“American Horror Story” Star Alex Breckenridge Goes Bare to Scare

The sexy maid outfit is a Halloween staple, and it’s practically Halloween every day for “American Horror Story’s” Alex Breckenridge.

The 29-year-old actress plays the mysterious younger incarnation/dark side of the Harmon family’s milky-eyed housekeeper Moira (Frances Conroy), who appears only to patriarch Ben (Dylan McDermott) when he’s alone and aggressively attempts to seduce him, ready to roll down those thigh-high stockings at a moment’s notice.

“Even when I got the audition, which was only a page, it was just a character that I've never played before,” Breckenridge tells PopcornBiz. “It's this overt sexuality that I've never had the opportunity to explore as an actor, so that was what I was really excited about. And then I read the script and I about sh-t myself.”

Breckenridge, who’s a voice regular of “Family Guy” and recently appeared on “True Blood” as the seemingly dowdy Wiccan Katarina Pelham, says she and Conroy actually haven’t made a plan to provide much behavioral continuity between the two faces of Moira.

“We are playing two completely different sides of the same character, so it was never really something that we felt we needed to discuss,” she explains. “My character's intentions are completely different from her intentions, so, really, when we do a scene together, sometimes we have to basically go in and play the same scene, so she'll go in and read the scene and then I'll go in and read the scene. And it's mainly just a physicality – where we're standing and the position we're in. and that's it.”

She’s also made peace with the more revealing aspects of her role, which on cable channel FX can go pretty far. “I've done nudity and it doesn't bother me, doing it or seeing it,” she says, admitting that the discipline she planned to apply to her workout regimen has waxed and waned. “I started doing Pilates for a little bit. And got sick of it. And started again. I'm not a big workout fan. But I try. I potentially could be showing my ass several times. You can show back, you can show side – you just can't show the bits. You just can't show nipple and hoo-ha, basically.”

Breckenridge admits she’ll be neck deep in the show’s more twisted storylines. “I get pretty messed up,” she chuckles, calling crator Ryan Murphy’s latest opus “definitely NOT 'Glee'. It's more unpredictable and sexual, and as raunchy as 'Nip/Tuck' – but so much darker.”

"American Horror Story" airs Wednesday nights at 10 PM ET on FX

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