She runs from bees and hates planes. But with acting, Sarah Paulson is scared of nothing. She talks about her roles in
American Horror Story and Ratched – and about her ‘creative marriage’ with screenwriter Ryan Murphy
I got a report yesterday saying it was up by…” Sarah Paulson pauses, weighing up whether she wants to reveal the extent of her daily screen time. Then she takes the plunge. “It was nine hours and 52 minutes,” she says, mock-abashed. In a day? She nods. “In a day, yes. Quite terrible. I think it was… doesn’t it break down how much of it was work? There was work on there. So I was doing some of that. But… it’s embarrassing.”
We are at the start of another long screen day for Paulson, who is speaking from her kitchen, at home in
Los Angeles. Her new dog, Winifred, is curled up just out of shot. “Winnie! Would you like to come and say hi?” she coos, in a squeaky voice. “I’m this person! Who does this voice when I talk to my dog!” Winnie is her first dog in nine-and-a-half years; she has the initials of her old dogs, Alice and Millie, tattooed on the inside of her wrist. “She’s very demanding and she has a lot of personality. She’s recently taken to humping me. She’s my child! Why is she doing this, this 11-month-old, precious little thing? I can’t tell you how upsetting it is. She’s not even 8lb. Her arms clamp around me and I’m like, ‘Oh, stop it!”’