By Tamara Krinsky, RCR Host and Entertainment Reporter
Follow on Twitter @tamarakrinsky or www.tamarakrinsky.com
When one thinks of Showtime’s hit series Masters of Sex, words such as “seductive,” “provocative,” and “intense” come to mind. One would expect a conversation with the cast and creators about the show to follow suit. But at PaleyFest 2014, the key word I’d use to describe the evening was “funny.” While the series, which follows the groundbreaking scientific sexual study by Dr. Bill Masters and Virginia Johnson, may traffic in heavy issues such as the nature of intimacy, the ups and downs of marriage and women’s changing roles in the workplace, it’s very clear that the talented cast is having a blast working on it.
The idea for the series came about when longtime friends and executive producers Michelle Ashford and Sarah Timberman read a review of Thomas Maier’s book Masters of Sex: The Life and Times of William Masters and Virginia Johnson, the Couple Who Taught America How to Love. They both fell for the compelling story, and thought it was something that needed to be told through a television series as opposed to the two hours that a feature would allow. Luckily, Showtime shared their opinion.
Once they had the greenlight, they set about finding their Masters and Johnson. Ashford said they were looking for actors who had a ferocious intelligence, as well as an unconventional bent to their work and the roles they had chosen. At which point Michael Sheen, who plays Dr. Bill Masters, jumped in with mock indignance and exclaimed, “How dare you! I am not unconventionally bent!”
Ashford responded, “He’s very conventional.”
Added Sheen, “I’m bent in all the conventional ways.”
After a roar of laughter from the audience, this led into a conversation about the fact that during the casting process, Sheen was doing a production of Hamlet, while Lizzie Caplan, who plays Virginia Masters, was doing Hot Tub Time Machine. As the actors ribbed one another about their respective highbrow/lowbrow gigs, their chemistry was clear.
Sheen, who is known to many American audiences for his role as journalist David Frost in Frost/Nixon and several portrayals of Tony Blair, said that while he wasn’t specifically looking to do television when the project came along, he was excited by the current quality of TV and the sophistication of its audiences.
He said, “TV itself is being explored as a medium in its own right, and as distinct from film.” This includes the ability to tell a story over 12 hours in one season, which opens the door to exploring character and telling stories in different ways. With this show in particular, he was intrigued by the combination of the preexisting structure of a project that was based on real people and the necessity for creative invention, given that Masters and Johnson were quite private and mysterious.
Caplan fought for the role, in part because it was about “proving to myself I could do more than one thing, which I was not convinced of.” She said that prior to Masters of Sex, she’d been leaning towards more comedic roles because she thought it was all she was going to get. While she loves doing comedy, as an actress she wants to be able to do everything. Said Caplan, “Going after this job was proving a lot of things to myself. [Director] John Madden and Michelle and Sarah saw in me what I didn’t see yet.”
See our related article with video interviews and photos from the red carpet
A big part of Caplan’s casting happened at a dinner. Alas, the panel participants declined to share what had been discussed, and instead just hinted at an evening full of merriment and sharing past experiences. Timberman said that after the dinner, they knew Caplan was the right actress for the part, and her actual audition was really about answering Madden’s one lingering question about whether or not she was “irredeemably contemporary.”
Said Sarah, “We needed to see what happened when we put her in period clothes.”
Quipped Caplan, “And by ‘period clothes’ we don’t mean sweatpants.”
The women in the audience roared. The men looked confused.
When the moderator asked Caplan what she did to overcome her contemporary sensibility, Caplan responded, “That’s where the acting part comes in a bit.” She gave a shout out to the vintage clothing, worn by all cast members and background extras, and revealed that when she gets to work every day, she insists on wearing period appropriate undergarments.
“So do I,” said Sheen.
“He really does,” confirmed Caplan.
“In fact, I insist on wearing Lizzie’s.”
“He’s wearing them right now.”
Like I said, these people have a great time with one another.
Annalee Ashford (no relations to Michelle Ashford), who plays Betty, an outspoken prostitute who is integral to getting the study off the ground, originally auditioned for the more demure role of Jane. She said, “But every time I’d read the script, I kept going back to the scene with the hooker. I was obsessed with the hooker!”
Caitlin Fitzgerald complimented the “glorious” writing in the pilot. She plays the charming Libby Masters, Bill’s wife, and was initially worried about being portrayed as a conventional 1950s housewife. Timberman and Michelle Ashford promised that would not be the case.
Said Fitzgerald, “It would be easy to say Libby is the happy go lucky girl who believes in true love. But to me…her motives for having a baby are more about need and safety and security, and that feels real and quite contemporary for me.”
Michelle Ashford said, “I give Caitlin an enormous amount of credit. She has brought enormous amount of a complexity to a role, for a woman we don’t know a lot about.”
Another aspect of the show that makes the show relevant to today’s audience is its exploration of love and marriage. Sheen said that he never thinks of the show as a love story between Bill and Virginia because defining them by that metric is too reductive. He said there is something about Virginia that compels Bill. He knows that it’s his salvation, yet he’s threatened by it, so he’s simultaneously repelled. Love is complicated when it comes to the Masters’ marriage as well. Sheen described Bill as a man who doesn’t like to be intimate, yet he and Libby have shared a life together.
Said Sheen, “Time makes you intimate, that’s just what happens. So he has been accidentally intimate with this woman.”
Given Bill Masters’ intimate, complex relationships with Libby and Virgina, it would be easy to just portray their relationship as one long catfight. However, Michelle Ashford said that in real life, the two women were very close, spending holidays together and babysitting one another’s children. “This became a great challenge for us. We spent hours thinking about what does each woman bring to it, what is each not allowing herself to think too closely about.”
Caplan credited the nuanced onscreen relationship between the two women to having a female showrunner. “No one sees Virginia as a villain or Libby as a doormat.”
Fitzgerald agreed, adding, “This relationship only works if we are both fully formed characters.”
Not surprisingly, both the moderator and audience members had questions about what it was like to do a show where there is so much time spent naked onscreen and where there are so many simulated sex scenes. Sheen said that everyone says it must be scary to do the naked scenes, but the most frightening scenes for him are the ones that show what you reveal about yourself. He made specific mention of the (SPOILER ALERT) crying scene in episode five after Libby loses the baby. It’s an incredibly moving scene where he is alone with Virginia in the office and has her close her eyes so that he can then finally release his grief.
“Where I make Virginia close her eyes,” said Sheen, “came out of all of us being honest with ourselves and asking what is hard about being vulnerable. You slowly meld these characters to yourself and push it forward.”
Timberman cited this as one of her favorite moments in the series, and said it was enormously gratifying to see a scene that you debate about how to play pay off so well.
Another such scene is the one between Allison Janney, who plays the provost’s wife Margaret Scully, and Teddy Sears, who plays Dr. Austin Langham, a doctor at the hospital and participant in the study. The two characters have an affair, and there is an incredibly emotionally intimate scene that takes place between the two of them in the pool. “It was challenging but rewarding, and she is the best in the business,” said Langham.
Given that the action of the series takes place in the 1950s, it would be nice to think that we’ve moved forward in our attitudes and comfort level regarding sexuality. But the difficulty that some of the audience members had asking about the shooting the sex scenes in the show made it clear that we still have a ways to go. Luckily for audiences, Caplan, Sheen and rest of the cast seem to have figured it out, at least on screen.
When someone asked how the actors dealt with the sex scenes, Caplan replied, “Some people flip burgers for a living, other people get naked and grind on Michael Sheen.”
And without missing a beat, Sheen replied with a big smile, “Surprisingly large amounts.”
