Lily Rabe Recalls the Time An ‘American Horror Story’ Prosthetic Got Her Stopped at Airport Security

Some actors are so committed to their roles that they stay in character when they stop filming. But when Lily Rabe forgot to take off a part of her American Horror Story costume when she left the set, it almost made her miss her flight to New York.

The actress, 42, revealed on Jesse Tyler Ferguson’s podcast that she set off the alarm at airport security because she’d forgotten she still had a fake bullet hole in her head. She told the Dinner’s On Me host that she had been dealing with an incredibly hectic production schedule while filming American Horror Story: Murder House, the first season of the Ryan Murphy anthology series. While the show was shooting, Rabe was also performing in a production of The Merchant of Venice alongside Al Pacino in New York City. She told the Modern Family star that she would “get on a plane, fly to L.A., sleep for a couple hours, go to set, shoot all of my stuff on Monday, get on the red eye, come back.” It’s understandable that such a schedule could make one a bit absent-minded.

Although Rabe would go on to appear in nine seasons of American Horror Story, in a variety of roles, during Murder House she played murdered socialite Nora Montgomery. “There was one time when I set off the alarm at the airport because I hadn’t taken the bullet hole out of the back of my head,” Rabe shared about the experience. “I was running. My hair was all pinned up. The costumes were so beautiful. And then I was like, oh, oh, oh, there’s a bullet hole in the back of my head,” she added.

Ferguson, 48, was also in the same production of Merchant of Venice, and so was Rabe’s eventual husband Hamish Linklater. Rabe mentioned that her mother, the late actress Jill Clayburgh, also became very ill that year and ultimately passed away. The Presumed Innocent star called it “the wildest and the hardest time of [her] life.”