Sarah Paulson is absolutely not here for the public’s morbid curiosity about the age gap between her and her girlfriend.
The 45-year-old performer — who prefers not to label her sexual orientation — has been in a six-year relationship with Holland Taylor, 77, an award-winning actress known for her roles in The Practice and Legally Blonde. Their age difference doesn’t bother Paulson, but in an October cover story for Harper’s Bazaar, the Emmy-winner pinpointed some of the reasons why she thinks her coupledom with Taylor makes some people feel uncomfortable.
Speaking to acclaimed Bad Feminist author Roxane Gay for the story, Paulson said people are preoccupied with the 32 years between them because of an unwillingness to confront mortality and because of other underlying biases. She believes that the criticism reflects “our own ageist thinking and the idea that to be old is to cease to have any desire.”
Even though she’s received mostly positive responses about their relationship, Paulson also had a warning for the people saying unsavory things about the two: “Anybody says anything about any person I love in a way that is disrespectful or cruel and I want to cut a bitch.”
As for the unsolicited feedback about her personal affairs, Paulson described a feeling of ambivalence about being a private person in a public world, especially as a celebrity.
“To feel that I belong to anyone other than a person I would like to belong to, like Holland or my dog or my best friend or my sister … a bunch of strangers claiming me as their own feels a little confusing,” she told Gay. “Since I’m not an expert at figuring out how to move around it, I end up giving more than I want to sometimes.”
As Harper’s Bazaar noted, this isn’t the first time that Paulson has addressed the preoccupation with her relationship. In a 2016 interview with the New York Times, Paulson said, “My choices in romantic partners have not been conventional, and therefore the idea that it’s ‘other’ makes it compelling.”
“If my life choices had to be predicated based on what was expected of me from a community on either side, that’s going to make me feel really straitjacketed, and I don’t want to feel that,” she added. “What I can say absolutely is that I am in love, and that person happens to be Holland Taylor.”
Paulson stars as title character Mildred Ratched in the new Netflix psychological thriller Ratched, a Ryan Murphy-produced project inspired by the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Paulson and co-star Cynthia Nixon both play as love interests in the series.
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