Miriam Mead

Miriam Mead is an antagonist in American Horror Story: Apocalypse. She is one of the leaders of the Cooperative, a satanic organzation that raises post-apocalypse outposts which attempts to remold the world in their own image.

She was portrayed by Kathy Bates, who also played Annie Wilkes from Misery.

Biography
Miriam is a ruthless and sadistic woman who runs an underground post-apocalyptic outpost along with Wilhelmina Venable after the End of Days started by Michael Langdon. She meets Timothy Campbell and Emily at the gates of Outpost 3, walking them into the compound and ensure that they are clean before entering the building.

Later, she arrives at the dinner table with Wilhemina who overhears Coco St. Pierre Vanderbilt defaming the food, causing Venable to slap her whilst Miriam nods in agreement. When Venable reads the message from The Cooperative that the world as they knew it is gone forever, Miriam comments that the world was weak before and that it did not take much to destroy it. When one of her fellow agents reports a spike in the background radiation in the room, Miriam seemingly discovers Mr. Gallant and Stu to be the sources. They are taken to the showers and given a brutal cleaning, but Miriam still finds Stu to be contaminated and executes him.

Sometime after, Miriam visits Venable in her room and they pretend to be the purples. They plot about distributing sadistic punishments which Venable admits that she enjoys, and Miriam, who used to be a military agent, admits they've been making up rules and punishments as they go along, such as setting the Geiger counter to maximum sensitivity to frame Stu. Miriam expresses concerns about disobeying The Cooperative, who she states have paid her bills for a long time.

Eighteen months later, the inhabitants of Outpost 3 are growing less hopeful of rescue and food supplies are decreasing. When Gallant protests and insists that they leave, Miriam tells him that no one is allowed to leave. An alarm suddenly sounds to alert that an intruder is on the grounds. Miriam goes outside and meets Langdon who has arrived in a horse-drawn carriage. He tells her to take care of the horses, which she leads away and shoots them. She sees people dragging the horses' corpses away as she goes back to the compound.

Emily prepares for bed, but hears a strange noise: her room is crawling with snakes. Her screams bring Timmy and Mead. Mead rejoices at the new protein, despite the risk of contamination. The dinner associates discuss what they've been eating lately, including possibly Stu. The servants lift the cloches over dinner to reveal the snakes, unexpectedly alive, which slither across the table.

The dinner guests assemble in the library, and Langdon enters to announce that the other compounds in New York, West Virginia, and Texas have been destroyed. He explains the purpose of The Sanctuary, which holds certain security measures, and that he will be evacuating candidates for survival. Mead asks why they weren't given those measures, to which Langdon answers is classified.

After observing Gallant having sex with the Rubber Man, a disturbed Evie Gallant visits Mead in her chambers and tells the overseer about her grandson's behavior. Mead reports to Venable and relays Evie's tale. They suspect Langdon as the suited figure, neither knowing Rubber Man's true nature nor that Langdon overhears their scheme. Venable questions a chained and naked Gallant, while Mead whips him. The women walk away after Venable notices that Gallant enjoys being whipped.

Timothy and Emily realize that since Venable's rules are made up and irrelevant, nothing can stop them from having sex. Later, Mead intrudes on Tim and Emily while they are sleeping on bed and drags them away. The young lovers confront Venable about her made-up rules, and she sends them to their punishment. Mead takes them to a chamber for execution where Tim shoots her in the torso in an escape attempt.

Mead is eventually executed by being burned alive, but was later "revived" into the form of an android.