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Holland Taylor has revealed why she and her longtime girlfriend Sarah Paulson don’t plan on getting married.
The 81-year-old actor spoke candidly about her relationship with Paulson, who she’s been dating since 2015, during an appearance on Andy Cohen’s SiriusXM showRadio Andy on August 8. When Cohen asked Taylor if she and her partner planned on getting married, she acknowledged that she didn’t think so.
“We’ve never talked about it with any interest,” she said. “It doesn’t seem to mean to us what it means to a lot of people.”
However, she clarified that she and the American Horror Story star “certainly would” get married “if they wanted to.”
After Cohen gushed over the famous couple, the Two and a Half Men alum went on to describe why she and Paulson, 49, are such a good fit for each other.
“We do have a wonderful resonance. We are very interested in the same kinds of things, and yet we share big differences,” she said. “We have a big generational difference, which worries me for her sake.”
However, Taylor acknowledged that the generational difference in her relationship isn’t necessarily an issue. In fact, she’s been able to support Paulson through recent moments in her life.
“A lot of the things that she is going through that are very emotionally and important to her right now, I went through 30 years ago, 40 years ago,” she explained. “And she brings them up in my memory and I think, ‘Of course this is hard.’ Or, ‘Of course, that’s great. Of course, that’s important to her.’”
She went on to celebrate Paulson winning a Tony Award last June for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Play, which recognized her work in Appropriate on Broadway. “That joy was so thrilling to see,” Taylor added.
Paulson has previously opened up about the dynamics of her relationship with Taylor. During an episode of the SmartLess podcast in May, Paulson shared that while she and her partner “spend plenty of time together,” they don’t “actually live in the same house.”
“We’ve been together for a long time now and I think part of it has to do with, we’re together when we wanna be and we’re not when we don’t,” Paulson added.
When asked if she and Taylor would consider having separate rooms, rather than living in different houses, Paulson clarified that they still often share a bed, noting they “fall asleep holding hands.”
“I like to sleep near her. I don’t want to be around her the rest of the time,” she quipped about her and Taylor having their own space, before adding: “Just kidding.”
She also discussed their different experiences when dating in the past, explaining that Taylor had never previously been in “a long-term relationship” before Paulson. That wasn’t the case for Paulson, however, as she said that before dating Taylor, she’d been in two previous relationships that lasted more than five years.
“And so, her life, and to get to be her age and sort of not having really cohabitated with someone for a long time,” she explained. “I think it was a lot to sort of all of a sudden have me and all my neediness in her space.”
Paulson and Taylor had actually met long before they started dating. While appearing on The View last November, she revealed that she and Taylor went out to dinner with actor Allison Janney and the late screenwriter Buck Henry 10 years before they started dating. At the time, Henry snapped a picture of the three actors on top of a Lamborghini parked outside of the restaurant and sent them all copies of the photo.
“It was on my refrigerator in my little apartment in West Hollywood for 10 years,” Paulson said. “There she was in my kitchen.”
When asked by TV host Joy Behar if she had a crush on Taylor at the time, Paulson acknowledged that she didn’t but admitted that “maybe something was percolating and it was unbeknownst to me”.
