Great-grandmother inspired Sarah Paulson's 'Hold Your Breath' character

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 2 (UPI) -- Sarah Paulson said she drew inspiration from her great-grandmother in the film Hold Your Breath , on Hulu on Thursday, because the historical horror film was set during her relative's lifetime.

Paulson, 49, plays Margaret, a mother awaiting the return of her husband on their remote homestead in 1930s Oklahoma, when a stranger (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) arrives. Paulson wore her hair like she's seen in photos of her great-grandmother.

"She would have been alive and young at the time the movie takes place," Paulson told UPI in a recent Zoom interview. "Oftentimes, women in that era and beyond tend to wear their hair the way they wore it at the prime of their lives."

Paulson said her great-grandmother died shortly after she was born, so she never knew her. However, Paulson shared a photograph with directors Karrie Crouse and William Joines, who agreed it should be Margaret's look.

Paulson's co-star, Annaleigh Ashford, also had significant focus on hair in Hold Your Breath. Though blonde in most of her roles, Ashford returned to her natural brunette to play Margaret's friend, Esther, as Esther would not have had access to hair styling products.

"I wanted to really explore what I would have looked like in that moment," Ashford, 39, said.

She said the desert environment caked in her hair, and though it was "too gross," it was authentic for the setting.

"I was so dirty all the time," Ashford said. "I don't know any other way to say it, but we were dirty for the entire time we filmed."

The stranger is not the only threat to Margaret and Esther. The pressures of holding down her family home during the Great Depression gets to Margaret's psyche.

As Margaret descends into madness throughout the film, Paulson said she tracked the stages of her character's decline in her trailer.

"It was a psychotic calendarI kept tacked to the wall of my trailer that had every single moment mapped out," Paulson said. "I could always reference it."

Paulson began with the script in order. Because the film was shot out of order, she re-ordered her notes according to the schedule of shooting days.

"I would look at the day's work when I would come in in the morning or the night before," Paulson said. "I would sometimes run back to my trailer and look at it and then run back to set, go, 'OK, I know where I am now.'"

Having played disturbed characters on the series American Horror Story , Paulson said she has never mapped out a role in quite as much detail as Hold Your Breath . This is partly because in a series, she does not have future episode scripts.

"Sometimes. I think it's very helpful to not always have the complete information," Paulson said. "You're playing something in an incredibly committed way and then you get an episode three episodes down the line, you're like, 'Oh, none of that really happened. That was all in her brain. Good to know.'"

Esther is also in crisis during Hold Your Breath . Though the film centers on Margaret, Ashford said she found Esther's hopelessness challenging to portray.

"In the end, you still always want something," Ashford said. "Sometimes, you want to disassociate. You don't want to believe. That's your form of giving up."

The stranger offers faith and solutions without practical means to back them up. While Margaret remains skeptical, this gives Esther hope.

"While Margaret is disintegrating, Esther is finding hope and faith and light," Ashford said. "It was really a special narrative twist and approach to have two characters having arcs that are parallel -- but going the opposite directions."