With many questions surrounding what life, death and sex means to women at its centre – and heartwarming and hilarious performances from Hollywood stars Michelle Williams and Jenny Slate – unmissable TV series Dying For Sex is here to bring a heartbreaking true story of friendship, as well as a quest for sexual liberation and understanding, to our screens.
The series is based on the real life of podcaster Molly Kochan, who left her husband of 15 years to pursue as much sexual pleasure with other partners as possible after discovering she had stage 4 cancer. This initially culminated in a podcast series, also called Dying For Sex, which dissected 200 of Molly's bedroom adventures.
It was hosted by her best friend Nikki Boyer – who is also a producer on the TV series – and was released a year after Molly's death. It quickly became a hit, as listeners got hooked on the amazing story, the podcast itself stemming from an idea discussed at a lunch between the two after Molly had already been on two dates that morning.
Dying For Sex is a masterclass in combining sexual adventure and comedy with, well, cancer. After all, we see our besties googling “cock cages” and assessing dick pics in a hospital waiting room. The show tackles the vitality of sexual discovery and joy, as well as touching on medical misogyny and the ways in which women aren't listened to or minimised, unable to take control of their own health. It also hits back at kink shaming, interrogates the complicated nature of trauma around abuse and champions the fact that your best friend can very much be the love of your life.
Michelle and Jenny sat down with GLAMOUR to play our Bestie Test, as well as opening up what they hope the show gives audiences when it comes to portrayals of female anger, sexuality, the visceral nature of our grief and the ways we've been socialised to swallow it and how that's changing and – ultimately – why the bond of female friendship is the biggest love at the centre of Dying For Sex.
GLAMOUR: Michelle, what did you want this series to say about female sexuality and how what we desire as women can so often lead to shame?
Michelle: Female sexuality is actually less linear than a person could ever imagine – or that we could ever even imagine – because we had blinders put on us when we were children.
I think it's like, can you allow yourself to feel desire and have desire without shame, and can you just follow that desire for as long as you can? And maybe that's a few minutes, and maybe you can build that up and see where it takes you inside of yourself with a partner of your choice, with partners of your choice. And how long can you keep that exercise going without letting shame into the room?
GLAMOUR: There’s a lot in the show on female anger and grief – what was that like to play?
Jenny: I really enjoyed it a lot, a lot. It's really changed me… I don't behave the way that Nikki behaves in terms of anger in real life. So boy, oh boy. I really ate it up.
Michelle: The opportunity to get it out, to get it out of your body, and not just sort of swallow it and let it calcify, as we've been taught and told to do.
GLAMOUR: Do you feel like, as women, we are taught to swallow this anger and visceral grief?
Michelle: I think that we were and I hope that that's changing. In my eldest [daughter, Matilda Rose Ledger] and her generation, I feel like I've witnessed a change. I feel like I've seen it there. I don't know that's a small sample size, but one that I'm grateful to acknowledge, that I'm witness to.
I hope that in some aspects the show dates itself, and that it looks like, why was she repressed? Why couldn't she allow herself the full breadth of human expansion and feeling?
[Molly and Nikki] had this incredible overlap. What they were really able to do is give and receive in equal measure, because what they really offered each other was honesty. Like, 'I see all that about you, and not only do I love it, I'm here to help you work on it at your own pace, not because I need it for me, but just because I want it for you.'
GLAMOUR: Jenny, we see in the series how a love of your life can be platonic - why is championing female friendship on this show so important?
Jenny: Well, I think that first of all, the one thing I thought about was like, ‘Wow, wow. Why is everything so narrowly defined?’ You know, our norms are just pretty tight. And to grow up, as I think I did, with the idea that it's really great to have really close friends of whatever gender, but having a partner is what stamps your worth in your community or culture or the world at large, or in your own mind, about whether or not you're one of the people that is worth being seen, that is worth being interacted with, or that is worth even putting yourself on the road to your own fulfilment.
I know I've felt this in my own personal life, with my friends… We [her and Michelle] each have a best friend. This narrowness does not exist in Molly and Nikki's relationship. It doesn't exist in my relationship with my real-life best friend. And I think we are discouraged out of our own expansiveness. We're discouraged out of the idea of an open investigation that has no one endpoint except for feeling good in whatever way you end up understanding that you do feel good or feel pleasure.
When I think about why it's so important to show friendship as a central love, it's because it's just so packed with possibility. And even though the story that we're performing is really specific, I think it's specificity and all the different, weird and exciting and beautiful and sad things that happen, the specificity will hopefully remind people of their own precious specificity in their lives.
Michelle and Jenny played GLAMOUR's Bestie Test…
GLAMOUR: Michelle, what would Jenny's karaoke song of choice be?
Michelle: [Sings We Belong by Pat Benatar] We belong to the night, we belong to the thunder! We belong…
Jenny: I mean that was beautiful first of all. Good lord. It's actually pretty close. I like to go with I'm So Excited by The Pointer Sisters which I feel like has that sort of big energy.
Michelle: So I got the energy.
Jenny: Yeah you got the energy.
Michelle: I count that as a win.
GLAMOUR: Definitely.
Jenny: There are no losers here, we can't have it.
GLAMOUR: Jenny, who would play Michelle in her biopic?
Jenny: I just got cast. She told me it's me. I'm excited to share this news right now. I'll be playing Michelle Williams, and I'm just so flattered.
Michelle: We've already started working on it, like we've got the bob, you have the white [outfit]…
Jenny: So excited for the scene where she's in the press junket with her co-star Jenny Slate, who is played by Michelle Williams, who I'm such a big fan. And, yeah, they're talking about karaoke.
GLAMOUR: So meta! Michelle, what is Jenny's biggest dating, relationship or sexual ick?
Michelle: [To Jenny] Send it to my brain. Send the message to my brain. I just don't know what it is.
I'm not sure that… I think you're open. I think you're open to the ick. That's my thing. I think you want to be with somebody who shares their ick. You don't want the ick to be a surprise. You want the ick to be like, right out in front and say, like ‘ick!’. This is the thing that is so hard for me, and I'm working on it. Can you love it?
Jenny: Yeah, that actually, really is right. I think my ick is that I don't want to be with people who are too afraid of the ick. It's really true!
Michelle: Dead on!
GLAMOUR: You guys are revolutionising this game. I've never had that before.
Michelle: We're winning at the same time!
GLAMOUR: Jenny, what is Michelle's pet peeve?
Jenny: Mmmmm bad table manners. I don't know, maybe that's mine. I get mad when people talk with their mouth full, but that's more of a me and my mum issue.
Michelle: You're correct. I would like to get table manner lessons for everybody in my family… You spoiled the Christmas present, because that is something that I think we have room for growth for.
Jenny: I think you spoiled their Christmas present, because that is a tough Christmas present. You know, most people want a sweater or a book.
GLAMOUR: Michelle, what surprised you the most about working with Jenny?
Michelle: I don't know. It's a hard thing to answer, because I think that to meet Jenny, is to is to know Jenny in some way. Jenny continues to unfold, and there was so much in that initial meeting that I could intuit and know, and then so many other gorgeous aspects kept unfolding.
This interview was edited and condensed for clarity.
Dying For Sex is available to watch now on Disney+.
