Hold Your Breath Star Sarah Paulson on Bringing a Thriller to Life in the Dust Bowl

Movies have a way of romanticizing bygone eras, as even the most deadly of periods in history are depicted in ways that highlight the enticing elements that set those times apart from contemporary challenges. The all-new Sarah Paulson-starring thriller Hold Your Breath, however, takes place during the 1930s in Oklahoma, putting the story right in the middle of the Dust Bowl. As if surviving these ecological conditions weren’t challenging enough, the film depicts the arrival of a sinister force that could prove to be even deadlier than the dust that blows its way into homes on a daily basis. Hold Your Breath lands on Hulu on October 3rd.

Hold Your Breath is described, “In 1930s Oklahoma amid the region’s horrific dust storms, a woman (Sarah Paulson) is convinced that a sinister presence is threatening her family.”  

“Surprisingly enough, I did far less research than you might imagine, simply because I didn’t want to be ahead of the character’s experience and I didn’t want to be on the outside looking in,” Paulson shared with ComicBook in regards to her preparation for the role. “I just thought it would be better if I was just entrenched in her reality rather than some future understanding of what happened. I think the thing that was most surprising to me about it, first of all, I only knew about it from what I read about in school, but that’s been a long time since I was in school. I watched the Ken Burns documentary, The Dust Bowl, which was beyond informative. It was looking at these older people’s faces as they were talking about their experience, having lived through it, and that was really useful for me to see and hear the emotion and the terror in their eyes, and it was really a profound thing to have, and I did think about that a lot while I was shooting.” 

She continued, “But in terms of most surprising thing, I don’t think I knew how much of it was man-made, in a way. That the horrible nature of this quick succession of these droughts that would not cease, but then the overfarming of the land, turning into wind erosion, all this stuff that created this opportunity for this to happen, I don’t think I recognized how much of it was self-created.”

Also starring in the film are Amiah Miller (My Best Friend’s Exorcism), Ebon Moss-Bachrach (The Bear), and Annaleigh Ashford (Kinky Boots, Impeachment: American Crime Story). The film was written/co-directed by Karrie Crouse (Westworld) and co-directed by Will Joines.

Much like the way dust infiltrated all homes in that era, Paulson reflected on how her character Margaret had infiltrated her in ways in which she felt intrinsically linked to the on-screen role.

“The truth is, if I’m honest, I have more in common with Margaret than I don’t. Let’s just say I’m a tightly wound person and I have a lot of controlling tendencies and issues and I’m well aware of them, whereas maybe Margaret isn’t as aware of them,” the actor admitted. “I certainly understood this idea of wanting to keep everything so controlled that you’re keeping everything from falling apart. I understood that part of her thinking very, very well. That has stayed with me because it’s who I am, essentially.”

Hold Your Breath lands on Hulu on October 3rd.

Will you be checking out the new movie? Contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter or on Instagram to talk all things Star Wars and horror!