Sorority life gets the Ryan Murphy treatment in the new 'Scream Queens'

It's from the executive producers of “American Horror Story” and “Glee,” but expect “Scream Queens” to be very much its own creation.

Promoted for months, the serio-comic Fox series from Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk and Mount Prospect native Ian Brennan finally arrives with a two-hour premiere Tuesday, Sept. 22. The show folds in various tropes of the horror genre — the casting of “Halloween” icon Jamie Lee Curtis as a college dean being a major one — as a sorority is shaken by a murder, precisely 20 years after another killing occurred on campus.

The situation brings out the respective best and worst in the figurative sisters. School newcomer Grace (Skylar Samuels) quickly encounters the domineering elitist leader of Kappa Kappa Tau (Emma Roberts) and its members, many of whom are named Chanel. It's anyone's guess how long any character will last, since at least one of them (and thus, one cast member) will be eliminated every week.

Murphy says that for him and his producing colleagues, “big horror fans” all, “Scream Queens” started with Curtis. She's been associated with the title identity since playing stalked baby sitter Laurie Strode in 1978, and Murphy “had always loved her for years and years and years,” he said.

“As it is with our company,” Murphy said, “usually there's no script to read. We simply told her what the story was and we just led with our love and passion for her, and said in the meeting, ‘If you don't do it, we're not going to do the show.'”

Luckily for all concerned, Curtis signed up a day later, and she believes “what's so fantastic about the show is, it is a social satire. And actually, we say what people think. We all live in this protected bubble where we're all trying to behave and look a certain way, and the thing that's so brilliant about this show is it strips away the imagined behaviors of human beings. It actually shows, I think, what people really are — which is inherently dark, inherently unhappy, angry, frustrated human beings who are trying so desperately to hold it together.”

Lea Michele, Keke Palmer, “Saturday Night Live” veteran Nasim Pedrad, Oliver Hudson and music's Ariana Grande and Nick Jonas also are in the ensemble cast of “Scream Queens.” For Michele, famous as the perpetually lively Rachel Berry on “Glee,” “Scream Queens” is a huge departure: Her new alter ego Hester is decidedly unglamorous and sports a neck brace, the result of scoliosis.

“For me, this is a completely different world in horror,” Michele maintains, “and in a lot of ways, it's a lot more difficult. Coming from ‘Glee' and performing and dancing and singing on that show, which was challenging in many ways, this is also very challenging — working with the balance of the horror and the comedy. And Brad and Ryan and Ian, their writing is so specific and so smart, it takes a really good actor to be able to take on that writing. And I think they've enlisted the greatest cast of actors who can really take on their words.”