Sarah Paulson hides ‘weight gain’ for Linda Tripp role beneath sweats as Ryan Murphy defends casting

Amid backlash over her casting as Linda Tripp in American Crime Story: Impeachment, Emmy winner Sarah Paulson took a stroll with a female friend in LA on Thursday.

The Tampa-born 46-year-old was also walking her rescue dog Winnie, whom she and 78-year-old girlfriend Holland Taylor adopted from Paw Works last year.

Sarah hid the so-called ‘weight’ she ‘gained’ for the role of the former Defense Department whistleblower beneath a baggy pink sweatshirt and black sweatpants.  

‘Sarah, particularly, really had been dedicated to that role and she wanted to do it naturally and she gained weight to play Linda Tripp,’ ACS co-creator Ryan Murphy told ET last week.

‘And then, you know, you put the wig on her and it’s sort of an amazing thing she’s doing physically. It’s very transformative. It reminds me a lot of what Christian Bale did a couple years ago [in Vice] – that sort of dedication. 

‘We talked a lot about how she has to keep it up for many many months until it’s done shooting, so it’s hard.’ 

However, pictures of Paulson on set from April 26 confirm she definitely had help from padding or a fat suit, which was blasted in an April 30 article by Refinery29. 

Other recent examples of fat suit-wearing stars include Viola Davis in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (2020), John Lithgow in Bombshell (2019), and Gary Oldman in Darkest Hour (2018).

The Run actress also shaved her eyebrows to more authentically portray Tripp beneath prosthetic make-up in the third season of the critically-acclaimed FX anthology.

‘I think the scripts are very special. I really do. I really do. And it’s a huge stretch for me as an actor and that is thrilling – thrilling to me,’ Sarah told Collider in November.

‘And to find myself at 45 and almost 46-years-old being given a part that, you know, in terms of the complexity, there is nothing about this woman that is – what’s the right word? She’s complicated. 

‘And it’s not like a Marcia Clark situation where you ultimately have to confront your feeling of how wrong we were. Not that you won’t feel some of that for Linda when you have a little bit of a context for what her life was.’

Linda famously recorded her phone calls with White House intern Monica Lewinsky in 1997 confessing to her affair with President Bill Clinton, which lead to his impeachment.

Impeachment – based on disgraced author Jeffrey Toobin’s 2000 book A Vast Conspiracy – will also feature Beanie Feldstein, Billy Eichner, Clive Owen, Annaleigh Ashford, and Betty Gilpin, Edie Falco, and Mira Sorvino.