he won an Emmy, SAG Award and Golden Globe for her bravura performance as Marcia Clark in last year’s FX miniseries, The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story, but it took Sarah Paulson almost another year to confirm what the TV industry really thinks about her acting chops. Earlier this year, her longtime collaborator and O.J. executive producer Ryan Murphy offered the actress the lead in Ratched, an origin story he is executive producing that focuses on Nurse Ratched, the Siconic, sadistic nurse from the 1975 film One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Murphy shopped the project around to networks, offering a package for the first time that included his frequent muse Paulson attached as star and producer. “That was very exciting and also very scary, because I thought, oh God, what if they take this out, and people are like, ‘No thanks, we’re good. We don’t need a Sarah Paulson show,’” says Paulson. “Thankfully, it all worked out very well.” In the wake of last year’s most acclaimed TV performance, everyone—TV networks and movie studios alike—wants to be in business with Paulson. Ratched sparked a high-stakes bidding war, with Netflix ultimately fending off suitors like Hulu and Apple (which is developing an original TV series strategy) for the project last month, giving the drama a hefty Why the inimitable two-season commitment. And that is only one of three high- profile TV series that Paulson will film over the next year. In Sarah Paulson is the 2018, she’ll begin production on Katrina, the third installment in Murphy’s American Crime Story anthology series for FX, and continue on the other Murphy FX anthology hit that future of TV. started her meteoric rise, American Horror Story. This year’s AHS installment, Cult, debuted last month to BY JASON LYNCH an audience of 6.9 million viewers, and ranks as the year’s No. 3 most-watched scripted cable series in total viewers and the 18-49 and 18-34 demos, behind only The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones. She’ll be back for Season 8 next year, while also appearing in a trio of major movies: Ocean’s Eight (an all-female spinoff to the Ocean’s Eleven trilogy due out next June, co-starring Sandra Bullock and Anne Hathaway), The Post (a Steven Spielberg-directed drama due out in December, about the Washington Post’s decision to publish the Pentagon Papers in 1971) and Glass (M. Night Shyamalan’s sequel to both Split and 2000’s Unbreakable). It’s a slate of meaty TV and film projects that any actor would envy. “Feeling a little bit of the incredible excitement and joy she’s experienced—having her artistry and talent recognized— has been really wonderful,” says FX Networks CEO John Landgraf of Paulson, who has become one of his network’s MVPs. “It’s been fun watching her dreams come true.” Photographed in Rarities at Lotte New York Palace by Sasha Maslov. 2 MONTH ##, #### | ADWEEK ADWEEK | MONTH ##, #### 3 When Paulson first crossed paths American Horror Story as an essential The Emmy memories may be She filmed Cult in L.A. while with Murphy in 2004, guest-starring fall constant, reliably delivering the fleeting, but that role’s impact on simultaneously flying out to New on a Season 2 episode of his plastic audiences they crave most. “The her career has been indelible. “A York for The Post, in which she surgery drama Nip/Tuck as a woman Horror Story model is very smart, lot of people watch Horror Story, portrays Tony Bradlee, second wife of who claimed to have stigmata, “I because you have staying power,” but it’s more of a niche show. I’d Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee, didn’t know that was going to lead says Nick Hartofilis, evp of national been on Horror Story for five or six played by Tom Hanks. Paulson is now to my world spinning on the Ryan investment, Zenith. “It’s a genre that years, and Steven Spielberg wasn’t in rehearsals for Glass, where she Murphy axis,” she says. Neither did people love. You can change the story, calling then, because I don’t think has “a great part. I’m not just in a big the prolific creator. He later cast the and people are genuinely interested Steven Spielberg watches American Hollywood movie with nothing to do.” actress in a 2008 FX pilot that didn’t to start again and see what it’s going Horror Story,” says Paulson. But the Next spring, Paulson will return get picked up, but then lost touch with to be this time. It’s a huge thing to director saw the entire season of to FX to start