![]() Sometimes you can just listen and respond in the moment. Sometimes you have to come in with substitutions and really focus on what the relationship is with the other character. As an actor, sometimes, you’re just listening and responding the best you can. These scenes where there’s one woman in the room and ten men - we are documenting history, something that really happened. How did that impact you when you played those scenes? And then, eventually, when she has to go in for the deposition, the conference room is packed with men. Then, at the CPAC press conference, she faces all those male reporters. First, it’s the one lawyer and her husband. One of the things that stood out to me while watching Impeachment is that every time Paula has to recount what happened, she’s almost always in a room full of men. I don’t think she would have actually gone to a lawyer about it if it hadn’t been for Steve. So while I do think her main objective was to please Steve, I think you’re right - that need for an apology goes hand in hand. But unfortunately, most women don’t feel like they have access to that apology or that they can even ask for it. Any woman who feels compromised sexually or feels like they’ve been sexually harassed obviously would want an apology. I, personally, don’t know if she would have gotten so public in her need for an apology if her husband hadn’t pushed her. The two things are intertwined, right?Ībsolutely. But Steve, her husband, really wanted that too. Paula obviously wanted an apology from the president. Sarah Burgess did such a beautiful job of writing this piece, and specifically Paula. For Paula Jones, it was surprising to me that her super-objective was to please her husband. Finding their objective is finding the core of the human. That was really important.īut really the most important thing in any character you’re working on is figuring out what they want. Because her look was something she changed, for me, that needed to be really specific, given the way she was so brutally picked on in terms of her physical looks. ![]() She’s familiar to anybody who was aware of this moment in history, so you want to make sure you’re not creating a caricature of this person - but you want to really be dead-on with her accent. What was the most useful part of your research?Ĭertainly all the video footage I had was outrageously helpful. I know you did a lot of preparation to play Paula. ![]() She was very excited to hear what Jones herself had to say about watching American Crime Story: Impeachment. On a recent Zoom call during a break from shooting her CBS sitcom, B Positive, Ashford talked about how she prepared to play the part, what she sees as Jones’s primary motivation for pursuing her case against Clinton, and how she wound up wearing Jones’s actual clothes in one scene. It’s a complicated part for Ashford, not only because Jones is such a recognizable public figure, but also because, as a performer, she aimed to do what many talk show hosts, comedians, and media figures would not in the late 1990s: portray Jones with compassion and invite the audience to feel empathy for her. The limited series revisits the affair between Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton, as well as the allegations brought against the president by other women, most notably Jones. Twenty years later, the versatile stage and screen actress feels like she knows Jones quite well after playing her in American Crime Story: Impeachment. ![]() “Most of all, I remember how brutally made fun of she was.” “I wasn’t amazingly aware of the specifics of her origin story or exactly what she was claiming,” Ashford says. Her initial frame of reference for Jones was late-night talk shows. Annaleigh Ashford as Paula Jones, and Taran Killam as her husband Steve, in American Crime Story: Impeachment.Īnnaleigh Ashford was a preteen the first time she learned of the existence of Paula Jones, the Arkansas woman who filed the sexual harassment suit that kick-started an impeachment scandal for President Bill Clinton.
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