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How Sarah Paulson and Jessica Lange Became Ryan Murphy's Treasured Muses

Ryan Murphy opens up about his friendship with his two biggest stars

By Kristin Dos Santos Mar 31, 2017 3:00 PMTags
Watch: Ryan Murphy Gushes Over Sarah Paulson & Jessica Lange

The next episode of FX's Feud: Bette and Joan isn't just the series' best episode yet—it centers on the 35th Oscars in which the truly unimaginable happened—but also marks the long-awaited reunion of Ryan Murphy's two greatest muses (and former co-stars on American Horror Story), Sarah Paulson and Jessica Lange.

Lange, who's already been killing it for four episodes as Joan Crawford (just give her the Emmy already), is joined by Paulson playing Oscar nominee Geraldine Page and as expected, their scene is glorious. It's one scene. On the phone. But every second of it is decadent. As is the entire episode—directed by Murphy. You know how everyone watching The People vs. O.J. Simpson freaked out over "Marcia, Marcia, Marcia"? Well, friends, this is that episode.

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Of course, anyone who follows Murphy's shows—American Horror Story, American Crime Story, Feud—knows he casts Lange and Paulson every single chance he gets. Sometimes at the same time on two different shows. (Why can't you play Marcia Clark and a dead ghost junkie at the same time?)

But what exactly is the secret to becoming a Ryan Murphy muse? Murphy broke it down for us in the exclusive video above, and the two takeaways you must know about Paulson and Lange are:

  1. They don't just learn their lines. They learn everyone's.
  2. They don't just read the scripts. They do their own research.
  3. They don't just have input on their own shows—they have input on all Ryan's shows.
Todd Williamson/Getty Images

Basically, Paulson and Lange became Murphy's most trusted, go-to actresses and confidants because they have worked their asses off.  These ladies have work ethic for dayyyssss.

"What I love about [Sarah and Jessica]," Murphy tells us, "is that they don't suffer fools and they're all about, ‘How can we make this better? Let's keep working at it.' They're a fount of ideas and they work really hard and prepare a lot. Jessica and Sarah are people who come to the set and know all of the parts, so it's very interesting to me to say, well what do you think about that B subplot, even though you're not in it, do you have an opinion?"

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They also dig deep when it comes to researching their roles and the history behind them. "When I was doing [The People v. O.J. Simpson]," Murphy recalls, "and then when I was doing Feud, literally, they had pages Xerox'd out of magazines or books and would say, ‘There's one sentence in here that I'm obsessed with. Could you figure out a way to turn this into a scene?' They challenge me."

Murphy, who has worked with Lange since the inception of AHS in 2011 and with Paulson since 2003 reveals he uses them as a trusted sounding board.

FX

"They are both two women that I'm close to and I call them up and talk to them about everything," Murphy explains. "It's great fun to call up Jessica Lange even if she's not going to be in something and say, ‘Do you think this is something I should do?' …She's smart and she's always right. Sarah's always right, too. But they're both perfectionists and they give everything to a project and then they get exhausted and then you have to wait until they are restored and get B vitamin drips. [Laughs.] But I love them both and I think of them for everything that I do just because I love being around them."

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Sunday's episode of Feud, which takes a deep dive into the insanity behind the scenes—and ultimately up on the stage—of the 1964 Academy Awards (Bette Davis was nominated; Joan was not) feels like a lock for its own awards glory. The directing, the acting, the writing, the set design, the hair and makeup and costuming—they're all devastatingly sophisticated and the only shame of it all is that the episode does end.

And then of course, there's all the painstaking work that went into re-creating a televised award show half a century later. No small task.

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"Some it was like, ‘It was perfect except her chin was like an eighth off,'" Murphy tells E! News. "And you'd have to go back in. So we spent a lot of time and energy on that. We loved it."

Hear more about what Murphy has to say about the "terrifying and exhilarating" task of re-creating Hollywood history in the video above, and his thoughts on Paulson and Lange in the video at top.

Feud airs Sundays at 10 p.m. on FX.