Grotesquerie’s Micaela Diamond on Playing a Deviant Nun, That ‘Full-Circle’ Musical Moment and the Best Advice She Got From Sarah Paulson
Micaela Diamond doesn’t know if her mom is going to be able to watch tonight’s season finale of Grotesquerie (FX, 10/9c).
It’s not that she isn’t proud of her daughter. Just the opposite, actually. But if you think you struggle to watch every stomach-churning moment from Ryan Murphy’s latest FX horror story, try watching it all happen to your own child.
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“My mom texted me after last week’s episode and said, ‘So you just got punched, and that hurt really badly inside my body. I need a break. Your acting is excellent but just tumultuous,’ which really made me giggle,” Diamond tells TVLine, adding that another friend texted to say how difficult it was seeing her in a hospital bed. “There are certain moments that feel so jarring to my group, my circle.”
One such moment came at the end of Episode 7, when Diamond’s character — the delightfully unhinged Sister Megan Duval — got her head blown off by Niecy Nash’s Detective Lois Tryon, following a knock-down, drag-out fight in the kitchen. It was a horrifically violent image, albeit one that no longer fazes Diamond.
“It’s not as scary to me as it is to all of you,” she says. In fact, she called the moment “such an honor,” largely because the mold used for her exploding head was the mold Chlo? Sevigny made for Murphy’s Netflix series Monsters: The Erik and Lyle Menendez Story. (The things that head has seen!)
One of Diamond’s earliest memories of working with Nash came from their first day of filming. Diamond recalls being “so nervous,” only to be disarmed by a string of questions: “Who are you? Where did you come from?” As Diamond recalls with a laugh, “She was just kind of obsessed with my face.”
In Nash’s defense, it was a fair question. At barely 25 years old, Diamond has already conquered Broadway, starring in The Cher Show (2018) and Parade (2023), the latter of which earned her a Tony Award nomination. And although Grotesquerie marks Diamond’s first series-regular TV gig, she has multiple recurring roles under her belt, including a no-nonsense detective on CBS’ Elsbeth. (Yes, she’ll be back in Season 2.)
Diamond relishes any opportunity to bring her stage talents to the screen, which is another reason she fits in perfectly on a Murphy set. Truly, can you think of any other show that would have a nun and a detective pause their murder investigation to belt “I Don’t Know How to Love Him” from Jesus Christ Superstar during a road trip through the desert?
“Ryan wrote that after I was cast,” Diamond reveals. “He loves musical theater too, obviously, and I think there was a feeling of, ‘Well, if we have the voice, let’s use it.’ We had so much fun in that hot, hot car all day singing that song. We genuinely bonded in that moment.”
It was also a full-circle moment for Diamond, whose first TV credit came via 2018’s Jesus Christ Superstar Live in Concert on NBC, where she understudied for Sara Bareilles as Mary Magdelene. “Sara was doing Waitress at the time, so I was left to canoodle with John Legend at 19 years old, singing ‘I Don’t Know How to Love Him,'” she says. “It was such a joy to finally be able to sing it myself on television.”
Through it all, Diamond never forgets the advice she received from fellow Broadway actress and frequent Murphy collaborator Sarah Paulson, whom she texted the day before she left New York to film the season. “I asked for her advice, and she was like, ‘Play the stakes. Play the heightened world that you’re in. Don’t be scared of that,'” Diamond recalls.
And if there’s one thing Diamond is, it’s fearless.
Grotesquerie wraps its first season tonight on FX. Have you been enjoying Murphy’s latest psychological rollercoaster? And what do you think of Diamond’s performance as Megan? Drop a comment with your thoughts below.
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