What Evan Peters really thinks of his terrifying ‘AHS: Hotel’ alter-ego

On a scale of one to ten, how hooked are you on this new season of American Horror Story: Hotel? Before the show even premiered last week, the cast started talking about the fact that this season is the scariest. Now two episodes in, we’ve got to agree. Wednesday’s episode, “Chutes and Ladders” was not about the classic children’s board game, but rather about all the hidden secrets of Hotel Cortez and its original owner, Mr. James March.

Stop reading right now if you haven’t watched “Chutes and Ladders.” Go watch it right now. During the daytime. It’ll be better that way, promise. Because now we’re going to talk about the latest character introduced last night, Evan Peters’ Mr. March. And there are SPOILERS.

As we’ve now learned, Mr. March is a serial killer. He built Hotel Cortez as a place where he could kill people and then secretly dispose of the bodies, because “no bodies, no crime.” That’s what all the chutes are about. That’s also probably why so much CRAZY STUFF happens in the Hotel, because it is straight-up haunted. We know this because we saw Mr. March brutally kill himself in the 1930s. But present day, he’s still wandering around (on the 7th floor) and hanging out in Room 64 (which was his original office).

Talking to Variety, Peters admitted that even he’s a little spooked by his character – and this is coming from someone who has appeared in every season of AHS to date.

“I would be scared of me. I would definitely be scared of me,” he explains. “This [character] is incredibly different from those that I’ve played [in prior seasons]. He’s got a lot of external qualities and things. He’s just fun to play and he’s probably the most evil character that I’ve played in the series. He surpasses Tate in that area.” AHS refresher: Tate was from Season 1 and also a serial killer. And also a ghost.

It also takes “something pretty intense” for residents of Hotel Cortez to come across Mr. March. “I think Mr. March has an incredible ability to sniff out the worst in people and they are sort of drawn to that. It’s always interesting to see the people who are staying in the hotel — the ones who check in, but can’t check out.”

But, Peters doesn’t think all the residents are that bad. “Maybe they have have bad sides to themselves, but none of them are really bad people per se. That’s my opinion, but then again I’ve been playing a really evil character so my judgment may be a little skewed.”

In a separate interview with Vulture, Peters admitted that playing Mr. March is “crazy and it’s scary, but it’s fun… It is nice to be able to be the person who’s torturing, as opposed to being the person who’s getting tortured! It’s interesting to do things that you’re not doing in real life. But I’ll have to let the audience judge whether he’s any type of endearing psychopath.”

After the events of last night, we’re going to go with YES on the psychopath part. Still haven’t figured out if he has any sort of endearing qualities. But from the torture we saw him inflict last night… that’s probably a hard “no.”

(Image via FX)

Related:

Here’s your AHS refresher guide

We may get two whole seasons of AHS next year