All’s Fair Needs Twice As Much Sarah Paulson
By now it’s likely you’ve seen clips from All’s Fair, Ryan Murphy’s new Hulu legal drama (“drama”) about rich, sexy female lawyers who only represent hot, rich women in high-profile divorces. The performances from the main cast — Kim Kardashian, Naomi Watts, Niecy Nash-Betts, and Glenn Close — are deranged, the dialogue is ham-fisted, and the whole designer-filled spectacle seems made for TikTok, not television. But there’s one woman on the show who makes the surreal real, and that’s Sarah Paulson. The longtime Murphy collaborator is both chewing the scenery and on the verge of breaking in every single scene she’s in, but in the first three episodes, out now, she takes a backseat to all the drama surrounding the few men in the show. In the words of another female lawyer, Elle Woods: I object!
Carrington “Carr” Lane (Paulson) careers into the series as a once-meek female attorney at a big and boorish law firm, working alongside attorneys Allura Grant (Kardashian) and Liberty Ronson (Watts). After Allura and Liberty get the blessing of the one female partner, Dina Standish (Close), to bail and create their own woman-only oasis, they’re forced to choose one person to come with them, and they pick seasoned investigator Emerald Greene (Nash-Betts). Carr may be a good lawyer who was overlooked by her prettier-than-her colleagues, but she is a twitchy weirdo who immediately flips out in Dina’s office after hearing the news, breaking antique decorations and screaming obscenities. “That was a gift from Golda Meir,” Dina says calmly to her, a line that exists somewhere between jokey and earnest. But then we barely hear from Carr, aside from a particularly nasty letter accompanying an equally nasty Edible Arrangement, until episode two, when she steals the scene yet again.
Sue Sylvester ran so Carrington Lane could walk ???? #AllsFair pic.twitter.com/02e9vhnglD
— sarah paulson's pr (@sarahpaulsbean) November 4, 2025
Paulson is so good on All’s Fair that it only makes it more clear how ill-suited just about everyone else is to the program. Nash-Betts is fun but nowhere near as wacky to watch. Watts is playing everything earnestly, while Kardashian barely registers. Close and Teyana Taylor get closest to the assignment, but Paulson is doing laps around all of them. It’s such a bummer, then, that she’s only in a few minutes of every episode and that Carr’s not even really the series’ big bad (that would be men — conceptually). Paulson has worked with Murphy on and off (mostly on) for the last several years, but she’s really in her wheelhouse in All’s Fair. She’s mean, she’s slaying, she’s funny, and she’s the only one who seems to be able to make this nonsense dialogue sing. “There are rumors about you,” she says to Dina at one point, giving the r in “rumors” a tenor it’s never had before. In every single scene she’s in, Paulson is both selling the fantasy of the show and seemingly on the edge of breaking. She’s not been this good — or this unhinged — in a while. All’s Fair may boast a harrowing 0 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, but at least Paulson is giving it 100 percent.
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