When you work with producer-director Ryan Murphy, says Judith Light, attention to detail isn't just a given, it's a gift.
"The way I work, it fills me with a kind of emotional understanding of the character," she says. "It produces a feeling. When I'm talking about what shoes I put on, all that helps me create the character."
Shoes were just one of many crucial details that helped Light craft her character in Impeachment: American Crime Story, Susan Carpenter-McMillan.
"Hair, makeup and wardrobe are top notes on every Ryan Murphy show," says Light, who previously worked with Murphy on the second installment of the American Crime Story anthology, 2018's The Assassination of Gianni Versace (for which she received an Emmy nomination), and the 2019 Netflix series The Politician.
All were essential to capturing the essence of McMillan, the affluent anti-abortion activist and self-styled "conservative feminist" who became an advisor and spokesperson for Paula Jones, the former Arkansas state employee whose accusations of sexual harassment against Bill Clinton dovetailed with the discovery of his relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
For the meticulous Impeachment crafts teams, no consideration was too small — down to McMillan's watch, her wedding band, even her fingernails. The same care, albeit it at a lower rung of the socioeconomic ladder, was devoted to Jones, played by Annaleigh Ashford.
In the series, the decked-out McMillan and the dowdy Jones forge a complex relationship in which the viewer is left to assess its dynamic: is McMillan's advocacy for Jones sincere or self-serving? This shading is also conveyed through additional details in the Impeachment script, by acclaimed playwright Sarah Burgess.
"Does Susie Carpenter-McMillan want to help Paula Jones? Or is she manipulating her?" Light asks. "As human beings, we're not just one way. She's a smorgasbord of many different things."
Let's talk about Susan Carpenter-McMillan's very iconic look.
That wig is so extraordinary. The way a character looks always comes from Ryan. I mean, Ryan has to see everything. And if that wasn't right, and that wasn't approved, I wouldn't be wearing it. So, it really is a team effort. Everybody participates in how it looks.
Plus, we have pictures. We were playing real people. So, you have to be accurate. And you have to be responsible to that. That's the thing I love about working with Ryan — he oversees everything. So, you can have this incredible comfort of knowing that it has been researched, looked after. And he signs off on it. Then he delegates to these brilliant people — every hair, makeup, wardrobe person on every show that I've ever done for him. We do camera tests, so we make sure it looks exactly accurate.
How did Ryan reach out to you? Did he say, "I have this great, wild character for you to play?"
No, he did that with The Politician. (Laughs) With this, it was like, "Here's this character. I want you to play it." I was also connecting with Brad Simpson, one of the producers. We were going to do this back in April of 2020. Of course, that went by the wayside pretty quickly. We kept trying to figure out how we were going to do it and when we were going to do it. It was just a question of, "I want you to do this." It was like, "This is who it is. Can you do it? Will you do it?"
When you can, and Ryan asks you — I want to be there. I love it. It's like a long-term repertory company.
Your character had real flair and was genuinely skilled at staging memorable events. What sort of research did you do?
All the research that you would think that I would do, all the research that they gave me. I read Jeffrey Toobin's book [A Vast Conspiracy]. And I, too, remember at the time. I remembered her. I watched her on Bill Maher. A very, very interesting combination of a person. I read about her and her husband and where they lived in California. I spent a lot of time researching her history and her background. She had a very complicated past.
What she came to was what I found so interesting. Sarah Burgess wrote so brilliantly to this. Who knew what a conservative feminist was? In a way, she created that niche for herself. She was very religious and thought it was very important to be relating to religion. That was a stronghold for her in many ways.
And yet, she was also a feminist; she believed that there were women who had been done wrong. And she believed that Paula [Jones] was one of them. And she was there to make sure that was heard. And she would speak truth to power.
But she was also characterized as someone who saw Paula Jones as an opportunity to raise her own profile. Is that how you thought about her?
It's very interesting, the way I think about creating a character. I think when you talk about it that way, you're placing judgments on people. And one is saying, this was opportunistic, or to get these adjectives to people that are too simple to explain the human psychology right of someone and what drives them. And for all intents and purposes — and I'm not saying, look, these are very complex characters — they're all very, very different.
And I'm sure that some of what was driving her was her comfort of being in the public eye, her passion to be the outspoken one, the one that shocked people. And yet, at the same time, there was this person who had a lot of complicated history, sexually and otherwise, that made her come to that opportunity, find that opportunity and seize on it and say, "I'm going to help fix this."
Do we think she's heroic? Maybe in some ways. In other ways we think she's manipulating. So, you have to be your character's best friend. Judging them never works, because you cannot find the soul of them to create that for the story, through the writing, through the direct to the audience.
