The “underwhelming” TV series Sarah Paulson regrets starring in
Sarah Paulson is easily one of the most beloved TV actors of our time. Delivering frights and funny remarks, she’s a leader in the dark comedy world. But she admits that there was one series she really didn’t want to be part of.
Paulson has always played dynamic characters, giving her all in every role. Part of that comes down to her long-term collaboration with comedic horror hero, Ryan Murphy, as the pair now know each other’s skills and limits totally.
Murphy is considered to be one of the most powerful men in TV, but he met Paulson when he was still a relative newbie. They met on the set of Murphy’s breakout hit show Nip/Tuck, in which Paulson had a tiny part. Despite the minimal screen time, it was big enough to impress the writer and director.
“She seems like my cup of tea,” Murphy recalled thinking, noting the actor’s obsessive focus on her projects, claiming she “has an attention to detail, like me.” From then on, the duo seemed to take on the world together as Murphy launched American Horror Story with Paulson always playing a vital role in the ever-changing storyline.
While each season of the show is a totally different tale and relies upon a changing motif, Murphy likes to bring back the same actors as a kind of revolving cabaret cast. Sarah Paulson, along with Evan Peters, Jessica Lange, Emma Roberts, and Denis O’Hare, are mainstays, appearing in several seasons. All in all, Paulson has been in the hit show for nine seasons.
Anyone who has seen the show knows that some seasons are undeniably better than others, focussing on a more gripping or interesting storyline in comparison to the weaker ones. Paulson knows that, too. Regarding season six, Roanoke, she regrets not asking to sit that one out.
“I just [didn’t] care about this season at all,” she admitted to the Hollywood Reporter. After recently doing another of Murphy’s shows that captured her attention far more, Roanoke felt like a step back. “I know people will get mad at me for saying it, but for me, this was post having played Marcia [Clark in The People vs OJ Simpson], and it was what I went to do right after finishing Marcia.”
Roanoke focuses on a paranormal documentary, showing part of the filming and then becoming more meta as the show descends into found footage that shows the scary goings-on. Paulson plays a British journalist who presents the fake documentary My Roanoke Nightmare. As far as American Horror Story plots go, this was one of the weakest, especially as it came after the incredible fifth season, Hotel.
Paulson couldn’t shake the feeling that this role was limiting in comparison to the character she’d just left behind. She said, “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,” she admitted. “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’. You know, let me out.”
It wasn’t the end of Paulson’s journey with the show, though, as she returned again for the seventh season, Cult. But since then, Paulson has been more selective with which iterations of the show she’s involved in. Rather than being a guaranteed feature, she drops in and out when characters take her fancy.