Katrina: American her, until Jessica Lange intervened have that as a resource to be able to People v. O.J., and offered her The Crime Story, which is based on the on her behalf while filming American tap into.” Maureen Bosetti, chief Post, with no audition required (as book Five Days at Memorial and is Horror Story’s first season in 2011. investment officer, Initiative, agrees: was also the case with her film roles expected to air in 2019. She will play Lange, who starred in The Glass “There’s certain shows we absolutely in Ocean’s Eight and Glass). Anna Pou, a doctor at New Orleans’ Menagerie on Broadway with Paulson want to be in for their stability and Memorial Medical Center, who in 2005, had been spending time with audience. American Horror Story was later charged with euthanizing her former co-star after she moved to has carved out a highly engaged patients during the disaster. “It’s a Los Angeles during filming. audience. It adds a lot of value to great character and a very compelling “L.A. is really not her town, so our overall buy.” story of a very harrowing situation for she was glad I was there,” recalls Of all the acting curveballs a lot of people,” she says. Paulson, who tagged along with Murphy has thrown Paulson’s way, She’ll also shoot another season Lange to an event honoring one of no role has had a higher degree of of American Horror Story next year Murphy’s employees. “It was the first difficulty than that of Marcia Clark for FX. And while “I love working time I had seen Ryan in many years. in The People v. O.J Simpson. “If you at that network more than I can Jessica threw her arm around me, were going to take a face plant, you say,” Paulson will transition from looked at Ryan and said, ‘Can’t you were going to take a big face plant in making hit season after hit season find something for Sarah to do on the front of a lot of people, the biggest one for FX to hopefully doing the same show? It would be so great. I just like being Marcia Clark,” says Paulson of for Netflix with Ratched, as she having her around.’” Murphy, who playing Simpson’s lead prosecutor. steps into the character that won was writing an episode featuring GROUP WALL MACHHAUSEN/THE TYRON MAKEUP: ORIBE/TMG-LA; USING MONZON MATTHEW HAIR: CASEY; CANNON/JUDY STYLING: “I felt an enormous weight to get it Louise Fletcher an Oscar. Six months psychic Billie Dean Howard, obliged right for her. But at the same time, it ago, Murphy sent her the Ratched and gave Paulson the part. After was the most exhilarating thing I ever script and urged her to think long her three-episode arc, Murphy took did.” Langraf concurs, noting that and hard about whether she’d be up her out to dinner and offered her a blind witch in Coven, conjoined Paulson’s masterpiece People v. O.J. for playing the same character for long-term deal to continue with the ‘There is twins in Freak Show and a drug episode, “Marcia, Marcia, Marcia,” multiple seasons. “I thought about show. “I was like, ‘Based on what?’” addict in Hotel. “There is something which delved into her ill-advised it for about five minutes,” Paulson says Paulson. “I didn’t know why he something so incredibly potent about knowing courtroom makeover, “is one of my says, laughing. “The character was was motivated to do that, but he did. that every year, you have no idea favorite episodes of television that so interesting, and of course Louise Then I played Lana Winters, and the what you’re going to get to do,” we’ve ever made.” Fletcher is extraordinary in that rest is history.” so incredibly Paulson says. The People v. O.J. averaged 12.6 movie. I thought, what an interesting Her turn in Asylum the following That’s the case again with her million viewers each week for FX and thing to explore how that human year as Winters, a lesbian journalist potent about Cult character, Ally, who hits won nine Emmys, including Paulson’s being became the human being in the institutionalized in 1964 for being uncomfortably close to home. She first victory after five previous movie.” Signing on as a producer too gay, is what first caused Landgraf knowing that has become unmoored by the results nominations. “It was incredible,” was “the next logical step for me, that to take notice of Paulson’s star of November’s presidential election, Murphy told Adweek earlier this year my voice be allowed at the table in a power. “She was the most important every year, which triggers several of her phobias— of the show’s and Paulson’s Emmy more official way,” she says.