families,” Murphy said, noting that some of his crews have worked with him as long as 24 years. “I have an obligation to keep my family and my community of creatives working.”
At this point is his career, Murphy is also less concerned with what people think about him. “I don’t read anything about me anymore. I just, frankly, don’t care,” Murphy said.”If I have an opportunity to move towards my curiosities, and if my creative partners — if Dana Walden is happy and [John] Landgraf is happy — then I’m happy.”
As Murphy approaches his 60th birthday, he wants to keep working on projects he loves with people he loves. “That’s kind of the story of my life. I went from being able to make nothing to being able to make pretty much anything that I want to do, and I’m going to take the Yes, and I feel very blessed that I get to take that,” Murphy said. “That really shows a change in our culture. That’s interesting to me where a gay kid from Indiana who literally was made fun of and can now control this really interesting company that can do a lot. That’s progress in my book.”
Even now, Murphy is pushing himself to take risks and do things he’s never done before. Coming off the premiere of “American Horror Story,” he and his team will be launching “American Love Story” soon, which will follow the relationship between John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy. Murphy will be directing that installment.
“In the spring, we’re trying to find somebody to play Carolyn Bessette, which is thrilling. We’re doing like a big Scarlet O’Hara search for that,” Murphy said.
Then there’s his upcoming project with Hulu, which marks a genre the accomplished Hollywood creative has never tackled: the legal drama. That currently untitled project will star Kim Kardashian, Glenn Close, Naomi Watts, Sarah Paulson and Niecy Nash-Betts with Murphy directing.
“I’ve always wanted to do a law show, but I want to do my version of a law show, which, is very different from others, which it’s really fun,” Murphy said. “And I always wanted to get work with Glenn Close.”
After that series is finished, Murphy will be stepping right into another show and another genre he’s never touched before: sci-fi. Starring Evan Peters, “The Beauty” focuses on a sexually transmitted disease that makes those affected beautiful.
“‘The Beauty’ was written for my really good friend, Evan Peters. We’ve had a lot of success together. It shoots in Europe, and it’s a big sci-fi thing,” Murphy said. “When we finish it, it will take a year to do the special effects because it’s so outlandish, outrageous.”
