Ryan Murphy

Ryan Murphy is an American television writer, director, and producer whose work has repeatedly combined pop spectacle with stories about outsiders, ambition, celebrity, and institutional power. Born November 9, 1965, in Indianapolis, Indiana, he was raised in a Catholic family and attended Indiana University Bloomington, where he studied journalism. Before entering entertainment, he worked as a journalist for The Miami Herald, the Los Angeles Times, and other publications.

Murphy began in television with the teen comedy Popular, which he co-created with Gina Matthews for The WB in 1999. Its satirical high-school politics anticipated his interest in stylized ensembles and sharply defined social hierarchies. His breakthrough came with Nip/Tuck, the FX drama he created about Miami plastic surgeons Sean McNamara and Christian Troy. The series ran from 2003 to 2010 and earned Murphy an Emmy for outstanding directing for a drama series in 2004.

In 2009, Murphy co-created Glee with Brad Falchuk and Ian Brennan. Set around the New Directions glee club at fictional McKinley High, it turned “Don’t Stop Believin’” and other catalog songs into recurring narrative events. Murphy directed its pilot and many later episodes; the show won the Golden Globe for best television series musical or comedy in 2010 and 2011. He then co-created American Horror Story with Falchuk, inaugurating an anthology franchise whose first season centered on the haunted Murder House. American Crime Story followed in 2016, beginning with The People v. O. J. Simpson and winning the Emmy for outstanding limited series.

His projects have also revisited recognizable episodes of American history. The 2018 season The Assassination of Gianni Versace dramatized the murder of the fashion designer and earned Darren Criss an Emmy for playing Andrew Cunanan. In 2021, Murphy produced Impeachment: American Crime Story, based on the Clinton impeachment crisis and centered on Monica Lewinsky, played by Beanie Feldstein. Lewinsky served as a producer on the series.

Murphy created Pose with Falchuk and Steven Canals. Premiering in 2018, it portrayed New York’s ballroom community in the late 1980s and early 1990s and featured the largest cast of transgender actors in series-regular roles on an American scripted television show at that time. Its star Billy Porter won a lead-acting drama Emmy in 2019, becoming the first openly gay Black man to do so.

Through his production company, Ryan Murphy Television, he has produced Netflix series including The Politician, Hollywood, and Dahmer, a dramatization of Jeffrey Dahmer's crimes.