Sarah Paulson Says Turn as Linda Tripp Is “Greatest Work” Despite Critical Response of “She Sucks”
Sarah Paulson made a cameo on Montana Avenue in Santa Monica on Saturday night to participate in a Q&A following the Beyond Fest premiere of her new Searchlight Pictures thriller Hold Your Breath.
And what a lively session it turned out to be inside the Aero Theatre, as the chat not only covered her work in the Karrie Crouse- and Will Joines-directed film (streaming Oct. 3 on Hulu) but also touched on other high-profile performances and a few notable co-stars.
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After receiving wild applause from the enthusiastic crowd when it was mentioned that she’s the (newish) owner of a Tony for Appropriate, the Emmy winner was asked if she navigates spaces differently based on the project. “Sure, I do actually and I have since I played Linda Tripp in [Impeachment: American Crime Story],” said the veteran Ryan Murphy collaborator of the playing the polarizing figure in the 2021 retelling of the sex scandal involving President Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. “Nobody liked that program and nobody liked me in it except for me. Critically, they were like, ‘She suuucks.’ But, to me, it’s the greatest work that I’ve ever done — to me.”
It’s not the first time Paulson has gotten candid about the response to Tripp. During a FYC panel in June 2022, Paulson said, “Nobody wanted to challenge their experience or expectation of what she was, and what they thought her to be, and they didn’t want to be invited inside the experience because she was a person who betrayed someone, and all that is true. There are real truths about things that Linda did that are just undeniable. It’s hard, I think, to rewrite what we’ve already written and subscribed to in our minds, so it shouldn’t surprise you, but I found it to be utterly devastating. Devastating.”
That role marked the first time she started working with a movement coach named Julia Crockett, who has since become a trusted collaborator. “She has sort of changed the way I work,” praised Paulson, who added that she brought Crockett on for Hold Your Breath to help her play Margaret, a mother in Oklahoma in the 1930s who is struggling to keep her family safe from the region’s dust storms while staying sane amid the threat of a sinister presence.
Paulson broke a little bit of news by saying that Claire Foy was originally set to play Margaret but dropped out. “I don’t know what the reasons were why she didn’t do it, but I don’t really care because I got to do it instead,” she quipped. Paulson noted that she was intrigued by the idea of working with first-time feature directors like Crouse and Joines, who had previously directed a handful of shorts. “I just thought, what an interesting thing to have a horror movie or a psychological thriller/horror movie that is grounded. Really, the spine of the movie is a story of a mother who is in the midst of a terrible grief of having lost her youngest child. The descent into madness becomes purely out of this fear of not being able to protect her children.”
She then joked that she can relate to that as someone who feels “a hair’s breadth away” from losing her grip. “That sanity piece is like, I don’t know, it feels like a tenuous hold I’ve got on it.”
Saturday night’s event was a double feature. After Hold Your Breath, Beyond Fest (built in partnership with American Cinematheque) presented a screening of Sean Durkin’s 2011 dramatic thriller Martha Marcy May Marlene, for which he won a best director prize at the Sundance Film Festival. Paulson starred opposite Hugh Dancy and Elizabeth Olsen in her feature film acting debut.
Asked to comment on what she recalls of the experience, Paulson explained, “I remember just being sort of startled by Elizabeth Olsen and her talent and thinking and also how really sort of regular she was. She had no airs about her. I don’t know why, but I had some idea that just because her siblings [Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen] were famous actors and clothing designers, that somehow it meant because she grew up in a Hollywood family, which I had not grown up in, I just thought inherently [she] would be some sort of monster. In fact, she’s just one of the greatest people I’ve ever had the good fortune of working with, and right at the jump. Every time I see her, she’s exactly the same.”
During the audience Q&A portion, a fan asked Paulson if characters stick around with her after she’s wrapped the project. “I made a joke earlier about not having children, and there’s probably nothing nerdier than what I’m about to say, but every part I play is always going to be part of me,” she answered. For all intents and purposes, every person I played or tried to inhabit is a child of mine of sorts, because I am mothering it. I am bringing it into the world. I didn’t create it because I didn’t write it, but at the end of the day, any really wonderful director will say that once the actor starts performing the role or starts to inhabit it, it becomes theirs. You try to take as good care of it as you would any other person that you loved or cared about. They all kind of swirl around in there, which, like I said, makes me one crazy lady.”
Though she’s become known for dramatic roles and genre fare, Paulson said she’s game for something lighter. “If someone asked me to do a fucking comedy I would do one, but no one’s calling.”
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