American Horror Story's Zach Villa Is Ready For His Breakout Moment

Zach Villa sits in a conference room armed with nothing yet a cup of coffee (medium roast, splash of almond milk) as well as a glass of water. “This is medicinal, so I can awaken,” he nods toward the coffee, then turns to the water. “This is therapeutic, so I can stay hydrated.”


Both are essential in the midst of a whirlwind couple of months. This past June he auditioned for an anonymous role on an anonymous show. It went well: In July, he was being welcomed into the storied Ryan Murphy fold. Filming for American Horror Story: 1984 started dominating his schedule not long right after. Save his ‘80s rock styling, all specifics about his character, including a name, have been kept totally under wraps, nevertheless Villa’s long-haired, leather jacket-wearing character is mentioned to have a key role in the upcoming installment, so it’s fully logical that days off — like the one we’re meeting on — have been few and far between.


No immediate visual cues recommend that Villa has been working around the clock (literally — night shoots are fully unavoidable once filming a summer camp slasher), however there really are tells in case you notice them. His required for coffee is one, his favorite to sit with his back to the sunny window as a view of Hollywood sprawls in back of him is another. Mostly, though, he comes off as open and social.


His confidence may have to do with the fact that AHS is the exact break he’s habitually wanted. He openly wept while he noticed out that he’d been cast. “I mean, I had once went in for Pippin on Broadway 11 times and didn’t get the job,” he contextualizes. “So, to go in once for this, and then to find out what it is and the scope of what it is, I freaked out.”


Sometimes it’s also easy to be able to see a successful person and know that they live a charmed life; Villa isn't one of these people. His in general vibe is more lived-in and experimental. He dyes his hair shades of blue and green and, in a weird way, it almost looks organic. He’s vividly self-aware and at times self-deprecating, calling himself “an NPR regurgitating system” and stopping short of identifying as an empath because “that’s such a ‘in’ thing right now.” He’s a Pisces.


It's pertinent that Villa was bullied as a kid. And that bullying was, at times, really traumatic. Plus it was hard for him to get through it. Although he pushed hard enough and, eventually, he did. It was almost like his whole life turned around in the snap of a finger — or the tap of a tap shoe.


Villa downplays his past as a “classic ‘woe is me’ story,” yet the impact of the bullying is pervasive. As soon as condensing his life into a hour-long conversation, there really are two things he keeps bringing up: his artistry and being bullied.


It all began once he was 2 years old living in Clinton, Iowa, and his mom, a dance teacher, enrolled him in dance classes as a substitute to daycare. He was per year younger than the youngest of his fellow students — which can be developmentally significant, at that age; 2-year-olds are mostly known for being terrible. Yet this toddler instantly regarding the art form.


The tiny dancer became the sort of self-professed nerd who made a household event out of watching his first-ever scary movie, Alien, with his dad on Halloween. “It was just the dorkiest, stupidest father-son bonding experience that we'd ever had,” he says. Later, while at a party where Jeepers Creepers became the main event, he sat in the corner laughing hysterically so as to shield himself from feeling scared as hell. Villa was a sensitive kid.


The 33-year-old is cautious to be politically correct about the treatment he endured, affirming that his hometown has experienced a “paradigm shift in the town’s collective consciousness” in those twenty-or-so years since his adolescence. In some ways, it seems like the full nation has undergone a similar shift. “Even any time we were growing up, there were certain things that were just not cool, and certain curse words were used as slurs, and it's just not done that way anymore,” he says. (Still, the National Center for Education Information reported in 2017 that about 20% of students ages 12 to 18 have experienced bullying.)


Dancing grounded him — “It just puts you in your body, physically,” he says — it also set him apart from his peers. That, combined with his sensitivity and the vulnerability of performing, made him a “primo target for Midwestern bullying.” Still, he persisted. Villa continued his formal practice through high school. He discovered Old Hollywood staple Gene Kelly and speedily became obsessed with the idea of adding music and acting to his repertoire, just like the legendary entertainer.


By middle school, Villa had secured the lead in the school musical. “I think it looked like, Daddy Warbucks or something in Annie,” he tries to remember. “It was the most dorky thing ever, nevertheless it was such an enormous deal because I finally got the lead. It's so small-town, yet it's real, also it garnered me a certain respect that at the time was huge, and I was just like, ‘Yay, validation!’ I just sort of felt used in the correct way for the opening time, and that felt great.”


