From Variety · Marlow Stern · · 1m 20s
Sarah Paulson swept the awards, then Hollywood went quiet
She won everything for playing Marcia Clark and became the first actor in history to do it, and the movie offers still never came.
In brief
She won everything for playing Marcia Clark and became the first actor in history to do it, and the movie offers still never came. Awards prove what an actor can do, but casting runs on a different logic entirely, and Paulson spent years waiting for film to catch up. Originally reported by Variety.
The role that swept everything
Paulson's portrait of Marcia Clark in 'The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story' won every major award. No actor in history had done that before.
Then the phone stayed quiet
A clean sweep of television's biggest prizes should have opened the film world. The offers simply never arrived.
“It didn't make sense.”
Her co-stars got the calls
She watched scene partners Courtney B. Vance and Sterling K. Brown walk into major Hollywood movies while she stayed on the outside.
A question with no answer
Same show, same acclaim, different outcome. Paulson was left trying to work out what film executives saw in her that they wanted to avoid.
“What was it about her that the film world refused to embrace?”
Not the ingenue
Paulson names the unspoken part herself: she never fit the young starlet slot movies cast from, and that shaped who got the scripts.
“I Wasn't This Hot, Young Nubile Thing”
The wait ends at TIFF
'Closing Night' is the film role Paulson says she has wanted forever, arriving in Toronto with Oscar talk attached.
The key point
Awards prove what an actor can do, but casting runs on a different logic entirely, and Paulson spent years waiting for film to catch up.
