American Horror Stories: Who does Michael Imperioli play? His chilling role, explained

The universe of American Horror Stories, the brainchild of Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk, took American TV's romance with horror to dizzying new heights. It all began in 2011 with American Horror Story, which overnight became a legend for its unabashed genre-bending, grotesque storytelling, and for its power to get A-list stars to sign up for its sinister storylines.

American Horror Stories was a spin-off that did things just a little bit differently, thanks to the success of the original show. Rather than stretching one horrifying tale across an entire season, this anthology crams a brand-new horror tale into every episode.

That means no clunky baggage from past stories—just new scares, bizarre urban myths, and creepy internet legends brought to life by some great actors.

In 2024, American Horror Stories made headlines with its installment, Backrooms, because it starred none other than Michael Imperioli. Ring a bell? It probably does because of his iconic, Emmy-winning performance as Christopher Moltisanti on The Sopranos.

The master of gritty, nuanced performances, Michael Imperioli, pulled out all the stops in this horror tale and gave fans something to remember for an eternity.

So what made Imperioli’s role stand out? Let’s break it down. We’ll start with a quick look at what makes American Horror Stories tick, then dive deep into Imperioli’s character, Daniel, exploring how he’s introduced, what drives him, and how his journey mixes chilling psychological tension with supernatural dread.

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American Horror Stories: Giving anthology horror a fresh twist

American Horror Stories premiered in 2021 as the spin-off of the incredibly popular American Horror Story. But while the first one follows a single terrifying saga from beginning to end throughout an entire season, this one approaches it differently by presenting a fresh, new story per episode.

One episode you might be getting haunted houses, the next urban legends, and then the next perhaps a story straight out of internet creepypasta. It's a horror playground of all varieties—short, stiletto, and always surprising.

This single-episode, single-tale structure is a double-edged sword. On the upside, authors aren't loaded with huge narratives or thick character backstories, so they get to play with enormous, eccentric, high-concept, and ride whatever phobia is currently popular in pop culture.

The downside is they need to grab you quickly and get on with the scares (and genuine emotion) within an hour. That's where great casting comes in.

Booking name-brand actors like Michael Imperioli isn’t just a nice bonus—it’s essential. They bring these brief hits of horror with the emotional heft to linger.

Consider the Backrooms episode, for instance. Drawn from an online urban legend about hauntingly vacant rooms that just keep going and going, it's precisely the sort of story designed to terrify anyone who's ever tumbled down a late-night YouTube rabbit hole.

But the episode does more than lean on a creepy concept. It weaves in raw human tragedy through Imperioli’s character, turning a spooky internet legend into something personal and deeply unsettling.

It's the classic example of how American Horror Stories combines modern scares with unsettling psychological depth—and continues to discover new ways to mess with our heads.

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Michael Imperioli: From The Sopranos to the surreal

Michael Imperioli has built his career playing characters who are anything but simple. Born in 1966, he shot to fame thanks to his unforgettable turn as Christopher Moltisanti on The Sopranos—a role that earned him heaps of critical praise and a Primetime Emmy.

But his talent doesn’t stop at mob dramas. Imperioli’s résumé spans film, TV, and theater, with standout performances in Goodfellas, The White Lotus, and even Law & Order.

So when news broke that he’d be starring in American Horror Stories, fans were intrigued. Could Imperioli’s trademark intensity translate to straight-up horror? The answer turned out to be a chilling yes.

In the episode Backrooms, he steps into the shoes of Daniel, an Oscar-winning screenwriter whose slow, terrifying unraveling drives the whole story.

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The Backrooms episode: A new kind of nightmare

What is so disturbing about the Backrooms episode is that it combines internet urban legend with sheer psychological horror.

If you've ever come across a creepy corner of Reddit, you might be familiar with the Backrooms idea: an eerie, never-ending labyrinth of yellow-lit, grimy rooms where the laws of reality appear to collapse.

It began as internet horror fiction, but rapidly evolved into an outright internet legend that draws upon our deepest, darkest fears of being lost and trapped.

So, what happens in the episode?

Daniel (Imperioli) is shown as a high-profile screenwriter who is renowned for writing horror stories that clients simply can't get enough of.

