Excitement is ratcheted quite high
working with Murphy, which of their characters they’d like to see get the prequel treatment, and what it was like working with screen legend Davis. Spoiler alert: It was the best kind of intimidating. The following conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.
How are you all feeling about getting back to work on a set?
Stone: I just got a little job that I agreed to do, a fun job. I’m going to work on Sarah Cooper’s special.
They just called me yesterday to see if I’d do a little, one skit with her for her Netflix special. I would play Satan. Don’t you think that’s a fun idea?
Okonedo: That’s really good. You know what, it actually quite works filming. I’ve been filming for the last two weeks. Yeah, it surprisingly works OK.
Stone: Right. They come, they shove the thing up your nose ...
Okonedo: Yeah, there’s a a COVID-19 booth you kind of go through. You’re tested every two days or something. I was so excited, just so full of energy, just pent-up acting energy raring to go. By the time I got on I was like, I am never going to complain again about anything.
Paulson: I’ve had one little toe back in the water. We were about to start [“Impeachment: American Crime Story”] five, six days before the shutdown. So we had only done one prosthetic test. Now they have a start date, which is in the middle of October, which seems absolutely insane to me. But it seems like we are moving in that direction, and I went to work and had a full prosthetic day of putting it all on, with all the new protocols in place: We were all tested, and hand-washing stations, and hand sanitizer stations, in and out of stages. You can only walk in one direction; you can’t enter.
It was nerve-racking, and a lot of people touching my face, applying things with no gloves. And they’re masked, but I wasn’t wearing a mask, so that was a little bit freaky. Part of it involves a real act of trust.
Sarah is well documented on this topic. But for everyone else, tell me what goes through your mind when you get that call about a project with Ryan? What is the appeal of working on one of his shows?
Stone: I was intrigued because I became such a huge fan, particularly watching Sarah, I have to say, when I saw [“The People v. O.J. Simpson”]. I have admiration for Sarah. Sarah has fulfilled so many of the dreams that women of my generation had and fought for, and tried to make occur. And so many of us were laughed out of room after room, and punished for asking, and really tormented because we hoped to do things like direct and not be f— tortured every second. And so it really is such a joy, it just means so much to see this world happening.
And so when I went out to lunch with Ryan and he told me he’d written me this part, I said OK. But I was waiting, because it can be a part or it could be eight parts. You have to see. Are you going to play one part, eight parts, twins, dead people? You don’t know what the hell he’s going to ask you to do. And for me I have to see if it’s something I really feel I can deliver, and I really feel I can get myself around.
Nixon: The thing about Ryan is his imagination seems boundless, but so does his knowledge. His deep sort of cultural knowledge of, not just of art but particularly of movies, and movies from this period, movies from the ’40s and the ’50s ... particularly actresses, in whatever decade they’re in. And he just loves to pull all of us from different, crazy grab bags and throw us together. I’ve been in a lot of big productions in my life, but I don’t know that I’ve ever been in one that was this sprawling, that had so many plot lines, but also so many actors.
Okonedo: I only ever met Ryan once because he didn’t film my episodes. So I just met him when I was in Los Angeles and he asked if I wanted to come and meet him for a cup of tea and I did. And he sat me down and gave quite a few promises, all of which he kept. “I’m going to give you a part in this piece I’m doing,” and he explained about “Ratched,” and he said, “You’re going to have a fantastic time.” And he gave me the cast list, and my jaw kind of dropped to the floor. And he said, “Now, I want you to come play someone with multiple personalities. I think it will suit your acting.”
There’s an element of loneliness to each of the characters you play. What did that illuminate for you about women of that period?
Nixon: I think about Gwendolyn, and I think she’s in this profession that’s so completely male that her even being there is kind of a miracle, but of course then Gwendolyn also has this community of gay women, right? And we see little glimpses of that ... at least in terms of Gwendolyn’s experience, it’s kind of bar culture and sex culture, as opposed to her having a model of kind of a lasting, intimate, romantic relationship.
But if you think about Bucket, even when there is a woman in charge, she’s so under the thumb of the male boss and so eager to please him in a million different ways that it turns her into a kind of a mini Ratched-tobe. And so I think that’s one of the things about the women that we see in the show is when they have power, they don’t necessarily feel comfortable or even think it’s possible to rule the way they would like to rule, were it up to them. They are so eager to please the male bosses, and to be taken seriously, and obeyed.
Can you tell me about what best informed each of your characterizations for these women? How much was it the wardrobe? How much was it the physicality?
Okonedo: It was just all on the page for me, for my characters. Each character had a very specific way of talking that was just there, it was in your mouth, as soon as you said the lines out loud. And then I just worked each character separately. I didn’t join them. I just made each one just as real as I could and worked from it like that because I didn’t feel she’d be conscious when she was becoming somebody else.
