The Untold Truth Of Cody Fern
Born in 1988 in a tiny town in the Australian outback, Cody Fern had already graduated college and settled into a career when he decided to chuck it all and become an actor at age 22. It's a testament to his drive and talent that he quickly established himself Down Under before heading to Los Angeles to break into American showbiz.
As Fern's IMDb credits demonstrate, he wasted little time making a name for himself in Hollywood, most notably appearing in several seasons of "American Horror Story." In those roles, in fact, Fern managed to distinguish himself among what is arguably one of television's all-time great ensemble casts, no mean feat among a crew that includes the likes of Sarah Paulson, Jessica Lange, and Kathy Bates.
Despite all Fern's extraordinary achievements, it's important to note they took place within a relatively brief period of time, and his best work is sure to come. With that in mind, fans of the on-the-rise young actor may not actually know that much about him, so read on to discover the untold truth of Cody Fern.
Cody Fern didn't actually come out of nowhere
For fans of "American Horror Story," Cody Fern was a fresh face added to the horror anthology series when he emerged in the series' eighth season in the pivotal role of Michael Langdon, aka the literal antichrist. At that point, however, Fern was hardly a newcomer to acting, having already established himself as a rising star in his native Australia.
As Fern's IMDb credits make clear, he appeared in a few other U.S. projects prior to his showy "American Horror Story" debut. His first non-Australian role was playing the son of Jennifer Garner's character in the indie film "The Tribes of Palos Verdes." Based on the strength of that performance, he was tapped to portray David Madsen in the second season of "American Crime Story," focusing on the murder of fashion designer Gianni Versace, in 2018. That same year he landed the role of devious Duncan Shepherd in the sixth and final season of "House of Cards."
Fern's fast rise in Hollywood, he told W Magazine, was not random, but the end result of a strategy he set for himself upon arriving in Los Angeles. "I have to do this 100 percent, which means working 16 hours a day," he explained. "It means reading plays. It means going to plays. It means watching films. It means figuring out why they're good. It doesn't mean having a smoothie and going to the gym and bi***ing about your agent."
He was about to take an 18-month hiatus before landing his breakthrough role
Landing that role in "American Crime Story" proved to be the breakthrough that put him on Hollywood's radar, yet for Cody Fern the offer came at a particularly complicated time. As Fern recounted in an interview with the Los Angeles Times, he'd been frustrated since moving to L.A. and going to audition after audition, usually up against the same group of actors, and never getting cast.
It was at that point, he told the Los Angeles Times, that he "decided to start writing, and directing, and my feature film was just about to go." Deciding he was going to "pull back" from acting and devote the next 18 months to getting his film made, Fern was living in London when he got the call to audition for "American Crime Story: Versace" — and decided he'd fly back to L.A. for a "last hurrah" audition before returning to his film.
Of course, Fern won the role, throwing a wrench into his filmmaking plans but propelling him to next-level stardom. Interestingly enough, Fern joked to the Los Angeles Times that he'd drawn a line in the sand, insisting he would only take film roles — or anything produced by "American Crime Story"/"American Horror Story" producer Ryan Murphy. "I had jokingly said the only thing that was going to put this production on hold would be if Ryan Murphy, HBO, or David Fincher called," Fern revealed in an interview with Entertainment Weekly. "So it's funny now."
The Cate Blanchett performance that inspired him to become an actor
Growing up in a small town in the Australian outback, becoming an actor wasn't exactly seen as a viable career choice for young Cody Fern. However, watching movies as a child, he told W Magazine, left him with an early desire to act.
Over time, those dreams fell by the wayside as he grew older and reality intervened. However, his passion for acting became renewed, he told GQ, when he watched Cate Blanchett portray Queen Elizabeth I in "Elizabeth: The Golden Age." While watching her performance, he explained, "something came alive again."
It was Blanchett's first performances as the British monarch in the 1998 feature "Elizabeth" that made him want to become an actor in the first place, Fern told Anthem, but seeing her reprise the role, a decade later, felt like "this strange sign that I was still unraveling." Blanchett's performance, he recalled, reignited "everything that I had thought, dreamed, wished, and hoped for when I was younger. It was a real moment of awakening. Not to get cosmic or whatnot about it, but checking in with yourself and how you feel about your life and where it's going, I thought, 'I really hate myself at the moment.' Acting was what I always wanted to do. If you're gonna do it, you've got one chance to go off and do it right now. And I did."
He quit a high-paying job in finance to follow his acting dreams
Cody Fern was forced to put his acting dreams aside when he landed a scholarship to study finance in Perth. After graduation, Fern's degree led to a job at accounting firm Ernst & Young, he told The Last Magazine. While he was on track toward a financially secure future, he also faced the realization he was not living the life he wanted to live.
