Ryan Murphy built an empire by playing the outsider

Ryan Murphy has a new profile in Vanity Fair, which means a new public performance of his old role: the scrappy outsider. The set dress hasn't changed, but the view from the stage sure has. This year he rolled out the Kennedy Love Story, a body horror series, an adaptation of The Shards, and new seasons of Monster and American Horror Story. Even All's Fair, the legal drama critics savaged, got a second season. That's not an outsider. That's the guy running the country club.

Murphy told VF he feels like an 'institutional person' now, which he calls 'very odd.' But he's been pulling the levers of power long enough to know the system never really feels safe. He came of age during the AIDS crisis, a time when the goal was survival, not self-critique. This trains a person to build and never look back.

He doesn't read the bad reviews anymore. On All's Fair, he says the critics calling it camp missed the point. He was making a soapy procedural for people tired of prestige TV's slow burn. He quotes a mentor who warned him not to drink the 'chalice of delicious poison' of critical disdain.

Murphy's brand is the second act. He calls it 'Island of Lost Toys' energy.

He specifically champions people who were told their time was up. He talks about the generational leap from the Glee culture war to the total embrace of Heated Rivalry. He says he's a cheerleader now. It's the best kind of victory lap: one where you pretend you aren't taking it.

In the interview, he makes a case for his whole pile of upcoming projects. A vampire show for his grandmother (Brides of Blood), a period monster story (Monster: Lizzie Borden), and the Bret Easton Ellis novel he couldn't get the rights to years ago (The Shards). He gets 40 nos a day, he says, but the scattered yeses built a monopoly on a very specific feeling: the macabre, the soapy, the joyfully weird. He's an institution who still talks like he's fighting for table scraps. That's the trick.

• All's Fair
• American Horror Story
• Disney
• Ryan Murphy
• The Shards
• Vanity Fair