Stone: I wanted her to have this weird back story where she kind of made herself up and then became the person she made up. So I wanted her to have a little bit of that mid-Atlantic movie [accent], the way that people talked at that time.
She constantly had reinvented herself into this sort of extremely grand and overdone [person]. And she was just more all the time. She was just extra — extra clothes, extra hats, extra furs, extra stuff, extra behavior, and yet no ability to actually integrate.
Nixon: All of the clothes — not just the heels, but how cinched in you are, how buttoned-up . ... You’re not only wearing stockings with seams and heels, but gloves and hats — I mean, it just is so different from how we are now. And there is a kind of a ladylike-ness to it that just can’t be avoided.
Paulson: Mildred, before we meet her anyway, was somewhat of a grifter. Her behavior is learned. Some of it from films, some of it from the women she watches and sees who are living a particular kind of life. And she has built this facade so that she can pass as a certain kind of woman in different circumstances and environments.
Sarah, obviously Nurse Ratched is fictional, but everyone had this view of her as this monster. Did that view of her change for you at all?
Paulson: I did not even know she had a first name. And I remember hating her and thinking she was quite cruel and how she could do such terrible things, and then when I rewatched the movie, I sort of thought, “Oh, what a terribly sad story about a woman who was probably incapable of challenging [the] patriarchal infrastructure of that hospital.” And what would we feel about Nurse Ratched if Nurse Ratched had been a man? Are we naturally expecting because she’s a woman for her to have her heart and her head integrated in a way that feels palatable to us, and makes us feel soothed?
It’s a unique opportunity to get an origin story for a character. Often you hear from actors that when they’re working on a character, they’re creating their own back story either on their own or in collaboration with the writer. What’s a character that you’ve played that you think is worthy of a prequel treatment?
Stone: My character in “The Muse.”
Paulson: Mine is two. Can I be greedy? Abby and Carol [from “Carol”] because, in the book she had, there was so much there about life with Carol prior to the Therese relationship, which would have been really interesting and fun to do. And also Mrs. Epps in “12 Years a Slave,” I think that would have been interesting. I don’t know if anybody would want to watch it, but it would be interesting.
Nixon: I’m sorry, I don’t have one. I pick up my person where they are, and if there’s a story that I know, then I know it. And if there’s not, I don’t.
Okonedo: I can’t think off the top of my head, really. I often think I’ve played parts where I think, ‘Oh, I could carry on with this.’ So you know the story about them that way round, but not so much. Because then it probably won’t be me playing as well. We’ll be too old when you think about it.
Nixon: I thought about my back-story person, which is Nancy Reagan, because you know how Nancy Reagan invented herself, and I won’t say scandalous things about her, but that’s a story to tell.
I don’t want to end without asking you guys to share what it was like working with the woman who couldn’t be with us today, Judy Davis. She’s such a force in this show.
Paulson: I found her to be incredibly responsive as an actress, incredibly present and inventive. She does this amazing thing. I think the first time we’re in Dr. Hanover’s office where she’s cleaning up, he’s throwing the bust and she’s cleaning up the broken bits and she knocks the dust pan against my skirt. And it’s not scripted that she did that. She just walked right by me and knocked the dust pan against my skirt on her way out. And I remember in the moment, I couldn’t help but play Mildred . ... I was impressed. Mildred was impressed that she did it and also, ‘Oh s—, this is going to be really somebody to contend with.’ My phone case said, Judy F— Davis for the last year and a half.
Stone: I remember when she played George Sand [in 1991’s “Impromptu”], and it was before “Basic Instinct,” and I just watched it over and over and over again. I thought, if she can do that, I can do this...
I haven’t worked with other women. I worked with Meryl Streep [in “The Laundromat”] and that was already like, “Oh, well, hi.” But I worked with men all my life. And all of a sudden I’ve got these great women actresses just turning up left [and] right... For me, as a person who’s never gotten to work with women, whose dream was always to go to work and work with women, it changed me entirely to the core of my soul. I can’t even say, coming from sets where I was playing horse at lunch and smashing my nose with a basketball because I was going to keep up with the guys.
Nixon: You have to really work to get the stories out of [Judy], because of course she has the stories. But I remember Sarah and I were sitting there with her and she starts telling us a story about a film [she] did with Peggy Ashcroft. First of all, making sure we know who Peggy Ashcroft is. And Laurence Olivier is in Peggy Ashcroft’s story that Judy Davis is telling. And after she gets up and leaves to go smoke, I said to Sarah, “Does she think that we haven’t seen ‘A Passage to India?’ ”