As Fern told GQ, he was 22 when he recognized he had come to a crossroads. "I just realized I hated my life; I hated the people that I was hanging around with; I hated the music I was listening to; I hated the clothes I was wearing," he recalled. " I was like, 'This is a slow and painful death, so I either have to go down with the ship or I have to swim fast and hard in hypothermic waters and figure it out.' And I quit. I quit that day. I walked out and I joined an experimental theatre group."
Success was far from instantaneous when he took to the stage in front of a "handful" of people. "I'm sure I was terrible in it, but I got great reviews and I was like, 'Oh my god, I'm going to be an actor,'" he told The Last Magazine, "but I'd secretly wanted to be an actor since I was five or six."
He suffered an injury during the stage production that put him on the map
As a profile in W Magazine put it, Cody Fern had been "rejected from every reputable drama school in Perth" when he landed the lead in an Australian touring production of the acclaimed play "War Horse." In the play, actors control a large horse puppet, which proved to be more memorable than Fern's role as the titular horse's owner. "You could come off the stage and they would be like, 'Were you in the horse?' And I'd want to scream," he joked. "That was a real big lesson in humility."
As a piece about "War Horse" in the Sydney Morning Herald pointed out, Fern's role featured a certain degree of physicality, which once caused Fern to twist his ankle during a rehearsal. Fern wasn't out of commission for long; as a spokesperson noted at the time, his injury was "not dreadful but he does need to rest it."
As it turned out, Fern's first major stage role proved to be more valuable than any acting lesson. "By the hundred-and-twentieth performance, sometimes you have these moments on stage where you're like, 'Where the f*** am I? What line am I up to? Who am I? What day is it?'" he told The Last Magazine. "I loved that. I loved every moment of that because you have to find things within yourself to push through to re-engage with the work and to reconnect with the audience."
How the late Heath Ledger utterly changed Cody Fern's life
Cody Fern's performance in "War Horse" may have won him acclaim in Australia, yet Hollywood wasn't exactly beating down his door. It was at that point that another Australian actor — albeit one who'd been dead since 2008 — would play an instrumental role in Cody Fern's rise to stardom.
In 2014, Fern received the Heath Ledger Scholarship, offering $10,000 for talented young Australian actors, money which Fern used to propel him to the next stage of his career. Winning the scholarship, Fern told Anthem, "was one of the main reasons that I was able to come out to Los Angeles. It's very difficult as a foreigner to come into this country ... particularly as an actor. You have to tick off so many boxes. You have to have a certain amount of acclaim. You have to be at the top of your field, etcetera, etcetera. Winning that scholarship propelled me into a field, which made it possible for me to work here. Without that, the opportunity might not have come up again for a couple of years."
Seeing other Australians succeed in Hollywood, he explained, serves as "a beacon of hope" for aspiring young actors looking to follow in their footsteps. "We're always looking up to people like [Ledger], Cate Blanchett and Geoffrey Rush, and what they're doing," he added. "It makes you wonder, "How am I able to get out there and do amazing work and continue [Heath's] name and carry on his legacy?"
Cody Fern is a trailblazing fashionista
Cody Fern's success in "American Crime Story: Versace," "House of Cards," and several seasons of "American Horror Story" have led him to strut his stuff on numerous red carpets. And while Fern has garnered some serious attention for his acting, that has sometimes paled in comparison to the kind of fervor he's drummed up with his bold and unique fashion choices.
Fern's first big moment came when he attended the 2019 Golden Globe Awards, with Vogue complimenting him for having "refreshingly strayed from the norm." Just a couple of months later, Vogue applauded the nipple-baring transparent turtleneck top that he sported for the "American Horror Story: Apocalypse" premiere, which preceded his wholly unique look for that year's Met Gala, which featured a "black tulle overlay with a blue polo neck on a camel suit that featured turquoise cowboy boots."
Meanwhile, Fern is also a firm believer that fashion shouldn't be defined by gender. Speaking in a 2020 video for Louis Vuitton, as reported by Vogue, Fern pointed out that "the traditional lines of gender are being challenged in a way that is not about stereotypes. Clothes can just be clothes. It's not shocking for women to wear things that are traditionally masculine, or men to wear things that are traditionally feminine."
Cody Fern learned he was starring in American Horror Stories via Instagram
Cody Fern had appeared in three seasons of "American Horror Story" when the series' mastermind, Ryan Murphy, announced plans for a spinoff, "American Horror Stories." As The Hollywood Reporter explained, "American Horror Stories," like its forbear, would be an anthology series; the big difference, however, was that while the original tells a self-contained story in each season, the spinoff will do the same in a single episode.
Among the episodes was one titled "Feral," in which a tribe of inbred cannibals known as "ferals" terrorize some campers. Fern appeared in the episode, as a park ranger named Stan Vogel. Interestingly enough, Fern discovered he'd be appearing in the new series via social media. "I first heard about it on Instagram because Ryan announced that I was going to be in it," Fern revealed in an interview with Entertainment Weekly. So, I was like, 'Wait! What? What am I doing? Okay. Cool.' So, that was where I first heard about it."
