Sarah Paulson Just Revealed Her Least Favorite AHS Season
"This is going to be controversial because a lot of people love it."
As one of the only actors to appear in nearly every season of American Horror Story, Sarah Paulson is basically synonymous with the series at this point. But of course, some iterations of the anthology show are closer to her heart than others. When asked if she has a least favorite season, Paulson didn’t hold back. You’d think she could easily sidestep the question by naming one of the three seasons she wasn’t a part of, but instead, Paulson selected a fan-favorite where she starred in multiple roles.
"This is going to be controversial because a lot of people love it," Paulson said when the spicy question was posed to her during her Nov. 4 appearance on Watch What Happens Live. "But I'm going to vote ... Roanoke." She added about Season 6, "It wasn't for me."
In AHS: Roanoke, which aired in 2016, Paulson played the meta part of Audrey, and actor who spent have the season acting as a tortured North Carolina transplant named Shelby in a horror documentary. At the end of the season, Paulson reprised her AHS: Asylum character Lana Winters for one episode.
Paulson has previously gone more in depth about why she didn’t connect with the Roanoke season. “I just don't care about this season at all,” she admitted in 2021 on the Awards Chatter podcast. “I know people will get mad at me for saying it, but for me, this was post having played Marcia [Clark on American Crime Story] and it was what I went to do right after finishing Marcia.”
Because she was so proud of her work on American Crime Story, Paulson started looking at her next AHS obligation less favorably. “I was so underwhelmed by the whole experience because I felt like I had entered into a new place inside of myself in terms of what I thought possible,” she said at the time. “I felt really kind of trapped by my responsibility and my contractual obligation to do American Horror Story. As much as it's my home, and I've loved it always, it was the first time I felt like I wish I could have gone to [showrunner Ryan Murphy] and said, ‘Please let me sit this one out.’”
Since then, Paulson has stepped away from the AHS universe a bit, not making appearance in the show’s ninth, 11th, or 12th seasons. But she is making a comeback for Season 13, which is set to debut Halloween 2026.
