Marcia Clark took center stage in tonight’s People v. O.J. Simpson, but not in a good way.
Or at least not in a good way for Marcia Clark. For us, it was great, because Sarah Paulson is a treasure, but it was hard to watch Marcia deal with the media’s sexist attacks on her appearance and demeanor. She tried to get a haircut and tabloids tore her apart. She even tried to buy tampons, and the cashier feared for the defense under the control of a menstruating woman. At the same time, her ex-husband was criticizing her for not being there enough for her children.
While the entire world was Marcia’s biggest and meanest critic, fellow defense attorney Chris Darden (Sterling K. Brown) was always be there to back her up.
As their working relationship grows closer, so do questions about their personal relationship: Did they date in real life?
In the video above, Kristin Dos Santos asked Sarah Paulson and Sterling K. Brown their thoughts on the real-life relationship of their characters.
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“Mr. Darden will attest to himself,” Brown tells E! News. “I remember in an interview he did on Oprah, he said that Marcia Clark is an extraordinary woman, so I definitely think he was attracted to her, and not just her physical being, but like her intellect, her spirit, etc.”
Paulson, on the other hand, wasn’t really interested in speculating.
“My take is probably not as important as what the facts are, and since some of it is really unknown to us, we are not giving the full breadth of what we believe to be true,” she says. “Playing it was very easy with Sterling, he’s so lovely and available and wonderful and so good.”
While Clark and Darden never officially dated, it was clear that they had an affection for each other. According to Darden’s book In Contempt, they did spend the occasional evening drinking and listening to R&B, and he did comfort her when she felt like she was in over her head.
Darden’s book also included this beautiful bit of insight: “As spring melted into summer, I began to wonder what might happen away from the flash of tabloid photographers and television cameras. The glare from the people who wanted to know if we were together may have been one of the things that ultimately kept us apart.”
Even now, we just watched an episode highlighting Marcia’s unfair portrayal in the media and all we can wonder about is whether she and her coworker were dating.
The People v. O.J. Simpson airs Tuesdays at 10 p.m. on FX.
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