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With an Emmy nomination for her guest spot as a marriage counselor on Mr. & Mrs. Smith in hand, Sarah Paulson has hit a milestone all of her own. The nomination is Paulson’s ninth, all for playing different characters. She’s the first actor to accomplish that feat and it says reams about the versatility with which she practices her craft. “It means audiences have accepted me playing different people and haven’t just gotten attached to me as a character that they love,” she says. “It means they’re responding to my work and not just to me as a person or a character I’ve played that they love.”
In addition to Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Paulson scored nominations for five seasons of American Horror Show, for Game Change (2012) and Impeachment: American Crime Story. Paulson won an Emmy for her role as prosecutor Marcia Clark. In The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story in 2016.
And she’s not slowing down. Paulson has seven projects in the works, including Hold Your Breath from directors Karrie Crouse and William Joines. The film will make its world Premier at the Toronto International Film Festival in September. And she is reuniting with director/writer Ryan Murphy in the upcoming series All’s Fair, a show she is particularly excited about because she will get the chance to work with a powerhouse cast that includes Glenn Close.
Here, Paulson talks about how a dog led her to the Mr. & Mrs. Smith role, dinner on The Bear, being versatile as an actor and how she’s a big chicken when it comes to scary stuff.
DEADLINE: You received your ninth Emmy nomination for your role in Mr. & Mrs. Smith. How did you get involved in that project?
PAULSON: I was at a party, a fancy Hollywood party, and Donald Glover was there, and we know each other in the past from various red carpets. And he was one of the sort of early vocal champions of my work in The People Vs. O.J. He was talking about it publicly in a way that was very, very nice. And we share some professional representation, so we would see each other on red carpets, and it was always very lovely. But I was at this fancy party, and someone had brought their dog. That’s not a sort of thing to bring to the Vanity Fair Oscar party, but someone did. And I’m a dog obsessed person, and I started doing a bit in front of Donald, not really for Donald, but just I was doing this bit about what the dog was experiencing being at this fancy party, and Donald thought it was pretty funny.
And then a couple days later, I got a text from my good friend Pedro Pascal, who said, “Donald Glover texted me asking for your number. Can I give it?” And I said, absolutely. And then he sent me a text saying, I have a part in this thing, and if you read it and you respond to it, I would really love for you to do it. And I read it, and I didn’t need to read it, honestly, because any excuse I could have to be in his presence was one you really wouldn’t have to work very hard to get me to say yes to. But then I read it, and I thought it was so great and funny and something I hadn’t really gotten to do before. So, I said yes immediately, and then very shortly after that, found myself on set with them and it’s really fun.
DEADLINE: It’s kind of a strange bit. You’re a marriage counselor for people who are only fake married, and the whole dialogue was about how they related being spies to doing computer coding.
PAULSON: Yes. It was very clever, I thought. And what’s sort of funny is that as far as this season goes, it’s absolutely a dramatic series, but the episode that I do with them, at least our scenes, is quite funny, and I rarely get asked to do that. And so that was really fun. And they were all, both Francesca [Sloane] the showrunner and Donald were really, and Maya [Erskine] as well, were really interested in improvising. So, we did plenty of that, and that was really liberating and really fun and a great way to kind of get into it.
DEADLINE: When I was watching it, I kept thinking there was going to be some point in the counseling sessions where you were going to call them out on the ruse.
PAULSON: We could debate the veracity of her greatness as a therapist if we wanted to, but I think at the end of the day, therapists are usually so interested in not offending the patient or making declarations that may or may not be true based on their immediate assessments. And so, I think you could get away with that storytelling because a lot of therapists don’t want to call bullsh*t on people until they’ve been seeing them for long enough that they can go, “Here’s the deal. Here’s what I’ve learned over the last year of our sessions together, and here’s where I think you’re fooling yourself.” But since these sessions were not taking place over a tremendously long period of time, I think it would be really ethically questionable if she were to start making statements about the erroneous nature of the things they were trying to sell to her.
DEADLINE: True. Your Part came in Episode 6. Is it difficult to come into that situation where there’s already sort of established chemistry with other players or were you comfortable?
PAULSON: I wouldn’t say comfortable. I mean, anytime you start a job, I don’t care if you’re doing a few days or two months, so whether the show’s about you or not about you at all, I always am a little anxious when I start because I just want to do a good job for everyone. But for me, it was sort of a bit of a double-edged sword because I have been so lucky in my professional life to find myself working with the same people over and over again and on long running things as you really have established a rapport and an ease of working together. So, when you come into something as a guest star and you’re thrown into a world that is not your world, I think it sort of shows you the truth of someone’s capability, which is why you have all these actors who have made their careers coming in and guesting on these shows and turning in incredible performances.
And I think it’s a real testament to how gifted they all are, because it’s hard to do and feel confident making choices and to feel secure coming into a world that is not yours. I got to try my hand out of that, and it was really scary because I thought, Oh, these people all know each other. I’ve just shaken hands with the cinematographer and the script supervisor, and now here we go. And so, it does feel a little nerve wracking. At the same time, there’s something liberating like, well, I guess if I suck, the good news is I’m in and out, and they’ll just have to … what can they do? I don’t have to worry about it. It’s like, I guess they could cut me out. That was sort of quiet comfort I tried to give myself, but it was also really fun because I just didn’t have the bulk of the responsibility. To make the show work or not was not up to me. That was kind of liberating.
