Shownotes Transcript
This message comes from Blue Harbor Entertainment, with Audrey's children, the untold true story of Dr. Audrey Evans, whose fight for change redefined medicine and impacted the lives of millions. Starring Natalie Dormer, now playing only in theaters. ♪
Okay, so the premise might be a tough sell. A young woman attempts to finally own her sexuality following a terminal diagnosis. And sometimes the new show Dying for Sex is a challenge. It starts Michelle Williams as a cancer patient confronting the unsatisfying relationships in her life, both romantic and familial.
But believe it or not, the series is also really freaking funny and horny. It's a raunchy sex comedy that suggests it's never too late to insist on your own happiness. And it's got a stellar cast that includes Jenny Slate, Rob Delaney, and Sissy Spacek. I'm Ayesha Harris, and today we're talking about Dying for Sex on Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR.
This message comes from Blue Harbor Entertainment with Audrey's Children, starring Natalie Dormer. The untold true story of Dr. Audrey Evans, whose fight for change redefined medicine and continues to impact the lives of millions. After being recruited to an elite children's hospital in 1969, Evans refused to accept the futility of current therapies and pioneered life-saving treatments. She was also the co-founder of Ronald McDonald House Charities, now playing only in theaters.
This message comes from Discover. Are you still quoting 30-year-old movies? Have you said "cool beans" in the last 90 days? Do you think Discover isn't widely accepted?
If this sounds like you, you're stuck in the past. Discover is accepted at 99% of places that take credit cards nationwide. And every time you make a purchase with your card, you automatically earn cash back. Welcome to the now. It pays to discover. Learn more at discover.com slash credit card. Based on the February 2024 Nielsen Report.
This message comes from Schwab. At Schwab, how you invest is your choice, not theirs. That's why when it comes to managing your wealth, Schwab gives you more choices. You can invest and trade on your own. Plus, get advice and more comprehensive wealth solutions to help meet your unique needs. With award-winning service, low costs, and transparent advice, you can manage your wealth your way at Schwab. Visit Schwab.com to learn more.
This message comes from Rinse. These days, you can do a lot from your phone. Book a vacation, buy and trade stocks, but you can also make your dirty laundry disappear and then reappear washed and folded with Rinse. Schedule a pickup with the Rinse app, and before you know it, your clothes are back, folded, and ready to wear. They even do dry cleaning. Sign up now and get $20 off your first order at Rinse.com. That's R-I-N-S-E dot com.
Join me today is the host of NPR's It's Been a Minute, Brittany Luce. Welcome back, Brittany. Thank you for having me. Great to have you. Also with us is writer Kat Chow. Welcome back to you too, Kat. Thanks for having me. Thanks to you both for being here. So a quick heads up, dying for sex is sexually explicit, and it also touches on issues related to sexual abuse, and we're going to be talking about that today.
In the series, Michelle Williams is Molly, who's diagnosed with stage four breast cancer. The diagnosis causes her to reevaluate how she wants to spend her remaining time. And she separates from Steve, her inattentive and unaffectionate husband, with a savior complex. He's played by Jay Duplass. Molly sets out on a personal journey to enjoy sex for the first time in her life. I actually don't know what I like or what I want. I've never even had an orgasm with another person.
And now I'm going to die. The show also follows Molly's best friend, Nikki, played by Jenny Slate. Nikki gamely steps in to be her primary caretaker, but this presents its own challenges to their friendship and to Nikki's personal life and career. I saw Steve. I got your records from him. And now they're not in my bag. You lost my records. Well, they were in my bag. Your bag is a black hole. I hate your bag. I've always hated your bag. You need to clean your bag. You need to organize your bag. Oh!
