I feel very grateful to have been on a number of fantastic set visits over the years, but one of the biggest treats of the bunch was getting the opportunity to watch Sarah Paulson work on the set of Run. The movie marks Aneesh Chaganty’s (Searching) second feature film and it stars Paulson as an extremely involved and rather controlling mother who’s raised her daughter Chloe (Kiera Allen) in isolation. With Chloe’s 18th birthday on the horizon, she’s itching to get out of the house, and that desire leads her to uncover certain secrets her mother’s been keeping from her.

While on the set of the film in Winnipeg back in November of 2018, I got the chance to watch Paulson and Allen film a tense dinner scene, and Paulson’s attention to detail and her awareness of every element of the production was astounding. It’s no wonder the episode of American Horror Story she directed is a standout. She’s clearly got the instincts for it.

Later in the day I got the chance to sit down with Paulson for a chat about her experience working on Run thus far. Check out the full conversation below to get her thoughts on her proclivity to wear multiple hats on set, what it was like seeing Chaganty operate as a team with writer-producer Sev Ohanian and producer Natalie Qasabian, the challenge Run posed that really excited her, and load more!

You can catch Run when it premieres on Hulu on November 20th.

What are you able to tell me about your character?

SARAH PAULSON: I can tell you she's a woman who loves her child.

How about the movie overall? What kind of thriller are we getting?

PAULSON: It’s an elevated thriller, I feel, in a sort of Hitchcockian - that's a word, I think. I've decided to make it one if it isn’t! [Laughs] At least in terms of style of filmmaking. I think there is an effort being made to evoke that era and also in terms of his style. And it's a thriller with psychological components that are complicated.

With everything you have on your plate right now, what was it about the Run script that made you say, ‘I need to put this on my schedule?’

PAULSON: I saw Searching and I thought it was incredibly inventive. I thought, here's a movie where it's done in this completely unconventional way. I've never seen it done that way. I've never seen a thriller made in that way. It was also just about family, that I found incredibly suspenseful and moving. I was always sort of jockeying to try to see what I could see in the frame. You know, as the viewer, I was wishing they would move the camera to the left so I could see more of this, which creates a kind of compelling viewing experience. I think making a movie at all that works is a huge feat. Making a movie that works and makes you feel something and is just arresting is hard to do. Then when I found out how old Aneesh was I thought, ‘Oh my god. Maybe I want to get on this on the ground floor [laughs],’ you know, before he becomes ruler of the world and I will have had the experience of working with him before the full anointing has begun.

Smart move! I still have his Google Glass ad seared in my brain.

PAULSON: Yeah, it was really something. I watched that after. If I had seen it I hadn't known that it was Aneesh who made it, but I saw that after. It's just impressive. It's really impressive.

Whenever I see a thriller in the theater I love the entertainment value of it, but it also has to have that extra layer. Something that makes you continue to think about it after it wraps up. Can you tease what that might be here?

PAULSON: Things just aren't always what they seem. The character I play has a past and it has informed some of her decisions and her behavior in ways that do, of course, for every person, but what she has done with this past and how she has sort of shifted her worldview to accommodate some of that is kind of compelling, I hope.

Do you refer to her as Mother? I just found that so interesting that they have names, but they're not used in the script.

PAULSON: I always say things like, ‘Well, Mother's doing this,’ and, ‘But that’s because Daughter does …' I do say it like that. I don't really refer to her as Chloe and I don't every think of myself as Diane.

And as I just said ‘mother’ out loud, I got a flash of Psycho, which seems very appropriate here.

PAULSON: Yeah. I wonder if the Darren Aronofsky movie hadn't already happened, if they hadn't already used the word ‘Mother’ if maybe that would be the title of this movie? It's not because I'm trying to make myself the title character [laughs], but I just wonder if it could have been that as well.

How’s it been working with Aneesh as an actor's director? This is only his second film and Searching must have been a completely different experience.

PAULSON: Yeah, I think it's new for him, if I'm being completely honest. He had such a different framework set-up for Searching in terms of how everything had to be within an inch of its life, decided, pre-determined. And working with actors in this capacity where it's a more traditional storytelling journey, I think requires a different set of directing skills. So, I think it's, like I said, kind of exciting to be there when all of that learning is still happening. The thing that's sort of amazing about him is that he's so hungry to know and that's really exciting. A lot of times people get so cynical and we've all been lucky to have been doing it for a long time and you encounter far many more people who are tired and worn out by the whole thing. He's got so much enthusiasm and so much excitement and it's infectious.

It was a pleasure talking to him for that reason, and Kiera as well. It's just so exciting to sit down with someone making their first feature. How has it been working with her and given all of your experience, do you ever feel compelled to give her any advice or guidance?

PAULSON: I always hate giving people advice who aren't asking for it. She's such a capable young woman and I just would never deign to think I had one thing to offer her in terms of anything really. She probably has a lot to teach me, truthfully. She's an extraordinary person, and I just like being around her. She's fun, she's game. She, like Aneesh, is very excited to be here. I have to sort of confront my own like, ‘Oh god, it's just a movie. Everybody calm down.’ [Laughs] But, you know, if I had been her age and had this happen to me, I probably wouldn't be able to sleep much less do anything but stare giddily into the sky. It would be kind of amazing.

