Sarah Paulson reconfirmed that she requested for Bette and Dot to be Southern in a 2014 interview with The Hollywood Reporter. She insisted that she doesn’t often request changes to her character. Normally committed to carrying out the script’s vision, she said (at the time) it was the only request she ever made.
Paulson elaborated on her idea when asked why this trait was such an important contingency. “I liked the idea of them living in a place that was quite rural and away from a bustling town or a place they could be hidden,” she explained, which makes sense. Throughout “Freak Show,” Bette and Dot are at odds with one another and the rest of the world, but they also believe in love and second chances. There’s a sheltered mentality there that they wouldn’t have gotten growing up in a more populated area. In a smaller town, they would have been safer.
“My grandmother’s from Alabama, and my father’s from the South, and I was born in Tampa,” Paulson continued. “I felt [like] if I was going to play something so far from myself in terms of playing a person who had another head with two distinct personalities, I wanted something that was going to ground me and make me feel immediately connected to it, and I think the only thing I could come up with was a voice that I thought would be recognizable to me.”
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