Growing up in Indiana, Ryan Murphy was weaned on Hollywood by his grandmother. She took him to the movies four or five times a week, passed along her film books, and regaled him with Old Hollywood lore. Amid the glittery stories about Vivien Leigh, Joan Crawford, and other stars, the struggles of three particular actors resonated with Murphy—those of Rock Hudson, the closeted Hollywood heartthrob who died from AIDS in 1985; Hattie McDaniel, the Gone With the Wind star who was forced to sit at a segregated table at the 1940 Academy Awards, where she became the first African American to win an Oscar; and Anna May Wong, considered the first Chinese American Hollywood film star, who eventually became so fed up with being cast in stereotypical supporting roles that she decamped for Europe.

Murphy—who felt like an outsider himself—sympathized with their journeys.

“With those three people individually, I always just wished that they had been seen, were able to be who they were, and more importantly, who they wanted to be,” Murphy told Vanity Fair. That yearning became the genesis for Hollywood, Murphy’s period-drama miniseries debuting on Netflix May 1.

The series, cocreated by Ian Brennan, gives audiences a better understanding of these real-life figures’ struggles—with Hudson played by Jake Picking, McDaniel played by Queen Latifah, and Wong played by Michelle Krusiec. The trio ultimately figures into a sprawling ensemble of fictional and fact-based characters who battle stereotypes, biases, and abusive industry power players. Their struggles feel unfortunately familiar, despite the fact that Hollywood is set in the 1940s. In a Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood–like twist, the series eventually goes rogue, straying from strict historical retelling into a blend of fact and fiction Murphy has taken to calling “faction.”

The “faction” format allowed Murphy and his writers to envision a scene, for example, in which a post–Gone with the Wind Vivien Leigh has a dinner party conversation with an up-and-coming Rock Hudson. In another scene, Patti LuPone’s grande dame—the glamorous, fictional wife of a studio head—crosses paths with Eleanor Roosevelt. Jim Parsons digs into his deliciously profane role as Henry Willson, Hudson’s real-life talent agent, who was infamous for making and mistreating stars. David Corenswet, Laura Harrier, and Samara Weaving play fictional aspiring actors, while Jeremy Pope portrays a fledgling screenwriter and Darren Criss channels an on-the-rise director. Dylan McDermott, meanwhile, plays a mustachioed pimp who connects celebrities—closeted or married—with sexual prospects. The character was inspired by Scotty Bowers, the real-life Los Angeles hustler who operated out of gas station on Hollywood Boulevard and Van Ness.

“We were less interested in the lurid sexual nature of it [than] the idea that there was a time when people had to go to this gas station to be themselves, to be able to express their sexuality, to be able to express their fantasy,” said Murphy. “What we’re dealing with here is a complete look at an idea of buried history in Hollywood. The idea of people not being able to be who they were, and to show their best side of who they were.” With Hollywood, Murphy aimed to rewrite the past: “What if we went back and sort of did a revisionist look, and created an alternative universe?”

The goal, he said, was to find some degree of onscreen justice for characters who never found it in real life. “You can’t underestimate the power of Hollywood,” Murphy said. “Hollywood teaches us everything, I think. Because if you can see it, you can become it. If you can’t see it, you can’t. It teaches us how to dress, how to act, how to walk. It teaches us how to be in a relationship. Historically, Hollywood teaches us how to be tolerant. Hollywood really can, in a very positive way, change the world.”

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