American Horror Story is never short on jump scares — it’s kind of in the name. The show’s most recent iteration — the “Rosemary’s Baby”-esque Delicate — returns to FX tonight (April 3.) With the anthology series in the headlines again, viewers are reminiscing about the show’s arguably most spellbinding moment — a cameo from the White Witch herself, Stevie Nicks.
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Stevie Nicks as the White Witch
The Fleetwood Mac frontwoman has long battled rumors that she’s a practitioner of the dark arts. Despite her insistence that “I just wear black because it makes me look thinner, you idiots,” Nicks has never quite beaten the sorcery allegations. Her role on American Horror Story: Coven, the New Orleans-set third season, sees Nicks finally letting her witch flag fly.
The season’s setting and plot seemed tailor-made for Nicks, and her presence loomed large long before she showed up in episode 10. Literal swamp witch Misty Day (Lily Rabe) was enamored with the “Edge of Seventeen” singer and convinced of her supernatural abilities. The poor girl actually faints when Nicks arrives to confirm those theories.
“You owe me five bucks,” Fiona Goode (Jessica Lange) says, embracing her old friend. “I told you she was gonna do that.”
It’s so absurd, so jarring, so self-aware — everything that makes AHS so compulsively watchable. “I damn near fell off the chair from jumping up and down whilst squealing like a piglet from the excitement!!!” one viewer wrote on X/Twitter.
Remember This Performance?
Although certainly a musical force on her own, Stevie Nicks’ career has been full of memorable duets. One particular collaboration was a dream come true for the folk-rock legend: “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” with Tom Petty.
“It was her mission in life that I should write her a song,” the late rocker said in Conversations with Tom Petty.
Famed record executive Jimmy Iovine arranged for Nicks to join Petty on the track. It eventually became the first single from her 1981 solo debut Bella Donna.
[RELATED: Stevie Nicks Reveals She Almost Left Fleetwood Mac for Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers]
Until Petty’s death in October 2017, Nicks was known to jump onstage with the “Free Fallin’” rocker any chance she got. A number of well-known artists have also joined her for “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around.” Memorably, Nicks duetted with her “long-lost love child,” Harry Styles, at her 2019 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction. (She had previously been inducted with Fleetwood Mac in 1998.)
Five years later, that performance is still reverberating across the internet. “Oh, Stevie’s powerful voice still brings tears,” one X/Twitter user wrote. “What a beautiful duet! Legends colliding.”
Featured image via YouTube
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