So, some people are going to see this and say, "Oh, my gosh, what a manipulator she was." Some people are going to say, "You know what? Right on. You go, girl. Good for you."
She has a lot of confidence. She isn't scared to take over the room. But she thinks Paula Jones is a dim bulb.
She says, "Dumb as a rock."
She's clear-eyed about the situation that she's inserted herself into.
That's the point, and I really value the way you're speaking about it. That kind of complexity. That kind of challenging complication, to play those things and to be directed well by all the people who had come in to direct us, really makes the difference. It makes these characters not cartoon characters, not caricatures; it gives them depth, makes them human. You understand the human condition.
And you're right. She felt that Paula was not as bright as she might have been. But that someone might take advantage of someone in that way. And Susie's eyes were very wide open to all of them. And to the vulnerability of somebody like that. So, it's parallel tracks. And I love that you got to talk to Sarah Burgess at length, because she's just a genius.
She's super interesting.
Really interesting. And the women of all this. I mean, we just shot the cover for [emmy]. And to be with everybody, and to be with this team? It's a great thing. I've known Sarah Paulson for years. I love Edie [Falco]. Annaleigh Ashford is just extraordinary in this. You get to see all these amazing, wonderful women. Beanie [Feldstein], Cobie [Smulders] and all these great, talented, open, team-player women that you don't have all the time all at once. That's Ryan's way.
Did you primarily work with Annaleigh? Was it almost like being in a two-hander?
All of us were in our own world. That's why it was such a great experience to get together with all the gals [for the photo shoot]. It was me, Annaleigh and some of the men.
I really loved scenes when your character would just bowl over the men in the room.
Like, "Who is this woman?" Also, take note of the fact that Paula in her vulnerability — and when you watch Annaleigh do this, she's just extraordinary. I mean, I hate to use that word over and over again. But she's amazing in this in this role and just a doll to work with. We've known each other from the Broadway world, the theater world in New York. So, we've known each other before.
Susan was able to convince Paula that she needed somebody like her. That that kind of ownership, power, taking over, let me tell you the way it is. Telling her to turn down the $700,000 that was being offered to her? Talk about brave! Susan believed that she was going to be able to get more, and then they changed the legal team.
So, when you read about this, or you do the research, or you read Jeffrey Toobin's book, you can see the kind of thinking that was going on in Susan's head about how to get [Paula] to be supported in a way that would also put a spotlight on the way that Clinton was maybe allegedly treating her, but also how other men treat women. It was a larger issue. And, you know, come to here we are in #MeToo. But she was part of the beginning of that kind of thinking in relation to women.
I feel like the world has come to view Monica Lewinsky and Paula Jones in a very different light. I wonder if you feel like your character will be viewed differently as well.
It was interesting because Brad Simpson and I were talking about this. Paula and Susan might come off, both of them, as more heroic now than they might have in the past because of the nature of the culture, what's happening in the world, the way women are viewing situations. And in that world, you'll see a new filter through which people will view these characters. I think that's very astute. And very possible.
Now, there will be other people who will say, "No, no, no. It's black and white. This is this is the way it was. This is what happened."
But what does it mean for a young country girl to say what she did? Paula Jones started the whole thing. She got the whole ball rolling. Which is why she's so prominent in this series. People drop that out. They say it's one woman or another woman. But it's Paula that landed square in the middle of this, just saying what happened. And then it led into the investigation about Monica Lewinsky.
People were looking, they were checking, they were moving toward. The moles were out. And they were circling and looking for something. But Paula was very much in the beginning.
Was Paula Jones interested in justice? Or did she just want to mollify her husband, who was embarrassed by the revelations?
You're going back to the same question that we talked about in the very beginning. Is Susie Carpenter-McMillan manipulating Paula? Or does she really want to help her? That's why this is such a powerful piece that will draw people in. It has the complexity of the characters. So, yes, in light of that, that was probably very much a piece of what was going on.
But as human beings, we're not just one way; we are very complicated. And within the human condition, there are so many aspects. It's not simplistic. Somebody's reasons for doing something have a lot to do with their own background, their own psychology, their own fears.
I mean, with Paula, "What if [my husband] leaves me? What if I'm alone? What will I do if I have children?" All of that is going on.
When you create a character, you have to create from the larger overall. What is their want? What is their desire? What is their need? What is driving them? And it's a smorgasbord of many different things. And I think you're absolutely right on, there was definitely that part of her.
What did you like about playing Susie?
