It has been over 10 years since the incident, but Sarah Paulson still hasn’t forgotten a slight by a fellow actress back in 2013—and isn’t afraid to call out said actress by name for giving her six pages of unsolicited notes on one of Paulson’s performances.
“I hope to see you never,” Paulson told hosts Will Arnett, Jason Bateman, and Sean Hayes on the trio’s podcast, “Smartless,” per Entertainment Weekly.
The anecdote emerged after the group was “talking about the theater custom of celebrities coming backstage after a show to meet with the cast when Paulson let loose,” Entertainment Weekly reports. Let’s let the Emmy winner tell the story herself, shall we?
“I did do a play once,” she said. “The last time I was onstage, I did a play called Talley’s Folly at the Roundabout, and the actress—and I’m going to say this, and I’m not going to ask you to cut this out, because I don’t fucking care—this actress came to the play. Her name is Trish Hawkins—hi, Trish! Hi, Trisha! Trish Hawkins came to the play—am I going to get sued? I don’t care, because I think this is outrageous.”
Paulson continued “But she came to the play, proceeded to say—she looked at me up and down and then she went, ‘Your dress is yellow. Mine was pink.’ And I thought, ‘What?’”
According to Entertainment Weekly, it turned out “Hawkins originated the role of Sally Talley in Talley’s Folly, both during its 1979 off-Broadway performances and its Broadway debut in 1980,” the outlet writes. “Paulson, meanwhile, played the same character in the rom-com, written by Lanford Wilson, in an off-Broadway revival in 2013.”
Paulson said her own mother had brought Hawkins to the play because the two were “in some sort of writing group together,” Paulson said. “Cut to two days later, I got an email that was six pages long of notes and a communication to me about what she had done when she had done the play, what she recommended I do. It was outrageous. It was really outrageous. Trish Hawkins, I have not forgotten it.”
The exchange clearly struck a deep nerve with Paulson, “who told the group that she does, indeed, still have the notes, but she never said anything to her mother about the incident,” Entertainment Weekly reports. (Pretty sure she, uh—pretty sure she’s aware now.)
“I just put it back in the file of things my mom has done,” Paulson said.
Co-host Arnett, for one, praised Paulson’s brutal honesty: “I don’t know you as well as these guys, and I have a real feeling that we’re going to be better friends than they could ever imagine,” he said. “I love you for saying that so fucking much.”
Moral of the story? Sarah Paulson does not need your advice, mmmkay? Don’t come for her unless she sends for you (as one Kenya Moore of The Real Housewives of Atlanta might say).
