This New Role Is Right Up Sarah Paulson's Alley

Sarah Paulson's crime drama days are not over yet. In fact, you could say they are just beginning. Considering the actor's Emmy, Golden Globe, and Screen Actors Guild Award-winning role as Marcia Clark in The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story, we all should have seen Paulson's latest gig as the star of Amazon Studios' serial-killer drama coming. According to The Hollywood Reporter, that latest gig is Lost Girls.

Amazon's Lost Girls adaptation will be based on real-life investigative reporter Robert Kolker's 2013 nonfiction book of the same title. Lost Girls revolves around the story of a mother in search of her missing daughter. While out in the woods in Long Island, NY, she stumbles upon four murdered bodies. Those are the quote unquote lost girls. (Or maybe they are all lost. The mother, the missing daughter, the murdered bodies. I'm sure there's a triple entendre in there somewhere.) Regardless, Paulson's got one dark, demanding role ahead of her. What that will be — either a role that puts her somehow in the family of these girls or somehow on the side of the law — hasn't been confirmed yet.

Good thing dark and demanding are two things Paulson does best. From her tortured characters in American Crime story (Hypodermic Sally) to the emotional weight of playing Marcia Clark (and in effect contributing to the lawyer's belated redemption), Paulson has proved that she can take on just about anything.

This will be the first narrative feature from documentarian Liz Garbus (known for Academy Award nominated What Happened, Miss Simone? and The Farm: Angola, USA). But, as noted above, the story is true. The murdered bodies of four girls were actually found by a mother searching for her daughter. Kolker’s book was published years after the event, and still, the killer has not been found.

Lost Girls (the source material) takes a scrupulous look at the underbelly of the internet, particularly for online escorts. Dwight Garner of The New York Times called it "a lashing critique of how society and the police let five young women down." Not unlike the critique of the true life case that inspiredThe People v. O.J. Simpson, many feel that society, the police, and the justice system let Nicole Brown Simpson down, and arguably Marcia Clark as well. The parallels are too glaring to ignore.

Given her talent and recent wins for her work in The People v. O.J. Simpson, there truly doesn't seem to be another actor out there right now who would do this story more justice than Paulson.