Do we like Sarah Paulson?
Our score: 8 out of 10. A clean record on harm and a decent one on how she treats people, with a few public stumbles that she has owned.
Paulson is one of the most decorated actors of her generation, and the awards came the hard way, through stage and television work. Her first Emmy was for playing prosecutor Marcia Clark in The People v. O.J. Simpson, and she won a Tony in 2024 for Appropriate. She has now spent a decade-plus in Ryan Murphy's orbit, including ten seasons of American Horror Story.
The nearest thing to a recurring stoush is the Linda Tripp fat suit in Impeachment: American Crime Story. When criticism came, she didn't dig in. She told the Los Angeles Times she regretted it, that the controversy over fat suits was legitimate, and that she wouldn't make the same choice again.
On the harm check, we went looking and came up empty. We found no anti-LGBTQ+ campaigning, no conspiracy-theory slide and no climate or vaccine nonsense. Her recent work is Murphy's Hollywood stable, and her wider film and stage credits sit in mainstream drama, with nothing we found tying her to the culture-war studios.
What she has said points the other way. In 2016 she told NOTOFU magazine she'd kissed her then-girlfriend at the Tonys because it was simply what you do for someone you love, per PinkNews. At the 2017 SAG Awards she took on the immigration ban, said silence wasn't golden, and told viewers to donate to the ACLU.
In 2023 she reportedly sponsored a full day of free Dallas screenings of Monica, a trans-themed drama she wasn't connected to, and the cinema's marketing director said she'd contacted IFC herself. Nobody was asking her to do that, which is the point. She has also said she didn't want to be pigeonholed as an activist, so the support has come in actions more than slogans.
The Met Gala was the latest dust-up. She wore a dollar bill as a blindfold, and the design was labelled Blinded by Money. Fox News reported that anonymous social media users called it hypocrisy at a $100,000-a-ticket event, while others said she isn't the one percent and the night raises money for the Met's Costume Institute. Where you land depends on whether you read it as a protest or as a prop, and she hadn't commented in what we read.