‘American Horror Story: Hotel’ Star Sarah Paulson Talks Sally’s Addictions

One of the major themes of this year’s American Horror Story: Hotel is that of addiction and after last week’s premiere, Sarah Paulson’s character Hypodermic Sally is currently the show’s poster child for dependency.

Sally is one of the Hotel Cortez’s permanent residents, having died on the property at the hands of Iris, and now she spends her days “helping” junkies that are unfortunate enough to wander into the establishment meet their painful ends at the hands (or other parts) of this year’s monster, the Addiction Demon.

“She gets off on watching other people have some kind of emotion,” Paulson told Variety in a recent interview. “She’s desperately to feel things. She feels what other people are feeling. She’s an emotion addict.”

Sally’s addiction to drugs is just one of the character’s vices. The drug addiction stems from much deeper issues (which is often the case with drug addicts), which we will find more out about as the season continues.

“We’re going to find out later why Sally is the way she is, why she had her heart broken. And when you have your heart broken, people respond to it in all kinds of different ways,” Paulson revealed about her character. “A lot of drug addicts will tell you you’re constantly looking outside of yourself for something to make the pain stop. If you’re a more evolved person, you know that can’t come from an external source. It has to come from internal sources. But Sally doesn’t know that. She was broken too early. I don’t know if she can ever be saved, to be honest. She’s looking at love to save her. She’s looking for the drugs to help her forget. But when you can’t leave the hotel, I don’t know how you get saved —but maybe there’s someone in there who can help her.”

Check into a new episode of American Horror Story: Hotel tonight at 10pm on FX to find out more about the mysterious motives of Hypodermic Sally.

Photo Credit: FX