The second someone told a teenage Sarah Paulson she resembled Julia Roberts, it was over. To be fair, her locker at her NYC performing arts high school was plastered with photos of America’s Sweetheart, so the comparison wasn’t totally out of the blue. Nevertheless, she ran with it.
“That was all I needed to hear to decide that this was what I wanted to do and be,” says Paulson. “I dreamed of doing romantic comedies and working with incredible directors like she was working with. She just seemed like she could do it all, and she can. But it was definitely not working out that way for me. I was not going to become this sort of internationally beloved superstar. That was not my journey.”
While she and Roberts have led decidedly different careers, legions of fans across the globe would consider Paulson an international superstar. In fact, she makes a great case to carry on the mantle of America’s Sweetheart, simply for the titles on her resume: “American Horror Story,” “American Crime Story,” “Miss America” and 1995’s “American Gothic.”
“It’s a whole weird theme,” she laughs.
For that “American” run and many other achievements, Paulson will be honored Dec. 2 with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. It comes on the heels of her Tony win for “Appropriate” on Broadway and her renewed partnership with prolific producer Ryan Murphy, for whom she is starring in two upcoming series (“AHS 13” and “Monster” Season 4) and the current hit, “All’s Fair.” But as she reflects on her journey, she’s pushing herself to dream even bigger.
Love Film & TV?
Get your daily dose of everything happening in music, film and TV in Australia and abroad.
“I’m looking to be a little more fearless in terms of betting on myself,” says Paulson. “If I look back at the things I’ve gotten to do, I never could have dreamed that I would have done a single one of them. I can only imagine that if I really take that in and let that live inside me as the truth, maybe the best is in front of me.”
Paulson went through “slim years,” as she calls the ’90s-’00s, when she worked enough to pay rent but never enough to “satiate my appetite for the experience of acting.” In fact, “American Gothic,” on which she played a teenage ghost, was the first time she flew to Los Angeles to audition. Talking about it 30 years later, she experiences a tinge of nostalgia for that bygone part of her career.
“I haven’t had an audition in person in many, many years. A lot of people see it as a blessing and a communication of forward motion in their career. But I long for the day when you have that personal connection with a creative of any kind,” she says. “There was a time when that was the only time I would get to act, when I went into a room to audition. It’s something I think about very fondly — that feeling that you won the job.”
Her turning point was 2011 with a trio of projects, including her Emmy-nominated role as Nicolle Wallace in HBO’s “Game Change,” a role in the indie darling “Martha Marcy May Marlene,” and FX’s “American Horror Story.” The latter changed her life.
She only had three episodes as psychic Billie Dean Howard in the first season, but Murphy gave her the lead role in Season 2. She led a new generation of scream queens across seven more seasons, before tapping out after Season 10. While not an easy decision, she was burnt out.
“There’s this phenomenon I’ve talked to other actors about that is really hard to describe unless you’re running through the woods simulating terror for six months out of the year, every year,” she says. “Your body doesn’t know the difference between the real and imagined, at least not the way I work. If I’m terrified, I’m hyperventilating and I’m running from something, then I’m actually experiencing that.”
She stayed in touch with her former co-stars, watching from the group chats with a sense of longing as they continued on. On Halloween this year, Murphy revealed that Paulson will reunite with Jessica Lange, Kathy Bates, Angela Bassett, Evan Peters and others for the as-yet-titled “AHS 13.” That reunion of old friends was enough to get her running through the woods again, so to speak.
“I missed it, and I’m really looking forward to doing it again,” she says. “It was like this dovetailing of my longing for it and the idea that I would be reunited with [all of them] just came together at the right time.”
Courtesy of FX
The new season will film in early 2026, but Paulson’s resurgence in the Murphy-verse also includes “All’s Fair” and the upcoming fourth season of “Monster” as serial killer Aileen Wuornos.
The latter is the latest true-life project Paulson has hooked into, following her “American Crime Story” role as Marcia Clark, and later whistleblower Linda Tripp. The thrill of playing a real person is in the guardrails. “I like having a blueprint and undeniable facts about a character that are not open for my interpretation, because I can sort of have more freedom inside of it,” she says. “You would think it would be the opposite, but it sort of taught me that I like to immerse myself in another person’s experience, in the reality of it.”
And she’s already down the rabbit hole of researching Wuornos’ life, mainlining every documentary and interview. She accepted Murphy’s offer to join the show, script unseen. But don’t expect wall-to-wall Paulson in “Monster,” which centers on accused 1892 axe murderer Lizzie Borden.
“I’m coming on to do a particular thing that I can’t talk about. But I’m always going to be interested in the why of human behavior. If there’s any opportunity for me to get inside something that has been predetermined by society and have a little look at it through my own particular lens, I’m always going to want to do that. Ryan knows that.”
On the road to Wuornos and “AHS 13,” Paulson is testing that pledge of fearlessness by playing something new — the comedic villain. In “All’s Fair,” she portrays a viperous lawyer hellbent on destroying the lives and cases of her former colleagues. Paulson fires off graphic insults with pleasure, something she finds liberating. “Her version of retaliation for being hurt and left out is all-out war. And I have to tell you, it is just a gloriously good time,” she says. “There was a kind of freedom in knowing that I could really go balls to the wall because of the writing. I actually called Kim Kardashian ‘beef curtains.’ I call her ‘cuntburger’ and ‘Mayor McHeadcheese!’”
Like almost every turn in her career, “All’s Fair” inspired some “How did I get here?” reflection, which Paulson’s still excavating. But what’s certain is how happy she is to have found her lane — Carrington and otherwise. Not even the show’s savage critical reception could kill that high.
“Does anybody like to get reviews from the critics that are not stellar? No,” she says. “It’s always a wild thing to put the thing you’ve been working on out into the world for people to determine its value. But I feel like what matters to me is the absolute unbridled joy and fun we have had making and promoting the show. There’s not a single thing or person in the world that could change that.”
From Variety US