At the same time, Villa’s bullies were relentless. He sought some reprieve throughout each year outdoor of the public school system at a local religiously based school, yet even with brand new classmates, he just couldn’t escape the bullying. “By the end of that year, I basically wasn’t speaking,” he says.


He returned to public school, where he experienced somewhat of a grand ‘Saturn returns’ moment. Kids weren’t quite as mean to him as they had been, and he “kind of stopped giving a fuck.” Villa right now rationalizes this in two ways, the opening being that the kids who were mean to him had grown a little, and the second being that him leaving was a wake-up call for them. “I think there was some buried guilt,” he says. “And also just wonder that I actually took some sort of space and power.”


Back in public school, Villa realized sort in attempt to truly become the triple-threat he was set on becoming, it was time to really hone his acting skills. He performed in his high school’s production of The Outsiders, although his Gene Kelly dreams coupled with the treatment he’d endured for also long led him to boarding school in Michigan at his idyllic Interlochen Arts Academy. For the initial time in his educational career, he felt accepted by people who truly were his peers. He began playing guitar and writing songs, exploring the untrained musician indoor him. “I was in heaven there, it was perfect,” he says. Yet high school doesn’t last forever, and soon Villa was off to study acting at the esteemed Juilliard School in New York City.


Things got tough again. Villa had gone from his mixture of formal and informal research of dance, music, and acting to a fiercely competitive conservatory where the plan of action was to “tear you down to build you back up.” The professional deconstruction combined with favoritism by the personnel and cliques that were even “more intelligent and more insidious” than the ones from high school left Villa feeling beaten.


He almost left halfway through. He had transfer paperwork filled out for a hilly east coast school where students freely design their own majors. “I was unhappy, and I felt underused, and I felt underutilized, and misunderstood both as an artist and as a person,” he says. “And so I was like, ‘I’ve got to get out of here.’”


Leaving was the comfortable option; it’s what eventually got him through high school. Although then, in a defiant turn of events, he determined to live at Juilliard.


“There was just this day where I woke up and I was like, ‘You're not going to beat me.’ I don't know what brought up that. And then I choreographed a tap solo, which I hadn't done in a couple years, and I went and won the Iowa State Fair, won 10 grand worth in prize cash, and took that back as a quota to live on for the next two years,” he says. “It was a big middle finger, however it was also like a big, I'm coming back to play on your terms a little, although don't cross me again. And those last two years really changed.”


Villa contends that he learned a lot while in his time at Juilliard, yet the most crucial lessons he learned had nothing to do with acting; they were about surviving adversity.


In the years since college, Villa has noticed the balance he needs to pursue his cross-disciplinarian lifestyle. He’s noticed success in music, having performed on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon as one-half of the Rebel and also a Basketcase duo. He’s also played at the legendary Hotel Cafe, the same stage graced by global stars Adele, Katy Perry, Sia, and the late Mac Miller. Right now, he’s embarking on another musical project with Sorry Kyle, an emo/pop-punk project. It’s almost a full-circle moment for Villa; he wasn’t cool enough to go to emo shows as soon as he was growing up, yet all of the music seeped into his psyche. Right now he is the show.


His art isn't habitually the most romantic pursuit — some things he simply does to create make some cash, like his side-hustle recording audio books — however some days he finds himself in pleasantly fulfilling, thoroughly tough places. Places that invoke the same glimmering feeling he first felt in middle school, like with his current AHS role.


“A lot of my companions have been asking, ‘Are you just so stoked about the role? What's your preference part about the job?’ Or, ‘You just must be so stoked about the role!’ And I am, make no mistake. Ryan Murphy, if you're listening, this is the perfect job, and the perfect creative outlet I've had, and it's amazing,” he says. “Am I excited about the role? Yes. Am I excited to wake up every morning and know that I have a purpose, and all of my talents, and all the things that I bring to the table as an artist are being fired, and used, and called upon on a day-to-day basis, and that I feel sharp in the morning? That's the most satisfying part, that I feel used.”