What To Know
- Lux Pascal makes her Ryan Murphy debut in The Beauty‘s latest episode.
- The actress reveals why she wasn’t shy about showing off her rear for a key scene.
[Warning: The following post contains spoilers for The Beauty Episode 6, “Beautiful Patient Zero.”]
At this point, anyone who decides to join a Ryan Murphy television production knows coming into it that there are no rules as to what might be shown … and shown off. For Lux Pascal, who plays the post-Beauty version of Clara (a trans woman originated by Rev. Yolanda) in Wednesday‘s (February 11) new episode, that meant stepping out in the buff to check out her now post-transition form in the mirror.
She had no hesitation about showing off her stuff, though — in fact, she got a little too comfortable on set as a result of how protected she felt, resulting in a hilarious almost-faux pas.
“Oh, my God, I was so protected on that set. It was really funny because, as we all know now, it’s a nude scene. Those censors don’t censor this, but I was really protected. And it’s funny because when I was younger, I used to dance, and there I did a whole piece of dance naked. So, I’m kind of used to [it]. I have very little shame around it. So, everyone was standing, and I was like, ‘Oh, I have to go to the bathroom.’ And I kind of just left the bed where I was covered in. And everyone’s like, ‘Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait!’ Everyone was trying to cover me up or protect me. And I was like, ‘Oh, right!’” she remembered. “I was so comfortable. And Michael Uppendahl, also the director of the episode, he’s just so incredible. I’ve always admired his work, and he also listened to me — everything I had to say. It was just a wonderful day. And those days aren’t always possible; wonderful days at work aren’t always a possibility. But that day was definitely one of them.”
For Pascal, joining Murphy’s production, especially one with this many top-tier talents on the cast list, was a literal dream come true, and that translated to the screen when she was tasked with expressing sheer wonderment and joy in taking in her own visage.
“Ever since I was seven years old, I wanted to be a part of his universe, so just the excitement of being on his set translated so well to what I had to do on camera. I was like, ‘Oh, my God!… Little Lux is fulfilling a dream of hers.’ I was kind of like, ‘I guess I’ll just use this incredible sense of wonder that I have inside right now, and I’ll translate it into whatever I’m supposed to do as a character,’” she explained.
She also felt that she was free to “let go” in her screentime for the FX sci-fi drama and also identified with her character’s experience and desire: “You have to imagine this uncanny circumstance of you becoming — in the blink of an eye, you just change. You just become whatever you dream of becoming, right? And I think that that is something that everyone can really relate to. We all have a vision for ourselves. But I do think that for trans women or trans people in particular — binary ones in particular — there is such an emphasis of embodying the dream person, the dream body, your dream avatar in this world, and yeah, it’s just almost like scary, but at the same time exciting. It’s like, literally, what happens if a genie comes out of a bottle?”
In an epilogue of the episode, we see that Clara’s beloved colleague, who stole the serum to share with her, was hunted down and murdered by the Assassin, but Clara’s future remains unclear.
Pascal has her own hopes about Clara. “I imagine that, just as this episode ends on that high note, I also think that Clara, she ascended somewhere else where she’s untouchable. Let’s leave it at that. I want to be super spiritual about it. I have this fantasy that she really was able to just get the bag and run with it,” she said. If given the opportunity to reprise the role, she added, “I would definitely love to come back as Clara in her best life. Absolutely.”
For now, she’d just be happy to get another call from Murphy to take on another bold screen adventure of his. “I told him personally, ‘You can have me at speed dial.’ Whatever he needs me to be and wherever he needs me to be. I’ll go.”
The Beauty, Wednesdays, 9/8c, FX
