What Producers Told Sarah Paulson About Her Hair Is Absolutely Ridiculous

There’s a good chance that in your mind right now, Sarah Paulson still looks like Marcia Clark from The People v. O.J. Simpson, with that famously controversial short, curly, brown hair. And after reading more about the hair pressure the actress has encountered in Hollywood, we get why she actually enjoyed trying out Clark’s hairstyle—at least it wasn’t cookie-cutter leading-lady stuff. Read: long, kinda wavy, golden blond.

In a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the naturally brunette Paulson recounts how earlier in her career, she gave her hair a Real Housewives makeover in order to land bigger roles. “I’ve never been asked to play the [romantic] leading lady without having to be a blond,” she says. “I don’t mind it, I like the blond—but to be told that in order to be considered a romantic lady opposite some hunky guy, I need to have long blond hair that looked very L.A. Real Housewives? It does do something to your brain. You go, ‘Gosh, so the way I came into the world is not as appealing as it would be if I were altered in some way?’ That’s a funny message to extend to a person. And that’s the other thing: I did it. I put the extensions in, I blonded it up.” Here she is blonding it up in 2006.

Hey, no judgment here—the bills aren’t gonna pay themselves, and you gotta break in somehow. And Paulson did the Housewives proud; we’re 100-percent certain Lisa Vanderpump would approve. Yet Paulson’s revelation (well not really, we already pretty much knew this stuff happened in Hollywood, right?) makes us fully appreciate why she enjoyed her Marcia Clark transformation. “I really found it very liberating. It was scary, don’t get me wrong,” Paulson told us in March. “I’m a 41-year-old woman wearing that, like, Chia Pet, broccoli-looking thing on my head. It was hard, but it was liberating. It really was.”

What’s even more liberating is seeing the American Horror Story star’s current non-cookie-cutter blond, which plays up very on-trend dark roots in an edgy short crop. We’re pretty sure television viewers find this look much more riveting than those same-old Bravo waves. No offense, Lisa. (At least she’s brunette?)

Watch makeup artist Kayleen McAdams share how she turned her passion into a career: