The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
‘I would be an absolute nutbag to say no’
Paulson marvels at assemblage of marquee female talent in heist caper ‘Ocean’s 8’
Sarah Paulson says director Gary Ross didn’t want to assume she’d say yes to a part in “Ocean’s 8,” the latest installment in the heist movie franchise — a politeness that was unnecessary, given how instantly appealing the screenplay was to her.
“He said, ‘Take a look at the role of Tammy and see if it interests you at all,’ “Paulson said by phone from New York City recently. “And I just said, ‘Gary, it’s going to interest me to be in a movie with some of the most extraordinary performers on the planet, all of whom are
women, and based on or inspired by a new iteration of a franchise that’s much loved.’
“I would be an absolute nutbag to say no,” she says. “I didn’t really care what the part was at that point.”
“Ocean’s 8,” in theaters, offers up a twist on the franchise led by actor George Clooney as Danny Ocean through three previous movies. In this one his sister, Debbie Ocean, played by Sandra Bullock, gets out of prison after a five-year stint during which she devised the perfect caper: to steal a priceless diamond necklace during the annual Met Gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
In addition to Paulson — who plays Tammy, a suburban mother who also happens to be a world-class fence (an expert at moving stolen goods) — the cast includes Cate Blanchett, Anne Hathaway, Helena Bonham Carter, Mindy Kaling, Awkwafina and a relative newcomer named Rihanna.
“I’d never been a part of something like that, and I don’t think any of us had,” Paulson says of the powerhouse cast. “I mean, can you name any movie where there are this many women with an equal measure for the most part, all carrying the whole thing together?
“So it was just, I don’t know, it was pretty thrilling,” she says. “I think it wasn’t lost on me how rare and special it was, and how part of me wished I didn’t feel that way. Part of me wished I’d had a thousand experiences like this.”
Paulson says she knows she’s been a bit spoiled in recent years, having worked so extensively with writerdirector-producer Ryan Murphy, including every season of “American Horror Story” as well as “American Crime Story: The People vs. O.J. Simpson,” for which Paulson won an Emmy for her portrayal of prosecutor Marcia Clark.
“He’s always been interested in telling the stories of women, and women over 40, and people of all ethnicities and sexual preference,” Paulson says. “The paucity of women in rich roles and all that stuff has not been as extreme for me because of where I’ve been working and for whom I’ve been working most significantly.”
But while she had worked with Blanchett on the 2015 drama “Carol,” and the friendship and respect that grew between her and Bullock on the set of “Ocean’s 8” led them to work together on the upcoming Netflix release “Bird Box,” the rest of the women in the cast she primarily knew through random encounters at industry events over the years.
“You have fleeting moments of connection and conversation only to never see them ever again,” Paulson says. “Because odds are if you are in a movie where you are the woman in the movie, there isn’t another character likely to be played by one of these women. Because you can have multiple protagonists who are men, but you don’t typically have multiple protagonists who are women.”
All of which added a richness to the already fun experience of getting to be part of this talented crew of women criminals who, in order to pull off a highstakes heist at the Metropolitan Museum, actually shot inside the museum for about 10 days, longer than any film production before.
“That just made it feel very glamorous and sort of like you were on the verge of getting caught, or getting in trouble every time you walked the halls,” Paulson says of the after-hours shoots that started once the museum closed for the day and had to wrap before it opened the following morning.
“I felt like I had broken in,” she says. “It was pretty exciting and I think we all felt a little bit like: ‘How cool is this? We’re in the middle of the Met. It’s 2 in the morning. What are we doing here?!’ “
Working with pop superstar Rihanna might have been almost as exciting, Paulson says.
“The thing about Rihanna that’s so interesting is that she’s so stealthy,” she says. “I mean that only positively, because what I mean by that is she was the ultimate observer. She was quiet, but she wasn’t quiet checked out, she was quiet present, taking everything in, learning, listening, interested, curious.”
She was also incredibly personable, Paulson says.
“My way of dealing with my anxiety about being around her, because I was sort of having fangirl-itis, was just to like constantly sing in her face and try to deal with my nervousness by being like, ‘I love you!’
“She was just so immediately sweet and said something nice about my work in ‘People vs. O.J.’ She had a way of defusing I’m sure what is an oft-experienced thing of people gushing all over her and gushing about her to her face.”
And then there’s The Dress, which deserves its uppercase letters for how special it was. Each of the eight women had custom couture gowns designed for their characters by world-class designers, going undercover in the kind of glamour one would naturally wear to the Met Gala as a guest or a criminal. For Paulson that turned out to be a blue velvet Prada dress, for which she was allowed to offer creative input.
“It was absolutely designed by Prada but they wanted our input based on our character,” she says. “I got to say, ‘This would be great, this would be a very Tammy-esque thing to have,’ and that was a thrilling thing to do.”
Talking about The Dress reminded Paulson that she’d intended to end up with it in her own closet.
“Because it was made for me, and it’s a one-of-a-kind thing that would be a very special thing to own,” she says. “I think I gotta send an email because I think the way it was left when we were done was, ‘You don’t know, we may need to reshoot something, so we can’t give it to you now.’ And then I just dropped the ball — actually I’ve got to go because I’ve got to make a phone call.”
She’s kidding about ending the interview, because she still had a few more things she wanted to say about how happy she is with making “Ocean’s 8,” and how she hopes it finds a big audience this summer.
“Getting this movie made wasn’t the easiest thing in the world, even though it’s these eight women and some of them incredibly powerful and can get movies made,” Paulson says.
“I think the goal is that this movie, if it does well, means that there are more opportunities for more films with female-centric stories to be made. At the end of the day some things work. Fingers crossed.”