Like most actors, Sarah Paulson looked at the role of Linda Tripp in the recently acclaimed FX series, “Impeachment: American Crime Story,” as a great acting opportunity.
She was so dedicated to the role that she put 30 pounds onto her slight frame to more closely mirror the character, yet she still required a fat suit.
And that’s where an actor’s traditional reaction to a great career opportunity hit an increasingly controversial wall. Many viewers consider the fat suit an offense noting that perhaps a larger actor should have been given the role.
As Yahoo reported, The Wrap recently hosted the “Power Women Summit 2021”, an online panel discussion where Paulson addressed the controversy.
She noted rightly that this criticism is “particularly gender-specific.” Said Paulson, “I feel men, certainly in our industry, are often celebrated for their desire to do great work. And sometimes I feel it can be misconstrued when a woman wants to do the same thing.”
She called playing Tripp -- the White House whistleblower of the Bill Clinton / Monica Lewinsky scandal -- "the acting challenge of my life,” and that the reaction “has been all over the map. And I welcome it, honestly, because it means I did my job ... It meant the world to me to get to do it."
Related
But of course, the controversy hasn’t been so much about Paulson’s acting chops as much as the use of that fat suit.
Paulson previously opened up about the controversy to the L.A. Times in August, noting: "It's very hard for me to talk about this without feeling like I'm making excuses. There's a lot of controversy around actors and fat suits, and I think that controversy is a legitimate one. I think fat phobia is real. I think to pretend otherwise causes further harm."
And while the actress did express regret about the role afterwards, her acting instinct was to grab the strong part: "Was I supposed to say no [to the part]? This is the question.”
It seems even at 46, Paulson admits this was a learning experience she hadn’t had to grapple with so far.
She told The Wrap recently: "It did hurt my feelings, partly because it felt, as often happens when you're criticized for your work, or when you're celebrated too ... it's very hard not to personalize. It's very hard to not want to say, 'Don't you know I just spent two years of my life and then I gained 30 pounds to play this part?' And that I like, slept, breathed, wept, bled Linda Tripp for two years? So for you to sit down at your computer and decide that maybe this endeavor was not worthwhile, and that maybe I shouldn't have been the one to play it, is so hurtful and also wrong."
“I also know,” she said, “it's a privileged place to be sitting and thinking about it and reflecting on it, having already gotten to do it, and having had an opportunity that someone else didn't have. You can only learn what you learn when you learn it.”
“Should I have known? Abso-f***ing-lutely,” concluded the star. “But I do now. And I wouldn't make the same choice going forward."
The debate over fat suits really kicked in on the release of the 2001 comedy, “Shallow Hal," a controversy that Gwyneth Paltrow commented on in a Netflix video stating the film was a bad decision and a “disaster.”
Related
Another such learning lesson happened for actress Debby Ryan, who in 2018 defended to Teen Vogue her use of a fat suit in Netflix's “Insatiable.” In the film, Ryan played a girl who lost 70 pounds.
“We knew that this conversation needed to be had,” said Ryan. “We knew that this societal brokenness needed to be addressed, but we didn't know how badly it needed to be addressed.”
LISTEN on the Audacy App
Sign up and follow Audacy
Facebook | Twitter | Instagram