Somebody who walks into a room and can take over? There's a real deliciousness to watching that. And like you were just noting about the scene with the lawyers, she didn't care what people thought about her. And that, I thought, was so delicious to watch. A way to move through the world. And I'm not talking personally — I'm talking about from this character. It's a delight.
It's so tasty to create a person like that, to find the places in yourself that you can pull from that are those pieces, those places, and that everybody looks around and looks at her and they're completely gobsmacked, even though they think she's nuttier than a fruitcake.
I feel like Susie is one of those women who thinks of her very specific, put-together appearance as an impenetrable force field, as armor. That how she looks is part of her power. Is the specificity of the look part of being in a Ryan Murphy production?
First of all, I have a conversation with our costume designer. Hair, makeup and wardrobe are top notes on every Ryan Murphy show. Every character, whether it's a made-up character or not — when we did The Politician, there was that very specific look. So, talking to the wardrobe, hair and makeup people, all of that as part of her look. Down to the nails. If you look at those nails, that was that time.
She's saying, "I'm wealthy. I know how to choose the proper dresses. I am sophisticated. I have money, I know what I'm doing. I look good." And those are all qualities that she brought into that. Same thing with the eye makeup. There's this sort of silver white eyelid that was very specific to Susan's makeup. The same thing with the jewelry. It was all very specific. We had a wonderful prop master. He gave me a very specific watch that had that kind of money look. The wedding band — down to those kinds of details.
When you're playing something like that, you look at what you're wearing. For somebody like me, the way I work, it fills me with a kind of emotional understanding of the character. It produces a feeling. When I'm talking about what shoes I put on, all that helps me create the character.
Because Sarah Burgess comes from theater, did you feel that attention to detail responded to the detail in which she writes? I think that there's a ton of small details in the episodes that make you think you know the story, but it's richer than what you thought.
Well, the story itself was always very rich. It took getting somebody like Sarah Burgess to express that level of detail. I think you're absolutely right on about her specificity.
And it may be. I mean, in Hollywood, there are writers' rooms filled with playwrights. Their attention to detail, the timing of certain things of substance. Not that television and film writers don't do that. I also think there was a real connection, speaking with Ryan about the way he wanted it written so that people could really see the detail and the understanding and the underpinnings of these characters within this story, which makes something much more interesting.
I mean, look at this. The specificity of the dog that Susan Carpenter-McMillan has, and that dog is in two scenes now. So, what does it mean when you have that dog there?
What does it mean when you see in Susie's house that one of the rooms is peach and one of them is white? You're right, there is that kind of specificity. And it happens to be not that she's a playwright, but that she just happens to be an extraordinary writer, an extraordinary writer of humans.
I think people are going to formulate their own opinions about each one of these characters as they watch it. And I think that's one of the things that's going to be really compelling in this show.
Did you ever meet Susan Carpenter-McMillan in real life?
(Shakes her head no)
What about Paula Jones?
No, no, no.
Did you know people who know them?
No, no.
I'm interested because, for example, Margo Martindale told me that Lucianne Goldberg lived close to her. I was thinking it would be interesting to be in proximity to someone you're playing.
(Almost shouting) OH MY GOD. Listen, when you're playing a real person, it's a real responsibility. I think it's better to back away from that. Just because you want to be deferential, responsible, respectful. But I didn't know that [about Margo].
In between shooting, I've been back in L.A., organizing everything. This is the best thing that could have happened with Covid, right? I found all the articles that I had saved for some reason during that time of the impeachment. I have to tell this to Ryan and to Brad. I found all these articles about what led up to the impeachment and Kenneth Starr, who is now himself in a little bit of hot water. I found all this stuff. And I was shocked.
I got a thing I got from [Bill Clinton's Deputy Chief of Staff] Harold Ickes. I'm looking at all this stuff and thinking "Why in God's name did I save all of this stuff?" All these newspaper articles. I thought I'd better tell them that I've got all this stuff.
It was captivating.
Particularly if you have political curiosity. If you have interest in the way that the world runs and works. I want to live in it. I want to know about it. I'm curious about the way we as humans think and operate and do the things we do. Look at Melania [Trump]. Not what she thought she was getting into. She thought she was marrying a rich guy. Okaaay. Whoops. Not so fast, Melania. Now you're the First Lady of the United States. She didn't want that job.
I'm fascinated by both [Donald and Melania Trump] getting vaccinated before leaving the White House and never telling anybody. I think we have a little perspective. But I think we're going to look back on that time and think, "This was a turning point in our democracy in a way that we never thought or expected."
This interview was edited for length and clarity.