Okay. Very relatable. My back is also a black hole. Dying for Sex was inspired by the life of Molly Cochin, who shared her experiences on the Wondery podcast of the same name, which was released nearly a year after her death. It's streaming on Hulu now. Brittany, I'm going to start with you. And as I've already kind of suggested, this show, it really, really tries to balance the tragedy and the comedy of death.
this person's life. And I'm curious what you made of this and how you reacted overall to what the show is trying to do. I really enjoyed watching the show. There's so many great performances. Michelle Williams, of course. Yes. Jenny Slade is so good. Rob Delaney's so good. Sissy Spacek's so good. I mean, there's so many phenomenal performances throughout that even if things in the plot were a little convenient or like
A little tweet. I asked myself a question where I was like, okay, I feel like it's a bit of an exaggeration or a bit of fantasy in the way that it's constructed. In dealing with illness and grief and death, as somebody who's done some caregiving, some of the best gossip sessions have been.
of my life have happened during those times. You know what I mean? Right, exactly. I think I thought if anybody deserves a fantasy, it is this woman or people in her situation that deserve that. Like, why not? You know what I mean? There's so many... I mean, there's fantastical...
films about God knows what. I'm like, why can't this woman have all of these, you know, amazing coincidences and conveniences pop up in her life so that she can become, you know, the greatest stage four cancer dom of all of, you know, Brooklyn. Why not her? Why not her? But also very true to real life. Some of the actual funniest moments of your life can happen when you are looking at very serious illness or death. But yeah, I laughed. I cried. I
I gasped at times. I thirsted over Rob Delaney. I had a good time. Oh, Rob Delaney, yeah. The graying chest hair? Wow. Yeah. He was good. Yes, yes. Rob Delaney, actually, he plays neighbor guy. I think that's all he's ever called in the show. And he winds up living across from the Molly character, and they have, like, a very...
fascinating journey together of like hating each other but then turning that hate into lust and something like love. But yeah, Kat, I'd love to hear what you thought about that and so much more. First of all, I, you know, should have gotten a bigger clue from the title Dying for Sex and I knew intellectually that this was a show about somebody who is terminally ill and I should have been more prepared for the ending which is when
Molly, the character, actually dies. And so I was just so moved by that ending. And of course, as the show is progressing, I found myself liking it more and more, but I was really mixed at the jump because I just wanted more. I wanted more of this character development so that I could see the friendship dynamics between Molly and also Nikki, just how messy that is. You know, when we're friends with someone for
20 years, things are just so, so layered. And we kind of just got this really finite snapshot of this moment. So in my eyes, I was like, okay, Molly has one family member that's Sissy Spacek, who is just like the most infuriating mom character ever. We were like, I wanted to pull my hair out in scenes. A mother with zero boundaries. Zero boundaries. Yes.
And then also she has her one friend. I just kept thinking, like, what else does she want besides sex? But under the tight focus of, you know, this series called Dying
dying for sex. It makes sense. But I found myself just craving a little more like, does she have a career? Is she worried about money? That was the thing that really struck me was like, I don't know if we ever get a hint of what she did. Like, because part of the Molly's journey and this was, um,
apparently true of the real life Molly as well, who inspired this story, is that she had previously had cancer. And then this new diagnosis, it's like it's come back or like a different version has come back now. And so you get the sense that like Steve, her husband, was like caretaking for her for a while. So like she hasn't necessarily had a career for a long time. Right. But like what could that have been before or did it exist? And like she had 401k from that time that she lived off of, but that's all.
The show, I guess, isn't afraid to at least explain a little bit as to how she's able for these things. Like she separates from Steve, but she stays with him legally so that she can stay. For his health insurance. For his health insurance. So like that is understood. But like we also have to recognize that like so many people who are going through this do not have insurance.
any of those types of resources. And they often don't have someone like Sonia, who is the palliative care social worker who's at the hospital where Molly's receiving her care.
