In the new series Dying for Sex, Michelle Williams plays Molly, a woman with a terminal cancer diagnosis who decides to take ownership of her own sexual pleasure. Williams says the central idea of the show — that women should feel free to pursue their own pleasure — is a notion that seemed foreign when she was growing up.
"The consideration of one's own pleasure was not in the conversation when I was coming of age," she says. "It was, first of all, 'You shouldn't do it. If you have to, you'll probably suffer a tragedy, get sick, or die.'"
The FX/Hulu series follows Molly as she leaves her sexless marriage and embarks on a sometimes kinky, often hilarious sexual adventure. Along the way, Molly's best friend, played by Jenny Slate, becomes her primary support system as she navigates treatments, appointments and the emotional rollercoaster of her sex adventures.
The series is based on a true story and adapted from the Wondery podcast of the same name. Williams says when she first heard the podcast, she felt "unraveled."
"I went back to listen to it for a second time to try and figure out why it had this power over me. And then there I was on the floor again, with no sense of what had really just happened," she recalls.
Then Williams read the script for the pilot episode, and something clicked: "I immediately, for reasons that I couldn't understand and were beyond me, knew that I wanted to make this. And went to my husband and said, 'Well, you need to take a look at this because this is gonna be in our life now.'"
While Williams acknowledges that taping some of the racier scenes felt risky, she says she views work as a safe space to push boundaries: "It's possible to be both scared and brave at the same time. And that's what I think moved me so much about Molly's journey and this best friendship."
Interview highlights
On the difference between how she was taught about sex as a teen and how her daughter has been taught
[Sex] seemed pretty scary and loaded. And it's certainly taken me a long time — in tandem with other things that I've experienced as a woman coming of age — to unpack.
I do believe that things will be different for my daughter. … I see her generation and their radical acceptance of each other and themselves. And I see them working together with more equality than certainly what I was raised with. … She teaches me. She is proud of me and accepting of me. And even [with] this show, she was like, "You go, Mom!" Or, like, I did a magazine cover that was racy. And she said, "You look amazing!" And so I don't know if it's cultural. I don't know if it's familial. … But I'm seeing a rapid push in developmental readiness as it relates to my daughter.
On the message she's taking away from Dying for Sex
Pleasure, baby, pleasure. Get it. It belongs to you, and that humor is not a way to make a joke in a sad situation. That humor is a way to make something whole and complete, and also a way to remember something better. … So the insistence on continuing to find the humor, but most of all the pleasure, because they can't take that away from us.
On friends like Jeremy Strong helping Williams raise her daughter Matilda after the death of Matilda's father, Heath Ledger
That was the period of time in my life when there were multiple people going in and out of that house. Like … my friend Daphne. We shared a bedroom and a closet and a bathroom and then Jeremy was there. My sister was there, friends of friends. We had a name, I think maybe Jeremy came up with it, and he called it "Fort Awesome." And it was like Pippi Longstocking or something, something that you imagine as a child, you imagine this place where you could go and you could make some of the rules and you would be together and there would be, it would be full of fun and play and ideas and personalities and acceptance and love. And he had sort of imagined this place as a child that his child mind would call "Fort Awesome." … He would be engaged for as long as Matilda wanted to be [with] fairy princesses or tea parties or dress up.
On emancipating herself at age 15 to pursue acting, and not going to formal school
I am constantly confronted by the things that I don't know. And I think maybe that's why work has become my conduit to the world. This is the thing that I've spent the most time trying to gain an understanding of and why it was so important to me because without it, I really had nothing to show for myself. I had no institution behind me that said "I accredit you in this particular way." And so then where do you get a good feeling about yourself? If you don't have a reflection telling you who you are, where you stand, and if you're also without partnership. So my work has meant so much to me because it was where I got to know myself. And I thought, well, maybe if I could get a little bit good at this thing, I could get a little of that self-esteem. So that was a real motivating factor for me.
On her 2019 Emmy acceptance speech calling out the need for equity in Hollywood
I spent a long time working on it. I knew if given the opportunity, I knew what I wanted to say and that you have a very short time to say it and so it needs to be as perfect as you can make it. And then underneath, my hands are [shaking] my heart is [pounding] and I was pregnant at the time and so, you know, also experiencing but I felt so connected in that moment to have had these experiences that allowed me to be the conduit for the message. …
We're not where I thought we would be. The opportunities of those moments of the #MeToo movement, of the Black Lives Matter movement, I hope that they are underground and receiving nutrients and that they will come back and that there will be a resurgence of the optimism and the momentum that we were enjoying.
Ann Marie Baldonado and Susan Nyakundi produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Beth Novey adapted it for the web.
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