DEADLINE: This the ninth nomination you’ve received, all for playing different characters.
PAULSON: That Is correct. That is correct.
DEADLINE: What does that say about you as an actor? Are you good at picking roles or are you just that good?
PAULSON: Well, I certainly am not the person to answer that question, but I think somebody did say this to me, too, and I do think it’s meaningful in that lots of times people get nominated over and over and over again, and their 10th nomination, seven of those nominations are for a character that people love and someone they’ve been playing for a long time. But my nominations are for different characters, which means audiences have accepted me playing different people and haven’t just gotten attached to me as a character that they love. I guess it’s sort of cool because it means that whatever I’ve done or whenever I’ve been nominated or singled out in this way, it’s because people are responding to the work and maybe not necessarily a character specifically that they have fallen in love with. And so that makes the honor feel extra great and special to me because it means they’re responding to my work and not just to me as a person or a character I’ve played that they love.
DEADLINE: And your body of work is evidence of that. The range of characters you’ve played is pretty amazing.
PAULSON: I think the very thing in the beginning of my career, and this is the truth, I think there was a part of me that was not necessarily different enough, I think I felt like, Oh, I kind of look like this. Everyone always tells me I look like Elizabeth Perkins or someone tells me I look like, I don’t know, all these different people. And maybe there was something about me that was not landing specifically enough to make a ripple or a wave. And then that very thing ended up, I think, being my greatest asset because it meant that I could kind of move in and out things in what I would hope would be a way that would have that kind of chameleon situation where [the viewers] are really responding to the character and not the actor themselves in terms of a particular personality that can be very winning or something.
And people make great careers and have long careers because of it. But I think the very thing that made me sort of unspecific in the beginning and no one knew what to do with me. I think when Ryan [Murphy] put me in American Horror Story, and it just gave me every single year a different person to inhabit, that challenges the audience to say, I know you fell in love with this character from last year, but now we have a different character being presented by the same actor, and we’re asking the audience to go along with this. And I think it helped sort of change the way people were able to watch things because it required audience members to do a little bit of heavier lifting to sort of hold their own part of it, of like, Oh, there’s that actor I loved in Season 2, but now here they’re in Season 3 playing someone else.
RELATED STORY: ‘Appropriate’ Broadway Review: Sarah Paulson Rattles The Rafters Of History In Powerhouse Production
And it allows them to sort of extend what they can hold on to as a viewer. So, the very thing that I think made me unplaceable — that’s not even a good word for it — but I just don’t think people knew what exactly to throw my way and Ryan Murphy did. And because of that, I got to use the part of me that can immerse myself or my face can really change and doesn’t always look like one thing. And the very thing that made it hard to put me in something because I think people weren’t really remembering me, but Ryan was saying, “No, I’m going to use that to my advantage.” And the very thing you loved her it’s Atlanta Winters, well, now she’s playing Cordelia and now she’s playing Be and Dot who has two heads, and then now she’s playing Marcia Clark and now she’s playing Linda Tripp.
And it just turned me into the truth of where I think my excitement is as an actor, which is as a character actress, and not necessarily a leading lady. I’m a character actress who can play leading lady roles, but not relegated to just that because audiences have attached themselves to a particular thing about me. It creates a lot of elasticity, which gives me an enormous freedom and makes it possible for me to do all sorts of things. And people instead of going, “Oh no, I don’t want to see her do that,” they’re like, “Ooh, cool.” And that’s been a real gift, an enormous gift to me as a performer. Enormous.
DEADLINE: Yeah, certainly. Too many people get locked into a box. You do TV and film, horror, drama, comedy …
PAULSON: And then I’ve just come off of doing this play [Appropriate] that I did on Broadway for the last seven and a half months and was the greatest creative experience of my life thus far. I’ve just been wildly lucky and very grateful that my career unfolded the way it did because things didn’t really start happening for me in terms of people noticing my work until I was in my late thirties, early forties, which is traditionally not when [women] start to make themselves known. It was very, very, very lucky. And I guess I just wouldn’t have it any other way.
DEADLINE: Do you feel like the landscape on that front is changing in Hollywood?
PAULSON: I think it’s changing somewhat. I surely do. I mean, the fact that I’m working at all is evidence of that and that there are so many of my peers and people who are even a little bit older than I am, Naomi Watts and Nicole Kidman and Olivia Coleman, all these extraordinary actresses who are at the sort of apex of their careers now. And so that means hopefully there’s a little bit more time before that window closes. And my real dream is of course, that it never closes, and I can continue to work in ways that are exciting and that audiences are willing to witness until I’m in my dotage if I’m lucky.
DEADLINE: Well, you have a ways to go for that, I think. At my count, you have seven projects in the works, including Hold Your Breath and All’s Fair.
