Sarah Paulson Recalls the Last Time She Got Together with Her American Crime Story Muse Marcia Clark (Exclusive) By Scott Huver and Charlotte Phillipp

Sarah Paulson is opening up about her connection with O.J. Simpson prosecutor (and her TV muse) Marcia Clark — revealing that the pair still keep in touch, nearly a decade after American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson was released.

Chatting with PEOPLE at the Television Academy Hall of Fame on Aug. 16, Paulson, 50, spoke about keeping in touch with Clark, 71, whom she starred as in the 2016 Ryan Murphy series about O.J. Simpson’s murder trial.

According to the American Horror Story alum, Clark nearly attended one of the biggest parties she’s ever thrown — but the pair last saw each other “during the pandemic.”

“We emailed and she was supposed to come to my 50th birthday bash, but at the last minute had to work and so she couldn’t,” Paulson told PEOPLE. “I almost saw her six months ago. But that was it.”

“She’s a wonderful woman,” she added of the prosecutor.

Paulson also joked that her 50th birthday party was one of the best events she’s ever hosted.

“It was just superb and I’ll never do it again,” she said, sharing that she hired a DJ and had a big glass bowl of cigarettes for guests to enjoy. “Once you’ve done a big birthday party, it’s like I threw myself a wedding. I married myself basically.”

Back in 2016, Paulson spoke about just how daunting it was to take on the role of Clark in Ryan Murphy’s FX series — which also starred Cuba Gooding Jr. as Simpson, Sterling K. Brown as Christopher Darden, David Schwimmer as Robert Kardashian, Courtney B. Vance as Johnnie Cochran and more.

Speaking to the Television Critics Association at the time, the actress said that when director Murphy approached her with the idea of playing Clark, she wasn’t immediately eager to join the cast.

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“[I felt] both, sort of, elated and completely worried that I wasn’t going to be able to pull it off,” Paulson said. “But there is a kind of magical thing that happens sometimes, which is when Ryan believes it, you sort of tend to believe it yourself.”

Despite her trepidations, Paulson later took home the Emmy Award for outstanding lead actress in a limited series for her role as Clark — as well as a Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild Award. Clark even attended the Emmy Awards as the actress’ date in 2016.

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“Having two small children and a husband who betrayed her and the public nature of all that scrutiny, which she was completely ill prepared to handle, it’s like walking into a battle without any armor,” she said, reflecting on Clark’s perception at the time of Simpson’s trial back in 1995.

“She just didn’t have the skin for it. She didn’t have any of that razzle-dazzle that Cochran had, and they all had. She just wasn’t designed as much for public life,” she continued.

“The most challenging part of it was just my own mental awareness that Marcia Clark walks the planet now, and that this is a real person I’m playing, and the responsibility of wanting to get it right,” Paulson added.

“I had done so much research and watched so much footage and read so many books, as everybody did, that I came to really revere her, both as a legal mind and as a person,” she concluded. “And the idea that I was going to be representing her somehow was really scary, a kind of heavy load to bear.”