Sarah Paulson won an Emmy Sunday night for her deft portrayal of former prosecutor Marcia Clark in The People Vs. O.J. Simpson. Clark, as we all know, was the prosecutor in the Simpson case, and she'd been unfairly maligned during the proceedings. Had she been victimized by our collective misogyny? Our lust for celebrity and pizazz (and contempt for "boring" buzzkills who are efficient at their jobs)? Whatever it was, Clark never got the respect she deserved, and Paulson brought up this point in her acceptance speech:
She said that Clark is a "whip-smart, giant-hearted mother of two who woke up everyday, put both feet on the floor, and dedicated herself to righting an unconscionable wrong." She also said that the media had portrayed her as a "two-dimensional, cardboard cut-out." Paulson voiced some shame, saying she'd bought into this depiction, and that she (and the "rest of the world") had been "superficial and careless" in judging Clark.
And as if the praise wasn't effusive enough, Paulson went and one-upped herself: She had Clark's name engraved on her Emmy.
How the process worked was that, after the ceremonies, Emmy winners headed to the Governor's Ball (located this year at the Los Angeles Convention Center) to get their statues engraved. They stepped into the "winner's circle" to watch as an engraver, wearing white gloves, etched their names onto their awards.
According to the L.A. Times, guards by the winner's circle had said that the area only allowed for "one guest, one award," but Paulson managed to sneak Clark in. After Paulson's statue was finished, she displayed it to the crowd to show that she'd made a personal request: Both her name and Clark's were engraved on the statue.
The Times snapped a picture of the two as they waited on their clandestine engraving:
LAist called the Television Academy to see if there were any official rules concerning the engravings, but no one picked up. We wanted to know just how far you can go with it. Could you randomly include "Ernest Borgnine" on your statue? Or one of those S-shaped doodles you did back in grade school?
Anyway. The engraving process is certainly a fraught and joyous one. This was certainly true when Leo experienced it for the first time last year:
