Pop Culture Fix: Sarah Paulson to Play Cult Leader Gwen Shamblin, Wigs WILL Escalate

Feature image by Gilbert Flores/Variety via Getty Images

Hey did you see us and Dani on Late Night With Seth Meyers last night? That’s the best Pop Culture Fix thing happening today, but here’s the rest!

+ Nobody loves a wig like Sarah Paulson, which is surely at least one reason she’s signed on to play diet coach/cult leader Gwen Shamblin in a new HBO Max biopic series. It will be based on Marina Zenovich’s wildly popular docuseries, The Way Down, which documents the “profound control” Shamblin had over the congregants of the church she founded as an offshoot of her The Weigh Down diet program. Prior to the documentary being released, a couple from the church was arrested for murdering their son, and Shamblin died in a plane crash. This one’s not a Ryan Murphy project — but doesn’t it sound exactly like one? He’s looking at this hair right now and squirming with envy!

Sarah Paulson on the red carpet the Emmys / gwen shamblin in front of a purple background with absolutely ENORMOUS hair

+ Indigo Girls discuss their musical history, lesbian roots of women’s music.

+ 15 films from Black creatives to watch out for after TIFF 2022.

+ Billy Eichner, Paul Rudd and wild lesbians hit the street for Bros.

+ Sophie Turner’s wild Do Revenge cameo is comedy perfection.

+ May I interest you in some lesbian catnip aka The Women Over 50 Film Festival.

+ Real Housewives of Orange County’s Meghan King says she falls “somewhere on the lesbian spectrum.”

+ House of the Dragon’s queer mistake is even worse than you think.

+ Lea Salonga celebrates queer strides on TV with Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin.

+ ESPN will be airing the FIBA Women’s Basketball World Cup starting today and running through October 1st! Great news if you’re a women’s basketball fan who needs a stop gap between the WNBA season and women’s college basketball season!

+ Ashly Burch will be streaming Ashly Burch as Aloy in Horizon Zero Dawn for Access Reproductive Justice this Friday!

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Heather Hogan

Heather Hogan is an Autostraddle senior editor who lives in New York City with her wife, Stacy, and their cackle of rescued pets. She's a member of the Television Critics Association, GALECA: The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics, and a Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer critic. You can also find her on Twitter and Instagram.

Heather has written 1718 articles for us.

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