‘Dying for Sex’: Michelle Williams confronts death and pursuit of sexual pleasure in new dark comedy

Based on the Wondery podcast with Nikki Boyer, in Dying for Sex (now on Disney+ in Canada) when Molly receives a Stage IV metastatic breast cancer diagnosis, she starts exploring all her sexual desires. Starring Michelle Williams as Molly and Jenny Slate as Nikki, the series, co-created by Kim Rosenstock and Elizabeth Meriwether (New Girl), is a complex dark comedy about friendships, sex from a woman’s perspective, and mortality.

While in a couples therapy session with her husband Steve (Jay Duplass), talking about Molly’s sexual desires not being fulfilled by her husband, Molly gets a phone call with a doctor sharing that a pain she had in her hip is a result of her cancer metastasizing. It’s an incurable diagnosis and treatment can extend her life, but not by much.

She ends up running out of the session and finding solace with her best friend Nikki, with a hysterical conversation where Molly reveals her cancer diagnosis, outside a bodega, over a two-litre bottle of generic diet soda. As Nikki takes over much of the caretaking responsibilities, she also helps Molly navigate her desire to have the sexual experiences she never had to this point, including experiencing orgasms.

As Molly’s condition worsens, we also follow Molly through her journey to experience real sexual pleasure.

“We’re watching a lot of stories that are written by women, now directed by women, and so the female gaze is much stronger on the sexual experience, which is very different to the male experience, which is often kind of more like a straight line heading towards arousal,” executive producer and director, Shannon Murphy, told reporters during a virtual press conference. “And it kind of happens, scientifically, in about 30 seconds to two minutes, whereas for women, it’s more of kind of a wave, and it’s about 35 minutes. So obviously that’s longer screen time, but it’s important to be traversing that.”

“In this particular project, we had the wonderful opportunity to kind of look at many different forms of kink and sexuality and desire. And so I think it wasn’t just about the end goal of ejaculation in any way. It was about so many other levels of intimacy and connection. And I think at the moment in the world, that’s something we’re all really craving. And so I think it is important to be telling more female gaze stories in terms of desire and sexuality.”

Michelle Williams: ‘She dies like she lives’

For Williams, who also serves as an executive producer on the show, the actor has to confront death in a way that, while there’s a lot of comedy on the show, still has incredibly heart-wrenching and emotional stakes.

“I think, if I can take this as a lesson, … she dies like she lives, which is that she is trying, in these last months and then moments, to find out how to be both receptive and also in charge,” Williams said.

The actor and executive producer highlighted one scene with Paula Pell, who plays a nurse named Amy, who breaks down exactly what the process of dying will be like for Molly as she enters hospice.

“That scene with Paula Pell, when she gives the information of what the progression, in real time and with physicality, is going to look like and feel like. When you get the information then you can live inside of the information,” Williams said. “It’s when the information is kept away from you that you enter the state of confusion and powerlessness.”

“That scene alone was an incredible gift. … Inside of that information, in those days, you can construct it in your own way.”

Williams added she’s also thought about “death consciousness as a way for life fullness.”

“I was even thinking about, … I live in a brownstone in Brooklyn and in these brownstones, … now you put like a vase there, but it was a coffin corner, and it’s because death was a part of life,” she said. “And you were born in a house, maybe you died in the house, and there was this allowance in the curvature of the staircase for a coffin to be brought down the stairs. It wasn’t as mysterious.”

In terms of what attracted Williams to the project, when she first read the pilot for Dying for Sex, she was taken by just how unique it was, both in story and the way it’s told.

“When I first heard about the show it was just a pilot episode of television. I read it. I thought it was unlike anything I’d ever seen,” she said. “I didn’t really know what I could relate it to and that’s so exciting, because it was like asking something of me that was new, was unusual, was exciting.”

“And then listened to the podcast and fell unremittingly in love with Nikki, with Molly, with their friendship, and with how much I thought, … I haven’t seen a representation of this, … how passionate a best friendship can be. So we started this conversation and we were so engaged in this, and we were on our road to making this, and then I got pregnant. … And so I quieted down for about a year and a half, and then we picked it back up. … We just built up such a foundation of love and faith and trust and respect that it felt like this was a community that I really wanted to be a part of and make a hospitable work environment for everybody to come and do their best.”

‘From heart-wrenching stuff into literal fart jokes’

But the success of Dying for Sex is really in how Rosenstock and Meriwether were able to seamlessly inject humour into this story, balancing the tonal shifts in a way that is so incredibly smart and appealing to watch. It’s truly equally as hysterical as it is emotional.

“Liz and I are comedy writers and it’s where we primarily started out. We worked on Liz’s show New Girl together for a long time, so I think [we always] have some sort of impulse inside of us, always, to look for the comedy,” Rosenstock said. “But then the joy with this story was that it is so many things. It is not just one thing. And so I feel like we were constantly, at every phase of developing this show, looking at, what is the balance that we’re striking? What is the emotional truth? And looking at that more than looking at genre.”

Rosenstock added that much of that stemmed from the podcast, which has than range of tones, while also highlighting that the actors really made those shifts possible.

“The fact that all of them just immediately got it and jumped in, and were able to go from heart-wrenching stuff into literal fart jokes, … that’s my favourite tone,” she said. “It’s what opens me up to the darker things.”