Ryan Murphy (writer) in 2017. The first season focused on the rivalry between Bette Davis and Joan Crawford on the set of their 1962 film "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?". With newcomer Steven Canals, a research assistant for Dustin Lance Black before his Master of Fine Arts at UCLA, Murphy and Falchuk launched a new series set in the Ball community in mid-1980s New York City. Murphy had wanted to adapt "Paris is Burning" as a series and Canals had been writing a script while at graduate school centered on a young African American teen made homeless for being gay, who moved
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962 film) more dollars to our film if I had won. Joan was thrilled I hadn't." As both Davis and Crawford had accepted lower salaries in exchange for a share of the film's profits, Davis considered it foolish of Crawford to have worked against their common interests, especially at a time when roles for actresses their age were scarce. During the filming of "Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte" (1964), Crawford acknowledged to visiting reporter/author Lawrence J. Quirk the difficulty she was having with Davis because of the Oscar incident, but added, "She acted like "Baby Jane" was a one-woman show after they nominated her.