Why Are We Still Putting Actors in Fat Suits?

When the show was announced, my immediate thought on who should play Tripp was Yellowjackets star Melanie Lynskey or Melissa McCarthy. Paulson’s casting felt like a copout from the start. Not to mention, the use of copious prosthetics for her role was in direct contrast to casting Beanie Feldstein, a noted average-sized actor, to play Lewinsky. And it’s pretty jarring to see the pair in scenes together, because you can tell Paulson isn’t actually that large. She’s a twig!

Paulson, to her credit, has vaguely acknowledged how people might be annoyed that one of Hollywood’s thinnest leading ladies spent hours putting on a plump costume. In an interview with IndieWire published on Monday, Paulson defended her use of ample fake poundage, emphasizing that the people who applied the pounds are Emmy nominees. “When you have people you’re working with who are extraordinary artists like the people I was working with for my hair and my makeup—all of whom have been nominated for Emmys, which is just an incredible recognition—it’s so wonderful. I was able to really immerse myself inside this character because I looked in the mirror and I didn’t see me at all,” she told IndieWire. “That was totally thrilling.”

I bet it was “totally thrilling” to merely play being fat and disliked because your body is too big and doesn’t conform to societal expectations. Though in Tripp’s case, maybe the personality was a compounding issue. This is not about Tripp, though! This is about Paulson and her fat suit.

Paulson added on mannerisms and affectations, but not too many. “There were just a lot of physical, idiosyncratic behaviors of Linda’s that I incorporated, and I didn’t even use all of them because if I’d [have] used all of them the audience would have been like, ‘Jesus that’s really doing a lot,’” she told IndieWire. So having too many mannerisms is “doing a lot” but wearing a fat suit is totally fine. Got it.

Another thing Paulson said was important was getting the manicure correct, “the way she used her hands to talk; she had pretty hands that she always had manicured.” While the nails looked nice, it doesn’t mean they got Paulson’s hands correct. When an actor is playing fat, the prosthetics on the hands rarely look real —maybe the wrist is the proper size, but the fingers are usually still bony or too knuckly. This is exactly what happened with Paulson’s Tripp.

“I wish I had been more aware of thinking about all of that in a responsible way,” Paulson said in the interview. “Obviously, at the same time, you look at Sean Penn on Gaslit and you look at Gary Oldman as Winston Churchill, Christian Bale [as Dick Cheney]. Transforming yourself is one of the joys of the craft.”

The arts need to be protected. Actors should be defending their craft. But a fat suit is not dotting up for Avatar’s green screen or being transformed into a battle-tested orc. It’s fine to be thin—but it’s 2022. It’s tired to still have actors play being fat.