Sonia is played by Esco Jolet. I will say, overall, I really, really loved this show. I, like you both, was laughing. I shed a few tears. I also just love that real balance between any time there's a sad moment, it's undercut by humor. But also oftentimes when it's undercut by humor, then it's undercut by sadness again. Yes. It's just that toggle. It's a toggle. And I
think the show for the most part handles it really well and this is a show about exploration of yourself and learning to love yourself I did struggle with the Sonia character just because they are a black queer yes character who's misbehaving
main purpose of being there. Yes, it's their job. They are a social worker. This is what they do. But there are times when it bordered on didactic a little bit in terms of like what their purpose was, which was to help Molly discover her own sexuality. I thought
Sonia and Esco Jolie, who plays Sonia, great performance. Loved it. Yes, so good. But I also wanted a little bit more of, like, who Sonia is beyond being, like, a queer, sex-positive, you know, social worker. Yeah, that is something that also I noticed. I mean, because it also wasn't just that Sonia was, for all intents and purposes, like, almost a death doula. Like, somebody who was really... Always present. Always there. I was thinking...
At my notes, I had other patients. Takes them to a sex party. Yes. When they all went to the sex party, I was like, yeah, hippophile. And then.
And then there's a scene where Molly meets Sonia's Dom. Robbie Hoffman. Played by Robbie Hoffman. Exactly where I was like, oh my gosh. But yeah, there's like a moment where Molly goes to see Sonia's Dom, who's played by Robbie Hoffman. G is the character's name. Yes, goes to see G. Where G and Molly meet up is like G works at, it looks like some type of Crate and Barrel-esque type store. Like West Dome, yeah. Like a pottery barn or something. Yeah, exactly. So then they go back to the stock.
group and there just happens to be a mattress back there for them to kind of like connect and you know for Molly to open up and it's like dimly lit in a good way not in like the gross fluorescent light way I'm like I've never been in a stock group that looked like that never in all my years of retail did that happen yeah that was also a moment where I was like let me just suspend this disbelief the woman is dying
She is dying. I felt like it was well intended. But also another thing I noticed is that the only Black people that the characters interacted with were, for the most part... In the healthcare world. Yes, yes. Yeah, they were their support staff, basically. I also know what it feels like to have Black characters peppered in in places where it didn't make sense. It's not like I needed them to have...
A black friend or something like that. But I just was like, did every black person you needed to interact with be an employee at the hospital? Yeah. And that's where I struggled. But I do think the fact that Sonia is...
more or less really integrated into the story, even if their only purpose is as like the deaf doula. It felt a little less egregious than like what I usually see. So like I appreciated that. And even if Sonia had to deliver some clunky lines about how Black women tend to get even worse treatment from doctors, I was like,
I'm curious what you both think about, yes, it's about, like, the sexual misadventures of Molly, but it's also in other ways about, like, how you maintain your humanity within the healthcare system. And I'm curious what you thought about that, because I loved the Dr. Pankowitz character played by David Rashi. Who's from Succession also. Carl! Yeah.
Carl. Yes. Longtime character actor. Like, as soon as you see him, you're like, I've seen this guy. But, like, Molly has to teach him, like, bedside manner. And I thought, you know, that could have been didactic, but it felt different to me. I'm glad you brought that up because that was a scene I was thinking a lot about where it was almost like this sweet parallel after Molly learns how to be a dom super quickly from G. Super quickly. And suddenly...
