‘American Horror Story’: Sarah Paulson Checking Into ‘Hotel’ As Another Character

The following article contains some spoilers about American Horror Story: Hotel and the series’ previous seasons. Read at your own risk.

As American Horror Story fans remember, Sarah Paulson had two roles as conjoined twins Bettie and Dot in last season’s Freak Show. On Hotel, Paulson plays the drug addict ghost known as Hypodermic Sally. And it looks like she’ll be taking on another role before the current season comes to an end.

According to Entertainment Weekly, Paulson is set to reprise her role as the psychic Billie Dean Howard for the finale of American Horror Story: Hotel. Creator Ryan Murphy is known for keeping details on his projects scant until they become available for public viewing, so it’s uncertain if Paulson will play both Sally and Billie in this season’s final episode. But what is known at this time is that Billie now has her own reality television series in which she uses her psychic skills, and she thinks the Hotel Cortez would be a good setting for one of her episodes.

When Paulson is not filming for American Horror Story, she’s working on another anthology series in which Murphy is involved as an executive producer. American Crime Story, set to debut in February of 2016, is a companion series to American Horror Story, and will provide dramatized accounts of real-life crimes. The first season will focus on the O.J. Simpson case, with Cuba Gooding Jr. playing the character. Paulson is cast as prosecutor Marcia Clark.

While talking to Variety earlier this year, Paulson noted that her performance as the twins in Freak Show helped her get prepared for playing two different characters on two different shows that were filming at the same exact time.

“This is actually harder. Those women were twin sisters and shared a body. These women — Sally and Marcia Clark — they have one thing, and that’s an animal instinct. They’re instinctual, very different creatures.”

Paulson won’t be the first person to play two characters in American Horror Story: Hotel. Finn Wittrock, who made his first appearance in the franchise last year as Dandy, also took on the task of playing two separate characters this season. Fans first saw him play model Tristan Duffy for five episodes, and Wittrock also portrayed late actor Rudolph Valentino for one episode.

As the Inquisitr reported last year, Murphy revealed that while American Horror Story doesn’t have to be watched in order from the first season through the current, they are all connected in some way. Fans caught a glimpse of that when Lily Rabe made a guest appearance in Freak Show, reprising her role as Sister Mary Eunice from Asylum. Naomi Grossman also reprised her Asylum role as Pepper for Freak Show.

But the connections within the American Horror Story franchise is more than just certain characters from one season making appearances in another. As Cinema Blend pointed out, Hotel has already made connections to Murder House. Marcy, the realtor Christine Estabrook played in the first season, made an appearance as the person who stripped ownership of the Hotel Cortez from Kathy Bates’ Iris and sold it to Will Drake (Cheyenne Jackson). The house that Marcy sold to the Harmon family in the first season was also the location in which Lady Gaga’s Countess went to get an abortion from Dr. Charles Montgomery (Matt Ross), and things didn’t go quite as planned.

The season finale of American Horror Story: Hotel is scheduled to air on January 20 of 2016. Do you think Paulson will play both Sally and Billie in the episode?

American Horror Story: Hotel airs Wednesdays at 10 p.m. on FX.

[Image via FX]