Ryan Murphy is reflecting on how public attitudes toward plastic surgery have dramatically shifted since the early 2000s, when his hit FX series Nip/Tuck first aired.
Speaking at a New York Comic Con panel for his upcoming series The Beauty, the Emmy-winning producer, 59, said conversations around cosmetic procedures — and medical weight-loss treatments — have become far more open and even aspirational.
“With every passing month, there seems to be less and less judgment about Semaglutides and plastic surgery,” Murphy told the audience, referring to the medication commonly used to treat type 2 diabetes and for chronic weight management. “It is kind of a new status symbol, in a weird way.”
Murphy recalled that when Nip/Tuck premiered in 2003, the topic of plastic surgery was still considered deeply taboo. The drama followed the professional and personal lives of the co-founders of a controversial plastic surgery clinic, portraying graphic surgical procedures alongside the doctors’ turbulent private lives.
“I remember, back in the day, one of my first big shows was a show called Nip/Tuck that was about plastic surgery, and I was amazed at how taboo it was to talk about it,” he said. “People changed their bodies, and they got in public and acted like nothing had changed. That was how you did it back then.”
Murphy noted that attitudes have since evolved. “Now I think people sort of flaunt it more and are talking about it. It’s an evolution in some strange way,” he added.
Starring Dylan Walsh, Julian McMahon and Joely Richardson, Nip/Tuck ran for six seasons until 2010. The series earned critical acclaim, winning an Emmy Award for Outstanding Prosthetic Makeup and a Golden Globe for Best Drama Series.
Following Nip/Tuck, Murphy went on to create a string of successful shows, including Glee, American Horror Story, American Crime Story and 9-1-1.
His latest project, The Beauty, is co-created with Matt Hodgson and is based on the comic book series by Jeremy Haun and Jason A. Hurley. The series centers on a sexually transmitted virus that “makes those affected more beautiful — but with deadly consequences.”
The cast includes Anthony Ramos, Ashton Kutcher, Evan Peters, Jeremy Pope and Rebecca Hall.
Teasing the tone of the new show, Murphy described it as a genre-blending experience. “It has amazing action sequences. It has a lot of body horror. It has a great love story. It has a great buddy-comedy thing going on, and it has a great villain,” he said. “It has a combination of really heightened genres, which is inherent in the source material, but it was a lot of fun to work on that tone.”