Beneath the glitz, however, his life is falling apart, particularly his fraught relationship with his son, Roman. Everything hits the fan when Roman goes missing. The loss drives Daniel into a whirlpool of grief, anger, and self-blame.

As reality begins to slip from his grasp, Daniel becomes trapped in the Backrooms, a strange, labyrinthine underworld that appears to reflect his guilt and pain.

Reality vs. fantasy is conflated, leaving him in a world that's both supernatural and painfully personal.

By taking an internet urban legend and placing it atop a story of loss and emotional unraveling, American Horror Stories produces an episode that's about something greater than jump scares. It's a trip into a troubled psyche—and when Imperioli is in focus, it’s impossible to look away.

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Michael Imperioli as Daniel: A peek into a haunted mind

In American Horror Stories, Daniel is no ordinary horror story victim. On paper, he's an incredible achievement—a Pulitzer Prize winner and an Oscar-winning screenwriter who's on top of the world, renowned for writing horrifying tales that terrify audiences across the world.

Off paper, however, his life is utterly in shambles. He is a screenwriter who can write the darkest nightmares for the screen, but cannot confront the real horrors that haunt his own home.

This contradiction between his public successes and his domestic failures is the foundation for a character study that's as much about mental breakdown as it is about monsters and ghosts.

As soon as Michael Imperioli appears on the show, he's playing Daniel with simmering energy. You can see the cracks lurking just beneath his smooth exterior.

He's won the awards and the accolades, but there's something delicate in how he holds himself together—like he's clinging to the wall with his fingernails. When his son, Roman, just disappears, that façade cracks wide open and sends him tumbling into the episode's dark conspiracy.

As Daniel searches for his missing son, things get murky fast. What’s real? What’s in his head?

The Backrooms become a bizarre maze that Daniel wanders through, trapped in spaces that seem to stretch on forever without rhyme or reason. The more he pushes forward, the more the walls seem to close in—both literally and inside his mind.

Imperioli’s performance is key here.

He doesn't simply play Daniel as scared; he portrays him as guilt-ridden, fearful, and desperate to the point where he's lost all rationality. You sense his paranoia closing in on him like a vice.

American Horror Stories uses the mind-warping corridors of the Backrooms to mirror Daniel’s inner torment—his shame, his doubt, and the creeping belief that he deserves this terror.

Through Imperioli's potent acting, even the most far-out scenes pay off emotionally. Regardless of how crazy it becomes, Daniel's suffering is authentic, and that's why this story sticks with you long after the credits roll.

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Themes: Horror, mourning, and living on the edge

The Backrooms episode in American Horror Stories is not so much interested in cheesy Jack-in-the-box frights—it's more interested in trying out some serious concepts, employing Jack-in-the-boxes to examine the ways that sorrow and remorse screw with your head. Here's how it works:

Liminal spaces: Caught between worlds

The Backrooms are a textbook example of so-called liminal space—a strange location in between where nothing feels quite right.

They're not fully here or there, just endless halls that exist outside regular reality. That makes them the perfect metaphor for Daniel's headspace. He's stuck in denial vs. acceptance, tortured by the past but unable to handle the future.

The laws don't apply in the Backrooms, nor do they within his own mind.

Grief and guilt: The real monsters

At its core, it's a story of a father unable to cope with the loss of his son. Daniel's guilt and grief are so immense, they warp his world into terror. The horror imagery—spooky corridors, unsettling echoes—operates to indicate just how much he's beating himself up.

It implies that the most terrifying threats aren’t ghosts or ghouls, but our own imaginations turned against us.

Can we trust what we see?

The episode blurs the lines between reality and fantasy in Daniel's mind, rendering him an unreliable narrator. Is he stuck inside this supernatural labyrinth, or is he trapped in his guilt and grief?

That ambiguity is what has people sitting on the edge of their seats in fine psychological terror. It makes people wonder long after the credits have rolled, thinking about what happened and what it means.

Bringing all these concepts together, American Horror Stories turns a viral internet urban myth into a multi-layered story of loss and regret, and how scary things are when you can't even believe your mind.

Also, read: 10 most twisted villains in American Horror Story, ranked by how unsettling they are