How did your experience directing influence your work here? Does it make you more aware of certain things happening on set that you weren't focusing on before?

PAULSON: Well, it's not that I wasn't before. I’ve always had more hats than anyone was ever asking me to wear. I took it upon myself to stick my nose in every department's business, which is really not all that pleasant for people in the departments who very, very well know what they're doing. I think hypervigilant people tend to be - it's both an asset and a detriment to this kind of work because you can become so aware of all the things happening at once that you kind of lose sight of the thing that actually is needing your attention. And on this one I have one job which is to try to bring Aneesh's story to life as best I can. I think it sort of gets in the way a little bit because I have an idea or I wonder if it should be this and it's really not my business.

I’ve always valued being on a set with a team that has an understanding of every department, having that awareness. 

PAULSON: Yeah, but you have to be mindful about not stepping on other people's toes. It's hard. It's a hard thing because you might have an instinct to do it and you have to remind yourself to quiet down.

Can you tell me about not just working with Aneesh, but also with Sev and Natalie as well? Seeing a little filming today, it's fascinating watching Aneesh and Natalie on set because it's almost like they operate as one being.

PAULSON: That’s exactly right and it's an astute observation. Aneesh told me that when I first met with him, before I had even decided to do the movie. We had lunch together and he said, ‘You know, if you end up doing the movie you'll see on set, you know, we kind of work as a team. So, I might come in and give you a note and I might go back.’ I think he was just trying to warn me because it's not a common thing, I think, to watch the director have a sort of mini meeting on his way to talk to some actors about a scene to sort of get everybody's opinion, everybody's sense of things. And on the one hand it's really smart, especially if it's people you really trust, which I think they have a real allegiance to one another and a real sense of feeling that everyone shares the same taste and is seeing the same thing when they look out a window, you know? Whereas if you find yourself in a situation where you're like, ‘Oh, I see a green bird,’ and you're like, ‘That bird is purple,’ and you're like, ‘What?’ That's probably not the person you should be partnering with in some kind of way. [Laughs] So I feel like it's sort of extraordinary that they have found that in each other and have such trust and really can finish each other's sentences and really respect each other's point of view. And they do. You're really right, [they] operate kind of as one being. 

On the other hand I sometimes would like to know that I'm getting a note or an idea presented by the man from which this has sprung. Although this is really Sev and Aneesh together creating this script. But it's an interesting thing. It's a challenging thing as an actor to sort of wait while you hear - Natalie has a voice that is a very, sort of deep voice and I can hear the bass tones of it in the other room, and it's a little disconcerting sometimes because when he comes in to talk to me I don't know whether, ‘Was that a Natalie note, or is that a Sev note, is that an Aneesh note?’ It doesn't really matter, but it is sort of interesting; it does spark my curiosity in a way that I don't know is maybe all that helpful for how I might approach the scene. Do you know what I mean?

Absolutely.

PAULSON: Because, you know, when you're entrusting yourself to a director it's because you're hoping that you guys do have the same sensibility and you may feel that way with a director but with the other two people you may know them less well, and you don't know exactly what's going into everything. But it obviously works and they have come up with a formula that works for them, and I'm here to try to see that through so if it ain't broke, don't fix it I guess.

I was reading this great interview you did with Sandra Oh, I believe with Variety, and you had mentioned when you take on a new project, you like that feeling of being scared and being challenged. Was there anything specific about Run that posed a challenge like that for you?

PAULSON: Well the whole thing is a sort of knife's edge dance, actually. Until you see it, you won't really know what I mean, but, calibrating it is going to be challenging. Some of it won't be up to me in terms of how it's executed or how it's cut, so it's sort of gonna be up to me to figure out how to assimilate all the parts of it and have it fit together properly, and that was a little daunting to me. You know, Aneesh is a young filmmaker. Having made one feature and a Google Glass commercial, I mean, it's far less than I ever did at that age, that's for damn sure. You know, you are putting yourself in someone's hands creatively and you have to be able to rely on them. I never, ever, ever, I mean, every once in a while I have a sense that something was either really wrong or really okay in a scene and I can walk away from it with some semblance of, I wouldn't say confidence, but acceptance. Or, I fight for another one. So I feel a little like it requires a certain kind of trust and it's a dice roll no matter whether you're working with someone who’s been doing this for a hundred years or someone who's just starting out, but I think it was scary enough to me to put myself in his hands because I was so interested in the story that I thought, ‘I'm just gonna risk it.’ I mean it's all a risk no matter what. You sometimes look at a piece of paper and it's like, ‘Well, it's got this one, and this one, and this one is directing, and this one's producing, and this one wrote it, and these are the actors,’ and it can still not work. It's not a guarantee. So you just have to decide, what kind of experiences do I want to have, and what do I want to go do, and how do I want to challenge myself, and how do I want to push myself? I haven't really been the lead in a movie, studio movie, really. Unless I'm forgetting something but I don't think I have. My television life is different and so there's also a part of me that wants to prove that I can do that, too. Maybe even to myself more than to the world. But, can I carry something like this? Can I? I'm not carrying it alone obviously, but can I do this? Do I want to take this chance and potentially face plant? But what can you do? If you don't run the race, you'll never know, you know? So I've got to try.

If you'd like to read more conversations from the set of Run, click here for our chat with Chaganty and here for our interview with Allen.