It's like, wow, that was the fastest lesson ever. Like you didn't even have to practice. And suddenly you're just like telling Rob Delaney and like all these other people to like, I don't know, crawl on the floor. I will say as like a side note before I actually answer your question, Aisha, I did think that at least the kink stuff was rendered with care instead of it being a joke, which I think is just like very important for me to just say. So that was nice to see that represented in a moving way. But I also think that it
it then served as a nice parallel between how Molly started to take charge more of her own care because previously her husband Jay Duplass was just kind of controlling his way through the caretaking and not really giving her the agency that she wanted and it came from a good place right so it was really moving to see her be able to kind of articulate what she wanted yes yeah
I think that for me, what I really appreciated was just the way Nikki, the Jenny Slate character, like it's very complicated, their relationship by the fact that like now that Molly decides to leave Steve, now it's like, oh, of course I'll be your caretaker. But like, what does that mean? And I think the show does a really good job of
putting that into context as well. We should say that on top of everything that's happening with Molly, she is also dealing with trauma from her childhood, having been sexually abused by her mother's boyfriend when she was around seven years old. And that comes up throughout the show. And on top of Nikki having to take care of all of her medical needs,
You start to see Molly kind of putting all of the trauma onto Nikki. There's a really like kind of heartbreaking scene where Molly is finally describing for the first time in detail to Nikki, like what happened to her. And Nikki suggests like,
I'm really glad you're able to share that, but like maybe you should talk to a professional. And Molly responds like, no, I can do it. I have you. And the look on Nikki's face, to me, that was like one of the strongest moments of this show because it really kind of put into context like,
what Nikki is dealing with. I mean, Nikki's life kind of falls apart as she's caring for her. And I think the show kind of juggles a lot of tones. And I think it also juggles complexities around like what that means because by the time it ends, like that is also kind of conveniently in many ways tied up as well. Like her life, Nikki's life kind of
surprisingly comes back together. She loses her job. Her boyfriend. Oh, Calvin, you also so darling in this. Yes, yes. We've seen many stories about people who are experiencing, you know, terminal illness. We don't often see in so much detail what it's like for the caregivers. And
I have not been a caregiver myself, but I have seen family members be caregivers. And at least from my sort of limited scope of things, it felt like a very real encapsulation of like what that emotional weight and toll and financial weight.
frankly, because again, Nikki loses her job. Yeah. I mean, it is a job caretaking like that, right? Yeah. And that's a job that Nikki didn't necessarily agree to. And there's this just really powerful scene where Molly and Nikki are talking and Molly turns to Nikki and says, I told him I don't want to die with him. Oh, okay. I want to die with you.
That part also took my breath away because, I don't know, if I were on the receiving end of that, I would feel so heartbroken if I were Nikki, but then also weirdly honored, but then scared, just afraid. Yeah, I mean, I'm so glad you used the word honored because that is one of the things that I felt caring for a sick friend a few years back and also that I feel like comes through so clearly in Nikki's character for all the ways in which, like,
Mm-hmm.
And Noah says like, oh, that's how basically he felt when his daughter was born. Nikki kind of says, you know, I know I'm not going to be there for the beginning of someone's life, but I can be there at the end of someone's life. And what family looks like is changing so much for people more and more with every generation, with every passing decade. It's not so conventional. It's not so cookie cutter. It's not like, you know, and also too, when you look at the statistics of
who cares for women when they get to the end of their lives or who cares for women when they are looking down a cancer diagnosis or a terminal illness. And their husbands are like six times more likely to leave them when they receive a cancer diagnosis. I'm not saying that's what happened with the husband character in this series, quite the opposite. And I liked the way they treated his character. He wasn't like all bad. Like you kind of saw where he was coming from sometimes, but you're kind of like, ugh. I can't be too mad at you. You mean so well.
Yeah. He wasn't too bad, but he also still like never was fully redeemed. Like when he brings his new girlfriend to visit Molly in the hospital while she's getting chemo. Why do you think she would want to see that? I know. Right.
Right. But then she does kind of, quote unquote, like win that situation when her lover comes and he's like in a pup costume. Who's into acting like a dog for sexual, like, yes, that was quite funny. Being there for the end of someone's life is just as valuable as being there for the beginning of someone's life. I think that there are a lot of women who do a lot of work like that for their family members and for their friends. And it doesn't get the same value in society. And I thought that was really interesting. I love that point that you make. And it just made me think, too. Yeah.
you know, when you were saying the way families are shaped now is just changing. I thought about how friendship can be so romantic, too, in so many ways. And I think that this is one of the shows that illustrates that pretty well. I loved that, thinking about how your friend can actually just be your partner. Yeah. And I think it's so notable that the neighbor guy
Rob Delaney character, they have a moment, it blossoms into something that becomes more than just, you know, sex and lust. But at the same time, she's like, she says something along the lines of like, I don't want to die with you. I want to like get a dog with you. But like, that's her way of saying, like, I still want Nikki to be there for my last moments. And I
There is a romantic element, but it doesn't end in the way that you might like a usual narrative might do. It's like, oh, of course, like she's moved on to a new man. And this is like this is the true fulfillment. And it's like he's going to propose to her on her deathbed. Yeah, right. Exactly. No, that's not what happened. Like he served like I mean, the crude way of saying it is like he served his purpose and she's like, OK, I'm I'm done with you now. But also it's like you brought purpose to my life. I appreciate you.
