'American Horror Story' star Adina Porter on shocking twist

Publish date: 2024-05-03

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She’s met her bloody end. 

Emmy-nominated TV veteran Adina Porter, who’s known for a slew of shows including “True Blood,” “Ray Donovan,” “The Morning Show” “The 100” — and five seasons of FX’s “American Horror Story” franchise — had a seemingly short stint on this season of “AHS.” 

“I read the script without knowing which role I was assigned,” Porter, 50, told The Post. “And then I fell in love with the Chief and hoped that was the one that I got. It is a bit of a surprise that someone who has been part of the ‘American Horror Story’ series for a while got killed off pretty early [in the season].”

Called “Double Feature,” this season of “AHS” (Wednesdays at 10 p.m.) follows Harry (Finn Wittrock), a writer with middling success who’s spending his winter in an isolated Massachusetts beach town with his pregnant wife Doris (Lily Rabe) and their creepy daughter, Alma (Ryan Kiera Armstrong), who likes playing the violin and cataloguing drive-by roadkill.

As they explore the town, they encounter its bizarre residents, including a sickly looking woman known as Tuberculosis Karen (Sarah Paulson), who yells at them in the grocery store, smarmy writer Austin (Evan Peters) and a vampire-esque pale man. Police Chief Burleson (Porter) has a nonchalant attitude when they approach her about the more concerning oddities. 

“I had just come off from playing another police officer [in Netflix’s ‘Outer Banks’] and I wanted to make sure that they were different,” said Porter. “I liked that she was this outsider in this world, entering it as a bit of what she thought would be an easy job. It’s definitely different from being on patrol in Oakland, Calif. She’s an outsider with attitude — thinking that she was on top of it all.”

As Harry pops some mysterious pills to cure his writer’s block, he develops side effects including a craving for blood. Soon enough, Alma gets her hands on the pills, too, and Chief Burleson becomes increasingly suspicious of the trail of blood and bodies.

By the end of Wednesday’s episode — spoiler alert! — Harry and Alma have become bloodsuckers, and when Chief Burleson stops by their house when Alma is alone and asks one too many questions, Alma stabs her in the neck, leaving her to bleed out. 

“It’s a champagne problem, but I don’t remember all of my [onscreen] deaths,” said Porter. “I do die a lot! Bleeding out definitely packed a punch, and who my assailant was packed a punch. I think this is definitely in the top 5 of deaths that I’ve had. In order for the death scene to be a good payoff, the audience has to be invested in the character.”

But on a show where characters can be undead and supernatural events aren’t unusual, perhaps Chief Burleson isn’t really gone for good.

“Well, there are scenes that I act in, and then there’s what the editor creates. So, I’m never going to say never,” said Porter. “So who knows. I could come back as anything.”

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