Ryan Murphy‘s latest Disney+ series, All’s Fair, is poised to deliver the designer-clad, high-stakes drama he’s famous for, this time in the world of female divorce attorneys. Two of the most formidable forces in the ensemble – and in the Murphy-verse – are Sarah Paulson and Naomi Watts, whom I had the chance to speak to over Zoom ahead of the series premiere on Tuesday. 

All’s Fair follows a team of female divorce attorneys who leave a male-dominated firm to open their own powerhouse practice. Together, they navigate high-stakes breakups, scandalous secrets and shifting allegiances, both in the courtroom and within their own ranks. The cast is stacked with household Hollywood stars, including Kim Kardashian, Niecy Nash-Betts, Teyana Taylor, Matthew Noszka and Glenn Close.

Paulson’s Carrington Lane is the razor-sharp antagonist, a lawyer who stays behind to fiercely battle Kardashian’s lead, Allura Grant, by representing her cheating husband. For Paulson, who is known for her chameleon-like transformations, this role offered a much-needed professional catharsis.

She confessed that embracing Carrington’s lack of concern for likability was a soul-cleansing exercise. “There’s something incredibly liberating about being able to let your underbelly out into the world. I’m not worried about being particularly pleasing and that is something in my life I probably worry about too much, and it’s probably good for my soul and I’m not saying throw caution to the wind and just treat everyone terribly. I don’t mean that. I’m just saying it was very fun to get to come to work, and the gift of it was, I don’t have to worry about being likable,” she continued. “Not that I think about that too much either, usually, but it does cross your mind when you’re like, oh gosh, here I am playing this lovely woman in this movie and her television program. I should try to be something. But I didn’t have to do any of that.” She joked that she just wished for a “peg leg and a black tooth” to fully lean into the role.

This adversarial role even led to one of the show’s most talked-about moments that can be seen in the trailer – a deliberate, on-screen “troll” where Paulson’s Carrington dresses exactly like Kardashian’s character. “I remember when Ryan wrote that. I was like, ‘Wait, I’m gonna do what? I don’t get it,’” Paulson recalled. Ryan Murphy’s instruction was simple: “No, you’re just trolling her.”

If Paulson’s Carrington Lane is the barbed foil, Naomi Watts’ Liberty Ronson is the bedrock of loyalty. As a brilliant British attorney within the breakaway firm, Watts sees the show as a manifesto for female solidarity against systemic imbalance.

“If I can just get corny here, the group of women… playing ladies in charge, fighting for each other… I like to get invited to go to work with good people,” Watts stated, emphasizing the genuine bond that formed off-camera.

Watts asserted that Hollywood is finally reflecting real-world shifts, challenging the old guard. “I think there’s been a lot of fantastic change that we’ve witnessed in real time, just in recent years, like last year we had three women in their 50s driving the story of a sexual woman: Pamela Anderson, Nicole Kidman and Demi Moore. That just didn’t happen and so we have people like Ryan Murphy to thank because he’s creating this whole lineup of women who all have phenomenal parts and all in the one place. It’s usually, you’re lucky if you get to see another woman in a show, it’s usually a lineup of men and you are in conflict with another woman.”

“So yeah, the narrative is definitely shifting because of people like Ryan and we’re half the population, she continued. “We want to see ourselves reflected in stories all the time and at every age. So I just feel incredibly grateful. And to your point about the patriarchy, it couldn’t come at a better time. I mean, we’re seeing the patriarchy is alive and well. And so let’s dine out on this high level group of women who are taking charge.”

The high-stakes world of All’s Fair leans in on the women making bold, strategic moves, both in the courtroom and their personal lives. For Paulson and Watts, the show’s theme of taking charge is deeply personal. I asked them about their own pivotal career decisions that reflected their own real-life “power moves” that paved the way for them to tackle such dynamic, uncompromising roles.

In an industry obsessed with youth, Watts used her platform to empower women in their 50s and so wrote a book on perimenopause and menopause, Dare I Say It: Everything I Wish I’d Known About Menopause – a move that was a radical, powerful statement. “I was really sitting on this idea for a very long time because I thought I would age myself and in Hollywood, it’s such a sin to talk about aging,” she said. “I was sure it would be career suicide and turns out that it’s the opposite, and Hollywood, at its heart, is a progressive industry. We do see great change take place here and so I think it’s actually been a really wonderful payoff for certainly for me and hopefully for others too.”

For Paulson, whose career is defined by her willingness to take on massive challenges, her power move mirrors the unpredictable nature of a Ryan Murphy script: saying “yes” when she’s terrified.

“Because oftentimes I could be too terrified to do something. I mean, in a work environment, that might just be absolutely terrifying to me, I don’t know how to tackle it. I don’t know where to begin. I don’t know how in the world I’m going to be able to pull it off,” she said. “And I say, yes anyway, and that I feel like it’s a kind of communication to the universe or to myself that taking the risk is sort of the big leap towards yes something fruitful always comes from it. It doesn’t always mean that I give a great performance or that I have a successful experience, but the act of saying yes to the opportunities in my life that are sometimes very scary feels like a power move to me.”

This deep trust in taking risks is precisely what she shares with Murphy, citing her acclaimed, yet less celebrated, role as Linda Tripp on Impeachment: American Crime Story. “Nobody else in the world would have let me play Linda Tripp, but Ryan Murphy and it was for me, the professional acting feat of my life, the thing I’m the most proud of, it was probably the least celebrated. It was for me something that I can’t believe I pulled off and I’m very proud of it… Somehow his belief is that you can find it within yourself, I find that to be an incredibly spectacular gift that he’s given me.”

It’s clear that the trust they place in Ryan Murphy is the very engine of their performances, certain that whatever outlandish, fabulous or deeply challenging scenario he constructs, they are capable of delivering. We’re seated for this show. 

All’s Fair premieres on Tuesday, November 4, with three episodes, followed by new episodes weekly on Disney+ in Canada.

Feature Image: courtesy of Disney+.