RYAN MURPHY: BUILT A NEW HEARTLAND

RYAN MURPHY IS TAKING A RARE BREATHER. WE’RE in his tidy trailer on a set in Hollywood, at the end of the last day of shooting for The Boys in the Band, a play that Murphy revived on Broadway in 2018 and is now producing as a feature film for Netflix. Outside, the studio lot is surprisingly sedate. A golf cart whirs past. A colleague brings him a single shot of espresso. Murphy, 53, schedules his days into short intervals—15 minutes, or 30—and works seven days a week. “I say I can’t keep going at this pace,” he says. “But then I have a full physical, and it’s like, I’m fine.”

For someone with at least 15 projects in the works, he’s unusually hands-on with all of them: writing, directing and producing. He still has two shows on Fox— and an upcoming spin-off—and three on the cable network FX: and a new installment of which will follow the Monica Lewinsky scandal. That would be a busy slate for anyone—but this