Evan Peters Not on American Horror Story Next Season

Surprise! Evan Peters says he won’t be returning for the new season of American Horror Story.

The 32-year-old actor, who has appeared in all eight seasons of American Horror Story so far, broke the news while speaking to an Extra reporter at WonderCon over the weekend.

In a short clip posted on Twitter, the reporter asked if Peters was “involved” with the upcoming season.

“No, I’m going to sit a season out,” he replied.

Peters had been in all previous iterations of the FX anthology, including Cult, Murder House, Apocalypse and Freak Show, often playing creepy and villainous characters.

The only confirmed casting news from the upcoming ninth season came when creator Ryan Murphy shared on Instagram in February that Olympian Gus Kenworthy would be starring opposite another American Horror Story regular, Emma Roberts — who recently called off her engagement to Peters.

The theme for the next season has not yet been announced. FX did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment.

In an interview with GQ in July 2018, Peters said that constantly playing “sinister” roles was taking a toll on him.

“It’s just exhausting,” he told the outlet. “It’s really mentally draining, and you don’t want to go to those places ever in your life. And so you have to go there for the scenes, and it ends up integrating it somehow into your life. You’re in traffic and you find yourself screaming and you’re like, ‘What the hell? This isn’t who I am.'”

Then, in an interview for the cover of British GQ Style in March, the actor said that he had been experiencing a “full-on burnout” when he gave the negative 2018 quotes.

“I think it was a full-on burnout,” Peters shared. “I’m going to take a break, regroup, decompress, get back in touch with what I feel like I want to do. Not that I didn’t want to do any of those roles — they’re exactly what I wanted to do. It was just zero to 100 instantaneously.”

Peters will next be seen in this year’s Dark Phoenix movie, alongside Sophie Turner.

Last month, a source confirmed to PEOPLE that Peters and Roberts, 28, had broken off their engagement.

The American Horror Story costars had begun dating in the summer of 2012, and PEOPLE confirmed their engagement in January 2014, after Peters popped the question over the holidays.“It’s really amazing,” Peters told PEOPLE in 2014 of working with his fiancée on the horror anthology in New Orleans. “You’re at set and you’re in a city that you don’t really know that well. It’s nice to have your best friend there to go to dinner with and check out the city.”

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