This just in: Emmy-award winning icon Sarah Paulson is...bored? Or she was, anyway. Yes, even for the most celebrated actors in the biz, there are days on set when apathy creeps in and sucks the purpose right out of their work. And sometimes, it’s not just a day but an entire job.
On a recent episode of the Hollywood Reporter’s “Awards Chatter” podcast, Paulson revealed that she had felt “underwhelmed” while filming a certain season of “American Horror Story,” the Ryan Murphy anthology on which she has appeared for the better part of a decade (she’s worked on eight out of the show’s nine seasons).
Sarah Paulson Boils Down Her Secret to Giving a Great Performance During the interview, Paulson didn’t hesitate to admit feeling downright unenthusiastic about filming “Roanoke,” the show’s sixth season. “I just don’t care about this season at all,” Paulson recalls thinking at the time.
The actor elaborates, saying she’d just come off of her Emmy-winning turn as Marcia Clark in “American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson,” another Murphy joint, and felt the experience had raised the bar for her. “I know people will get mad at me for saying it, but for me, this was [after] having played Marcia,” she says. “It was what I went to do right after finishing Marcia… I was so underwhelmed by the whole experience, because I felt like I had entered into a new place inside of myself in terms of what I thought possible, in terms of what I might be willing to see if I can do. I felt really kind of trapped by my responsibility and my contractual obligation to do ‘American Horror Story.’ ”
Paulson, certainly, doesn’t mean to be ungrateful for the experiences she’s had or to Murphy himself. But she goes on to admit she wished she could have opted out of at least that round of AHS. “As much as it’s my home and I’ve loved it always, it was the first time I felt like, I wish I could have gone to Ryan and said, ‘Please let me sit this one out,’ ” she says. “You know, ‘Let me out.’ ”
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