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Angela Bassett and “American Horror Story” have history. The powerhouse actress played four distinct characters across five seasons of Ryan Murphy’s long-running horror anthology series. In a Reddit AMA, Bassett revealed that among her four “AHS” characters, she has a preference.
“Marie Laveau was my favorite,” she said. “I knew who Marie Laveau was and [Ryan Murphy] was shocked.” Debuting in Season 3’s “AHS: Coven” before returning in Season 8’s “Apocalypse,” Marie Laveau comes into conflict with Fiona Goode (Jessica Lange) and her coven of Salem-descendant witches after they get involved with an old enemy.
While it might be easy to chalk up Bassett’s immortal Voodoo queen as pure fiction, Marie Laveau is based on a real person who once held prominence in New Orleans. However, Ryan Murphy’s take on the character has more roots in myth than history.
Marie Laveau was a prominent New Orleans figure
While Angela Bassett’s take on Marie Laveau is an intriguing interpretation, the real historical figure was much different. Laveau was born a free person of color in the early 1800s. While Laveau did practice Voodoo as “American Horror Story” leads us to believe, she was also a Catholic, which isn’t as strange as it seems. Voodoo stems from Africa but also embraces elements of Native American spirituality and European Catholicism. The incorporation of Catholicism into Voodoo developed as a means of enslaved people holding on to their religion despite laws prohibiting them from practicing.
However, Laveau’s rise to prominence stemmed from her involvement in the New Orleans community. There, she also practiced healing, clairvoyance, and herbalism while providing consultations to the public. It was these deeds that earned her the nickname “The Voodoo Queen of New Orleans.”
How AHS changed Marie Laveau
Perhaps what’s most interesting about Marie Laveau is how fact and fiction blur. Even before “AHS,” rumors and fantasies about her powers circulated. For example, many attributed the acquisition of her home to her Voodoo abilities when, really, it was already a family property that was purchased by Christophe Duminy de Glapion, Laveau’s common-law husband.
“AHS: Coven” gets rather … creative with Laveau, keeping very little of her true story aside from her prevalence in New Orleans and her Voodoo practice, which it also greatly exaggerates. Instead, Ryan Murphy’s version of Laveau leans fully into myth by reimagining her as an immortal Voodoo priestess unopposed to murder and hellbent on getting revenge against Delphine LaLaurie (Kathy Bates), another real-life figure “AHS: Coven” puts a spin on.
In “Coven,” Delphine LaLaurie tortured and killed Laveau’s lover, Bastien, setting up a century-long feud between the two women. While LaLaurie’s infamous torture of enslaved people was as brutal as “AHS: Coven” makes it out to be, there’s no evidence that LaLaurie and Laveau knew each other, even if they both existed in New Orleans around the same time. Really, it’s just another example of how this Ryan Murphy show turned Marie Laveau into an entirely different person than she was in real life.
