Short description

In post-World War II Hollywood, an ambitious group of aspiring actors and filmmakers will do almost anything to make their showbiz dreams come true.

Seasons

Season	Episodes	Release date	Rating
Miniseries In post-World War II Hollywood, an ambitious group of aspiring actors and filmmakers will do almost anything to make their showbiz dreams come true.	7	2020-05-01	7.3

What's left behind the scenes

Henry Wilson, played by Jim Parsons, actually existed and worked in Hollywood from the late 1930s to the 1960s. He did work with some actresses, but primarily represented young, handsome male actors, giving them 'cool' pseudonyms himself. Thus, Roy Harold Sherrer Jr. (1925-1985) became Rock Hudson, Arthur Andrew Galin (1931-2018) became Tab Hunter, Orison Whipple Hangenford Jr. (1930-2017) became Tab Hardin, and Francis Timothy McCown (1922-1999) was given the stage name Rory Calhoun, and so on. Wilson was a closeted gay man. Not all of his clients were gay, but he gained fame in Hollywood by turning young gay men into actors whose secret inclinations no one even suspected. Wilson held compromising information on many famous people, and from time to time, he used it to promote some of his clients.
When explaining her character's look to Samara Weaving, Ryan Murphy described Claire as a "spider." Following this, the actress asked the costume designers to select a color palette that she felt suited the world of insects—various shades of red and black, and spots.
In terms of makeup and costumes, the filmmakers drew heavily from the extensive collection of photographs taken by George Hurrell (1904-1992), the famous Hollywood portrait photographer.
While preparing for the role, Samara Weaving repeatedly sought help from her father (a director and professor at the University of Newcastle in New South Wales) and rewatched feature and documentary films from the 1940s about women.
The costumes of Jack, played by David Corenswet, show a noticeable influence of the dressing style characteristic of James Dean (1931-1955) and Marlon Brando (1924-2004).
Each character in the series had their own color scheme—Archie, played by Jeremy Pope, preferred shades of gold, while Raymond, played by Darren Criss, preferred pink.
Actress Holland Taylor sent costume designers Lou Eyrich and Sarah Evelyn photographs of her mother taken in the 1930s and 1940s. This resulted in her character in the series, Ellen Kinkaid, being dressed in several outfits inspired by those photos.
Samara Weaving, who plays Claire, auditioned for the project when it didn't even have a title yet, and was asked to read a scene from Billy Wilder's (1906-2002) film 'Some Like It Hot' (1959). It was only two months later that she found out she had been cast in Ryan Murphy's miniseries.
Approximately half of the costumes shown in the series were handmade.
The series tells the true stories of real-life actors Rock Hudson (1925-1985), Hattie McDaniel (1895-1952), and Anna May Wong, whose careers were negatively impacted by their sexual preferences and/or origins; however, it mentions nothing of the widely known and documented instances of racism faced by Lena Horne (1917-2010) and Dorothy Dandridge (1922-1965), introducing instead a fictional character of African American descent into the plot.