PAULSON: I’m clearly working and I’m glad that someone is interested in me doing so. It means I get to continue. And part of what’s exciting about it is, to echo what you were saying before about not being sort of pigeonholed into some particular genre, is that it means I don’t exactly know what the next exciting thing will be, and it could be anything and how totally thrilling that is. I got to guest star on The Bear. I got to do Mr. & Mrs. Smith. It’s sort of allowing me to dip my toes into waters I haven’t been in before, which is really exciting. The role that I’ve dreamt about playing forever that another actor got to do, which someone asked me once, and it was Claire Danes and Homeland. I think her work on that show and that show in general, but her work in particular is just off the charts brilliant. I always think maybe one day that will be the different thing I get to do, which is play the same character for seven years. That’s the one thing I haven’t had the opportunity to do, to continue to dive into the depths of the same character and develop a relationship with a character that lasts for a long time and that audience invests in. That would probably be the next thing I would be the most interested in pursuing. I haven’t gotten to do that yet.
DEADLINE: The next thing you’ve got coming out is Hold Your Breath. The film is going to screen in Toronto at TIFF.
PAULSON: Yeah, the world premiere of the movie will be at TIFF, which is very, very exciting for the filmmakers and for me. And I was also executive producer on the project, which really makes it extra thrilling to have that be the launch place. That’s where 12 Years a Slave was first seen, Martha Marcy May Marlene went to Toronto. I’ve had a couple of films there and it’s such a wonderful festival and I have such good association with it and I’m excited about it. And we shot the movie a while ago because of the strike, and there’s also a lot of special effects in the movie. It is about the Dust Bowl. A lot of that work took a very long time to get it to be really in a special place. I feel very excited about it. There’s definitely a genre element to the film, but it’s really the story of a mother just fiercely trying to protect her children from succumbing to the air that they’re breathing. It’s definitely a tense movie and beautiful to look at.
DEADLINE: And then you’ve got TV series All’s Fair with a crazy cast.
PAULSON: I know. I’m so excited. I’m being reunited with Ryan, and we haven’t worked together in a while, so that’s exciting. And actors, I’ve always admired. I’ve gotten to work with Niecy Nash before on Mrs. America, and she’s someone I just worship as well as Naomi Watts. I’ve never gone to work with Kim Kardashian, Tiana Taylor, and not to mention the genius that is Glenn Close that I have only dreamt. I’ve been very lucky in my life and I’ve gotten to work with some of the great actresses, and she has always been on my list of people I would love to work with. I worked with her daughter on Ratchet, that was really special, but I’ve never gotten to look into her eyes and do some real work. I’m very, very excited about that. And we start shooting that in a couple of weeks.
DEADLINE: And your other projects in the works. Are there any of those that you’re particularly looking forward too.
PAULSON: Well, I’m very excited about Untamed, which is based on Glennon Doyle’s book of the same title. And we’ve been working on that for a while, and I’m excited to get that off the ground. And there are a couple of other things in various stages of development. I’m really actually looking forward to getting on stage again, but I can’t really talk about that yet either. It’s too early. But I really had an extraordinary time being on Broadway and being back in New York and connecting to the place where it all began for me. So, I’m looking forward to that.
DEADLINE: I have to ask about your cameo on The Bear, “The Fishes” episode. Was that as crazy to shoot as it was to watch?
PAULSON: It was as crazy to shoot, yes, as it was to watch, because much like what we did during The People vs. O.J. when we were in the courtroom, there were many cameras rolling at one time. So, you always knew that at any moment you could be on camera and you weren’t really sure, which gave it this really wonderful feeling of aliveness. And it felt like doing a play actually, because sometimes when you’re waiting for your coverage and you’re off camera, it’s not that you’re holding anything back, but you’re aware you’re not on film. Something naturally happens to most actors when they know the camera’s on them, even if it’s just a slight energy shift. So, because we didn’t know when the camera was on us and when it wasn’t, particularly at that dinner table scene, you were firing on all cylinders all the time. And for me, it was just like having a front row seat at a masterclass with just some of the greats; Jon Bernthal and Jamie Lee, of course, and Bob Odenkirk, and Oliver Platt, Ebon [Moss-Bachrach]. Ebon is in Hold Your Breath with me. We had just had this wonderful experience working together. It was really, really kind of incredible to be part of it. I’m very, very thrilled to have been a small part of it.
DEADLINE: It was exhausting to watch. By the time it was over, I felt like I needed to take a nap.
PAULSON: Well, I surely wasn’t taking a nap when I was shooting that, for sure.
DEADLINE: Completely unrelated, my daughter is a huge fan of your work on American Horror Story, and she told me that before I talked to you, I should watch the American Horror Story haunted mansion bit you did on Ellen. I watched it and it’s one of the funniest things I’ve seen in a long time.
PAULSON: Well, I mean, I’m glad that my personally being terrorized can bring lots of people joy. Yeah. I mean, it was really funny that I should find myself working in that genre so often when I am the biggest mini when it comes to those kinds of things, as evidenced by that piece. Still, it was funny to me after. When I watched it, I was like, “Oh, that’s pretty damn funny.” But in the moment I was like, “I have to go to the hospital.”
