Sarah Paulson Reflects on Last Meeting With Marcia Clark: 'She's a Wonderful Woman'

Sarah Paulson is looking back fondly on her bond with Marcia Clark, the O.J. Simpson prosecutor who inspired her work in American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson. Nearly a decade after the miniseries aired, Paulson, 50, revealed that the two still keep in touch.

During the Television Academy Hall of Fame at J.W. Marriott Los Angeles on August 16, Paulson noted that they almost reunited when Clark was set to attend her 50th birthday party.

"She's a wonderful woman," Paulson said, quoted by a news outlet. "We emailed and she was supposed to come to my 50th birthday bash, but at the last minute had to work and so she couldn't. I almost saw her six months ago. But that was it."

Paulson humorously described her landmark birthday celebration as one of the best events she's ever hosted. "It was just superb and I'll never do it again," she said. The event featured a DJ and, intriguingly, a big glass bowl of cigarettes for her guests. "Once you've done a big birthday party, it's like I threw myself a wedding. I married myself basically," she quipped.

The actress faced significant pressure when taking on the role of Marcia Clark in Ryan Murphy's FX series, which also starred Cuba Gooding Jr. as O.J. Simpson. In a previous interview with the Television Critics Association, Paulson expressed her initial hesitation about portraying Clark.

"[I felt] both sort of elated and completely worried that I wasn't going to be able to pull it off," she said. "But there is a kind of magical thing that happens sometimes, which is when Ryan believes it, you sort of tend to believe it yourself."

Paulson's performance garnered critical acclaim, earning her an Emmy Award for outstanding lead actress in a limited series, along with a Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild Award. Clark even supported her at the 2016 Emmy Awards.

Reflecting on Clark's experience during the Simpson trial in 1995, Paulson commented, "Having two small children and a husband who betrayed her and the public nature of all that scrutiny, which she was completely ill prepared to handle, it's like walking into a battle without any armor."

"She just didn't have the skin for it," Paulson continued. "She didn't have any of that razzle-dazzle that Cochran had, and they all had. She just wasn't designed as much for public life."

The actress acknowledged the weight of her responsibility in portraying Clark.

"The most challenging part of it was just my own mental awareness that Marcia Clark walks the planet now, and that this is a real person I'm playing, and the responsibility of wanting to get it right," she stated.

Paulson concluded, "I had done so much research and watched so much footage and read so many books, as everybody did, that I came to really revere her, both as a legal mind and as a person. And the idea that I was going to be representing her somehow was really scary, a kind of heavy load to bear."