What's the Deal With Frances Conroy's Eye? The Tale Behind the Mystique

The Gist:

• Frances Conroy's distinctive eye, which is notably different in color and shape, has been a subject of curiosity for fans.
• The actor revealed that a car crash in the 1990s resulted in a corneal injury, causing her eye to appear glazed or lighter in color. She normally wears a colored lens to conceal it.
• Her unique eye feature became a significant part of her character Moira O'Hara's storyline in American Horror Story, while in Six Feet Under, she used a contact lens to make her eyes match.

Before the golden age of television, an underrated series that questioned the meaning of life and death through a comical lens would come to fruition. Six Feet Under, a 2001 series, is finally on Netflix with a star-studded cast. It seems like every prestige actor was part of the series, from Frances Conroy to Patricia Clarkson.

As we dive back into one of Frances’s most notable roles, we can’t help but wonder what happened to her eye. She notoriously has an eye that’s a different color with a slightly different shape from the other eye, although it’s not nearly as noticeable in Six Feet Under as it is in American Horror Story. So, what happened to Frances’s eye?

While some actors like to keep their bodily differences a mystery (it’s really none of our business), Frances has been open about what happened to her eye. According to an IMDb trivia tidbit, she was in a car crash in the 1990s that led to physical trauma to her face. “The cornea of the eye can appear glazed or lighter in color after such trauma. This type of corneal scarring is actually fairly common and easy to hide. She has said that she normally wears a colored lens to hide it.”

However, Ryan Murphy asked Frances not to cover up her eye when filming Murder House and it became part of Moira O’Hara’s storyline. We learn that Moira’s cause of death was that she was shot in the eye, so her differently colored eye worked perfectly to represent that. While some people think that Frances wears a glass eye, that’s not actually the case, despite her eyes being slightly different shapes.

In Six Feet Under, Frances wears a contact lens, so her eyes nearly match. Because the show was created long before American Horror Story, many fans assumed that Frances’s accident occurred between the two series. However, Frances simply covered up her eye with a contact lens, so many people didn’t know about her accident until she starred in American Horror Story.

Six Feet Under follows the Fisher family after the death of the patriarch Nathaniel Fisher. As the family reckons with how death can create meaning in life, Frances’s Ruth Fisher is forced to figure out who she is without her husband. She spent her entire life fitting into society’s expectation of becoming a mother, but now that her kids are grown and her husband has passed, she’s left grappling with her identity.

She stars in the series alongside Peter Krause (9-1-1), Michael C. Hall (Dexter, The Crown), Lauren Ambrose (Yellowjackets), Richard Jenkins (DAHMER-Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story), Jeremy Sisto (FBI), and Freddy Rodriguez (Bull), all of whom are now prestige television royalty.

Although it has been over 20 years since Six Feet Under was created and released, it’s still definitely worth a watch.

Six Feet Under is now streaming on Netflix.