Fern eventually did receive more of a formal invite later on, once the series had already gone into production. It was then, Fern recalled, that Murphy "got in touch ... and asked me if I was available to come and do this episode, and I was only happy to oblige." According to Fern, Murphy always gets his attention. "When Ryan rings, it's very hard to say no," Fern admitted. "And I love working in Ryan's world."
Viewers criticized Cody Fern's Australian accent
Many television viewers who only know Cody Fern from portraying American characters in U.S. TV series made the reasonable assumption that he was American. That came into play when Fern appeared in an episode of the "American Horror Story" spinoff "American Horror Stories," an anthology series telling a different tale of terror each week. In the episode, Fern played an Australian park ranger, using his natural Aussie accent for the first time ever in a U.S. production.
Viewers, however, refused to believe they were hearing Fern's natural speaking voice, with some even taking to social media to criticize his Aussie accent as being kind of fake; one Twitter user, in fact, wrote about "laughing at cody fern's 'fake' australian accent in ahs then i find out he's ACTUALLY AUSTRALIAN?"
Fern was made aware of the controversy over his not-actually-fake accent, and shared his thoughts in an interview with TVLine. "I'm not fairly comfortable acting in my accent," he admitted, adding, "It was very strange for me to use my own accent." And while Fern doesn't actually use social media himself, he'd "seen feedback from people within the company who are sending me little tweets like 'He should stick with his plain white-boy American accent,' and 'Who does this Harvard grad think he is trying to do an Australian accent? He's not Meryl Streep!' I'm like, 'You all need to calm down.'"
His role on House of Cards landed Cody Fern in the midst of a massive Hollywood scandal
When Cody Fern was cast in "House of Cards," it would have seemingly fulfilled any rising young actor's dream to appear on one of television's most acclaimed, most talked-about series. However, that was before the show's star, Kevin Spacey, became caught up in a massive #MeToo scandal that not only derailed his own career, but nearly took down "House of Cards" with it.
Fern, having just landed one of his earliest U.S. roles, was caught in the middle. "I'm not used to the twists and turns," Fern told ET after Spacey was fired. "It was out of the frying pan and into the fire." As Fern recalled, he was "incredibly excited" to have had "just signed onto a TV show which I had been watching longer than I had been acting, and one that I so loved." He and the rest of the cast had already assembled in Baltimore to begin production when they learned that Spacey had been axed — and the show would continue for one final Spacey-less season.
However, as Fern told W Magazine, he backed Spacey's firing 100 percent. "What's happening in Hollywood at the moment and what's happened to Kevin is a very necessary and exciting time because we're sweeping out the trash," he declared. "Sweep it all out."
He has huge respect for his American Horror Story co-stars
Of all the roles that Cody Fern has played within the "American Horror Story" universe, it's arguable that none left a bigger mark than his portrayal of antichrist Michael Langdon. In a 2018 interview with Out, Fern admitted that being able to play the character has "been the greatest privilege of my acting career so far." According to Fern, being a part of "AHS" is "beyond comparison ... this will forever have been the most formative experience of my acting career and of my development as an artist."
Joining what is arguably one of television's top ensemble casts ever, he admitted, was truly special. "To work with these extraordinary women at such an early point in my career, to work with Sarah Paulson and Frances Conroy ... To work with Kathy Bates and Joan Collins, the list goes on and on... The entire experience was so exceptional and magic. I know I'll never have that back, that moment, it's gone. I would come back in a heartbeat."
More than two years later, Fern told Entertainment Weekly that Michael Langdon made such an impression on him that he was hopeful of reprising the character in a future season of "American Horror Story." "I am sure I've been on the record saying that before, but if [Ryan Murphy] ever calls and asks me if I want to play Michael Langdon again, the answer is, 'Absolutely, yes.' I love playing Michael."
He's played very different roles in the American Horror Story universe
Michael Langdon is one of four different characters that Cody Fern has played in the world of "American Horror Story" — as of the 2021 season, at least. Fern followed up "Apocalypse" by playing aerobics instructor Xavier Plympton in the next season, an homage to teen slasher movies subtitled "1984," and then played Australian park ranger Stan Vogel in "American Horror Stories."
In the 2021 "Double Feature" season — which told two separate stories, one about vampires and another about aliens, Fern appeared in the latter as a mysterious character called Valiant Thor. As CBR pointed out, the character is seemingly some kind of robot, popping open his head to reveal "alien technology" within.
Despite the disparate breadth of these characters, Langdon is still the pinnacle of Fern's "AHS" roles. That, he explained in an interview with ET, could possibly be attributed to the fact that he modeled his character on the way "The Crown" depicts Queen Elizabeth II. "Imagine being born into something that supposedly serves a greater purpose," he mused. "That's how I approach Michael's anger, first and foremost, that he was born into something that he doesn't understand, that he doesn't choose. That he needs to go about molding himself into, that other people are continually pressing onto him, that there are all of these expectations and these weights and he has these impulses that he doesn't understand, that he is just enacting."