Jamie Lee Curtis Previews 'Scream Queens': 'Any Day Could Be Our Final Day on Set'

Jamie Lee Curtis, who caught her big break in the Halloween franchise and cemented her scream-queen status with campy ‘80s classics like Prom NIght and The Fog, has once again found herself on the wrong side of a masked murderer in Ryan Murphy’s new scary-meets-sardonic Fox drama, and she couldn’t be happier. “On the surface, Scream Queens is playing with all those horror tropes from the late ‘70s and early ‘80s movies that helped me establish a career,” she told Yahoo TV during a phone interview on a break from filming the series in New Orleans. “But it is also so much deeper than that. This is the Ryan Murphy think-piece on the state of women. This is Ryan, Brad [Falchuk], and Ian [Brennan] holding up a mirror to the issue. It’s obviously heightened and dark, but unfortunately it’s also very accurate. It will definitely generate conversation.”

Our conversation with the 56-year-old star — who plays the sorority-hating dean of the fictional Wallace University — also yielded her thoughts on being the most senior member of the cast (co-stars include Nick Jonas, Emma Roberts, Abigail Breslin, Ariana Grande), filming in secrecy, and Dean Cathy Munsch’s unexpected bedroom romp.

Usually, Ryan Murphy sets his sights on a particular actress and he makes it happen. Occasionally, as in the case with Lady Gaga on AHS: Hotel, someone calls him. How and when did you become part of Scream Queens?
I got an out of the blue, come-have-a-meeting-with-me-because-I-have-a-role-for-you call. Those calls are very rare. Many performers never get one. I’ve been lucky enough to get three and each time, even though I didn’t need those calls because I was already making a living as a journeyman actor and was very happy in my life when they came, they transformed my life. It was John Cleese calling about A Fish Called Wanda, James Cameron calling about True Lies, and Ryan Murphy calling me in September of last year to be in Scream Queens.

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And that was exactly how this happened. The phone rang. I picked it up. I went in, met him, and frankly all he said was that he was writing a show set in a sorority and he’d like me to play the dean. He said, “You’re a feminist and you basically become the counterpoint to this very evil sorority, and there are murders going on.” That’s what I said yes to. I didn’t read a word until two weeks before we started shooting in March.

Were you worried about what you’d gotten yourself into given how little you knew when you signed on?
No. Ryan Murphy clearly has this handled and clearly he knows what he is doing in the medium of television. Is there a little suspension of control that is hard at points? Of course. He runs a tight ship. He is very tight-lipped. He doesn’t tell anyone involved in the show anything that is happening next. Anyone who says they know anything is a liar.

How has working under the “don’t bother asking because I won’t tell” policy?
It keeps it fresh. It is possible that every single member of this cast will no longer be in this cast by the end of it. We are all kept in the dark very specifically so we all just do our work instead of looking for an end game. It keeps you on your toes.

Executive producer Brad Falchuk told me that you were their first and only choice to play the dean because you are the “OG scream queen.” That must feel validating.
Well, no, because that is not how I live my life. I live a very quotidian life, a domestic life. I’m a mom, a wife who has been married a very long time, and a card-carrying adult woman with a job first. I don’t walk around wearing a scream-queen cape to wave it to people on the street. I try to live a sane, sober life. But I am flattered by their interest and I understand why my involvement would be a good thing to them. I get the joke.