'The People v. O.J. Simpson' Postmortem: Sarah Paulson Talks Portraying, Meeting, and Revering Marcia Clark

There you have it, “Marcia, Marcia, Marcia,” the best episode yet of what has been FX’s completely addictive The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story miniseries. The writing, and the all-star supporting cast, of course, were great, but the standout, as she has been throughout the series, is Emmy and Golden Globe nominee Sarah Paulson and her portrayal of Simpson murder trial prosecutor Marcia Clark.


Paulson talked to Yahoo TV about what it was like to be Clark during the “Trial of the Century,” what it was like to play the much maligned prosecutor, and what it was like to meet the woman she admires like a “childhood idol.”

After “Marcia, Marcia, Marcia,” it feels like we all owe Marcia Clark a big apology.

I think so, too. I think that would be a really good idea.

Why do you think this story and this trial is still resonating with people after more than 20 years?

I sort of feel like it’s a combination of a bunch of things, but chiefly nostalgia, and the sort of unfinished business of it. A lot of people can identify where they were in their lives, their work lives, their married lives, their teenage lives, when this event took place. You can go right back to that moment in your life, and you’re interested in seeing what your big take is on it now. I think the other part is how it just doesn’t feel like it was ever resolved in a way that felt good or right to anyone, or to most people. Not to mention the idea that we were able to go behind the scenes, and see all the things that we didn’t know were going on, the conversations that were happening that we were not privy to. It takes you really inside the belly of the beast, and that’s a very different vantage point from which to see this.

The biggest takeaway from “Marcia, Marcia, Marcia” is how little we really knew about just how much pressure Marcia Clark was under, from so many different sources: her ex-husband, who was publicly airing their custody issues; her boss, who was recommending she see a style consultant; Judge Ito; the media and public’s scrutiny of every aspect of her appearance; and being a single mom with two young sons. How did she get through this, every day, for a year?


I think the thing that we do with most people we watch who are people we don’t know on television is that we assign certain beliefs or character traits to them, even though we’re guessing, based on what we perceive their behavior to mean, or to be. The truth is, I feel like somehow we let Marcia become a kind of animatron. She wasn’t a person to us… she was not real. She was a cardboard cutout of a person. You could say whatever you wanted about her, you could have as many opinions as you wanted about her and just say them publicly, and people would forget that this is a woman who… You asked the question, “How did she make it through?” When we were shooting this episode, I thought every single day, “I do not know how she did this.” Two tiny children at home, an ex-husband who was not protecting her, people at work deciding that she should look different, be different, smile, wear a different outfit, being just pummeled and raked over the coals at every turn… not to mention, when was she was supposed to be sleeping? When was the time where she was supposed to rest? I guess she was supposed to not… she was supposed to be trying on different lipstick colors instead of sleeping, I suppose, you know?