In 2012, she co-starred in the Ben Affleck film Argo, based on the Iran hostage crisis. DuVall played Cora Lijek, a Japanese-American who was one of the six American diplomats rescued from Iran in 1980. She, along with the rest of the Argo cast, received the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture. That same year, DuVall appeared in a recurring role on the second season of the FX anthology series American Horror Story, as Wendy Peyser, the girlfriend of Lana Winters (Sarah Paulson).