American Horror Story: 10 Worst Characters

Emma Roberts’ portrayal of Madison Montgomery is one of American Horror Story’s most popular characters. So good, in fact, that her extremely similar Chanel character carried Ryan Murphy’s other project Scream Queens for two seasons.

But despite that, Roberts doesn’t have the biggest range. She can do bratty really well, but there’s not much else she excels at. So when she was slated to return in Cult, fans were understandably excited. Ryan Murphy writes with an acid wit, and Roberts often provides the best delivery of that.

In her early interactions with Beverley Hope, we definitely see some of that. But even for Cult she’s too much of a Tomi Lahren parody, and as such it’s hard to think anything about her. Then her scene with Bob Thompson is just cringe-inducing in the worst way. Belinda flirts with Thompson but it’s painfully awkward, far more than it should be and ends up a bit ridiculous.

How much sympathy do we have with Belinda? How much do we loathe the levels she stoops to? How much are we strangely impressed by the lengths she’ll go to? Unfortunately, the scene asks us none of this when it really should.