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Some actors are so committed to their roles that they stay in character when they stop filming. But when Lily Rabe forgot to take off a part of her American Horror Story costume when she left the set almost caused her to miss her flight to New York.
The actress, 42, revealed on Jesse Tyler Ferguson’s podcast that she alerted airport security because she had forgotten that she still had a fake bullet hole in her head. She told Dinner is on me presenter that she had managed an incredibly busy production schedule during filming American Horror Story: Murder Housethe first season of the Ryan Murphy anthology series. While the show was taping, Rabe also appeared in a production of The Merchant of Venice along with Al Pacino in New York City. She told Modern family star that she would “get on a plane, fly to LA, sleep a couple of hours, go to the set, shoot all my stuff on Monday, get a red eye, come back.” It’s understandable that such a schedule can make you a little mindless.
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Although Rabe would go on to appear for nine seasons of American Horror Storyin a variety of roles, during The murder house she played murdered socialite Nora Montgomery. “There was one time when I set off the alarm at the airport because I hadn’t taken the bullet hole out of the back of my head,” Rabe said of the experience. “I was running. My hair was all done. The costumes were so beautiful. And then I thought, whoa, whoa, whoa, there’s a bullet hole in the back of my head,” she added.
Ferguson, 48, was also in the same production of The Merchant of Veniceand so was Rabe’s eventual husband Hamish Linklater. Rabe mentioned that her mother, the late actress Jill Clayburgh, also became very ill that year and eventually passed away. The Presumed innocent star called it “the wildest and hardest time [her] life.”