Sarah Paulson Slated to Play Cate Blanchett's Ex in Lesbian Potboiler Carol, Based on Patricia Highsmith's Novel

OK, we knew Rooney Mara and Cate Blanchett were going to play lesbian characters in an adaptation of out author Patricia Highsmith's 1952 lesbian road trip novel, The Price of Salt.
We knew they were changing the name of the flick to Carol, which was the original name of the book. We knew Cate Blanchett (who made you go "oh damn" in Blue Jasmine) was going to play the titular role of a wealthy, older married woman who falls in love with a young woman who works in a department store. And we knew that Rooney Mara replaced Mia Wasikowska in this Todd Haynes-directed, Phyllis Nagy-written film.
And now we know, thanks to Variety, that Sarah Paulson will join the cast. She plays Blanchett's ex-lover and pal.

Whoa.

Highsmith wrote The Price of Salt during the heyday of lesbian pulp novels, but her tale, which is often heartbreaking, varied greatly from the bleak outlook of so many pulp novels, offering up a glimmer of hope with its “happy ending,” in which she left it open to the chance that the women could end up staying together. 

This is making our lesbian heads explode. Out filmmaker Haynes' Far From Heaven, a remake of the '50s melodrama All That Heaven Allows, starring Julianne Moore and Dennis Quaid, is possibly one of the greatest gay-themed films of the new millenium. And with a cast that included Blanchett, Mara (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) and one of our favorites, Paulson, we're planning on making this release date our own national holiday.