everything is for a season. And I thought it's just a really lovely moment that they had. And the fact that he doesn't appear in the final episode, it's like, this is interesting. Yeah, I kind of liked that in
In the end, it was just Nikki, Molly, and Molly's mom. That it was just these trio of women. And they were kind of just doing their own thing and quietly sitting with their own grief. I also thought that Michelle Williams' acting in that last episode was just so beautiful. The way she portrayed someone who is...
actually about to die. I was like, this is just so carefully rendered. It was so heartfelt. This is really a show that for all its like suspension of disbelief that you might have to do, I think overall it's really well conceived and the performances are what put it over the top. And that is what makes it you stick around. And
And Michelle Williams, like, she's always great. I think this could be one of her best performances that I have seen of hers. Greed. And I've always loved Jenny Slate. And this just felt like a new thing for her in, like, the best way possible. Oh, my God. I wrote Oscar, like, one day? Oscar someday?
She gave a lot of good comedic relief. One last thing I will say that I want to make sure that I mention that also really stuck out to me is there is in, I believe the seventh episode is like an extended series of scenes that involve sex taking place in a hospital bed. While Molly is like in her gown and has like the nasal, is receiving nasal oxygen, Molly
One of the things that where like society is lagging in the way that it thinks about people who are like ill and disabled is their sexuality and their sexual agency. Like she was able to be in the context of illness very visibly and still be desired. And I thought that that was really, really important. And to that point, I think.
One thing we haven't even mentioned either is the fact that this show, it's a very sex positive show that also is basically it's advocating that like there are other ways besides penetrative sex to find pleasure. Sex. Sex is a wave. No sex.
Sex is a mindset. Largely in part because she's getting all these surgeries, she can't do the things that a lot of people can do. And so she is finding her way to be fulfilled without the quote unquote normal hetero way of doing things. And I really appreciated that like that is part of her journey is not just like the vanilla way as she calls it. Yeah.
Yeah, I think that was one of the first times I saw that portrayed. And so I really also just appreciated each partner she had. She learned something new. I mean, she was miraculously really great at being a dom naturally. I could have watched more episodes of her, you know, struggling and kind of trying to figure it out. Well, it sounds like we all...
Absolutely recommend the show. It's a lot, but you've got some great performances and you've got a lot of really beautiful, lovely moments. So definitely let us know what you think about Dying for Sex. Find us at facebook.com slash pchh.
And that brings us to the end of our show. Kat Chow and Brittany Luce, this was such an enlightening conversation. I really appreciate it. Thanks for being here. Thank you. Thank you. This episode was produced by Hassa Fathima and Liz Metzger and edited by Mike Katziff. Our supervising producer is Jessica Reedy, and Hello Come In provides our theme music. Thanks for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Aisha Harris, and we'll see you all tomorrow.
This message comes from Blue Harbor Entertainment with Audrey's Children, starring Natalie Dormer. The untold true story of Dr. Audrey Evans, whose fight for change redefined medicine and continues to impact the lives of millions. After being recruited to an elite children's hospital in 1969, Evans refused to accept the futility of current therapies and pioneered life-saving treatments. She was also the co-founder of Ronald McDonald House Charities, now playing only in theaters.
This message comes from Thrive Market. The food industry is a multi-billion dollar industry, but not everything on the shelf is made with your health in mind.
At Thrive Market, they go beyond the standards, curating the highest quality products for you and your family while focusing on organic first and restricting more than 1,000 harmful ingredients. All shipped to your door. Shop at a grocery store that actually cares for your health at thrivemarket.com slash podcast for 30% off your first order plus a $60 free gift.