NEED TO KNOW
- Anthony Ramos revealed he was “butt-ass naked” in front of co-star Ashton Kutcher while filming The Assassin’s origin scene in The Beauty.
- The episode, “Beautiful Living Rooms,” finally gives The Assassin a real name — Antonio — and a full backstory, from military service to his body transformation via the Beauty drug.
- Ramos also opened up about working alongside his real-life friend of 15 years, Jeremy Pope, calling their time on set “some of the most fun I’ve ever had on any job.”
Spoilers!
Seven episodes in, and The Beauty finally gave the people what they wanted: the full, unvarnished origin story of Anthony Ramos‘ The Assassin. And it came with a detail that’s hard to un-picture — the Twisters star, completely naked, while Ashton Kutcher stood there and studied him.
Episode seven of the FX and Hulu sci-fi body-horror series, titled “Beautiful Living Rooms,” peeled back the layers on one of Ryan Murphy‘s most compelling new TV villains. As Ramos tells People, the episode was a gift for an actor who’d been playing this character with deliberate opacity all season. “It just made for a better relationship between the characters,” he says of the lengthy origin monologue he delivers opposite Jeremy Pope‘s Jeremy.
Here’s the setup: Anthony Ramos plays The Assassin, an enforcer working for “the Corporation” who took the drug soon after it was invented. But episode seven reveals that the man behind the eye patch has a name — Antonio — and a life that looks nothing like the sleek, lethal figure we’ve been watching. Per the episode, Antonio served in the military at 18, eventually transitioned into work as a hired man, and built a quiet life with a wife and son. Then an eco-terrorist attack left him severely burned and hospitalized, which is when Byron Forst — that’d be Kutcher’s trillion-dollar tech villain — walked in, offered him a shot of the Beauty drug, and changed everything. Byron was “my savior,” Antonio recounts, though salvation came at a steep price: he had to leave his old life, his wife, and his son behind entirely.
Which brings us to the naked part.
After undergoing his full-body transformation, Antonio receives the eye patch that has become his signature—a gift from his new boss. And that scene, Ramos tells People, is the one that’s stuck with him. “Ashton’s studying me and I was butt-ass naked,” he recalls with a laugh. “It was a crazy scene.”
In a show built on the premise of bodies being scrutinized, transformed, and weaponized for power, there’s something almost poetic about The Assassin being literally bare in front of the man who remade him. As Kutcher has explained, the show’s central tension, “The question is: what are you willing to sacrifice for that? What risks are you willing to take?” For Antonio, the answer was: everything, including his dignity, right there on set in front of Ashton Kutcher.
But for Ramos, the nudity wasn’t even the hardest part of the scene. That honor goes to his character’s most recognizable prop. “I have to put the patch on my eye, but I had to squinch my cheek a little bit to make sure that it stayed on,” he tells People. “So, I’ve got this weird face where it’s like I have this intensity on my face but it’s really just because I’m trying to squinch my cheek enough where I can keep the eye patch on my eye.” Method acting, or just physics — you decide.
The eye patch itself went through a full design gauntlet before landing on the cool, slit-style version fans know from the show. “We tried different variations and things in the camera test,” Ramos explains. “There was one eye patch where I completely couldn’t see anything out of my eye. I was like, ‘Nah, let’s not do that.’ Then we tried this half-glasses kind of thing where I couldn’t see out of my eye but there was a gap. It looked cool, but it didn’t quite work.” Eventually, they found “this eye patch that had these slits. It was also the coolest looking one.”
Eye patch logistics aside, The Beauty has been a personal milestone for Ramos in ways that go well beyond the role itself. Sharing the bulk of episode seven with Jeremy Pope — who plays Jeremy, Antonio’s newly recruited sidekick — meant working alongside someone he’s known for a decade and a half. “It was really great, man,” Ramos says. “I mean, I had days at work where it didn’t even feel like work. It was like, ‘I can’t believe we’re here right now and laughing for 10, 11, 12 straight hours.’ It was truly some of the most fun I’ve ever had on any job.”
The two actors, who’ve watched each other navigate Hollywood in real time, brought something lived-in and warm to scenes that could have easily tipped into pure genre menace. “You don’t get to do that often in your career,” Ramos says. “You don’t get to work with your friends in real life that you’ve had for so long. We’ve watched each other grow up in life and in this game, so it’s just awesome to be able to work together.”
That warmth extends to the set’s broader dynamic. Despite his character being technically a hired killer working for a villainous billionaire, Ramos has been vocal about his admiration for Kutcher’s work throughout the season. “One of my favorite performances I’ve ever seen from anyone on TV — like, top five performances probably,” Ramos told Good Morning America. “I told Ashton, I’m like, ‘Yo, bro, you’re, like, my favorite character.'”
High praise. Especially from a guy who was naked in front of him.
The Beauty airs Wednesdays at 9 p.m. ET on FX, with new episodes streaming on Hulu. The two-part season finale drops March 4, 2026.
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