Michelle Williams was fine with portraying varied sexual exploits – some kinky – in her new miniseries “Dying for Sex.”
“I knew what I was getting into,” the actress, 44, told Page Six exclusively at the show’s premiere earlier this week.
“I knew what I signed up for,” she continued, “so I just kind of take a deep breath and hope that this thing that I’m interested in, for whatever reason, that I find particularly moving and funny has a place in other people’s lives as well.”
“Dying for Sex” is based on the hit 2020 podcast series by Molly Kochan and Nikki Boyer.
The podcast explored Kochan’s sexual exploits after she received a terminal diagnosis of metastatic breast cancer. They included making out with a mortician while he wore full clown makeup, an awkward car romp with a guy who couldn’t maintain his enthusiasm, and a Ryan-Reynolds lookalike with a predilection for machosism.
Kochan died on March 8, 2019, at age 45.
Williams plays Kochan, who left her unhappy, sexually repressed marriage with the help and support of her best friend, Boyer (played by Jenny Slate).
The Oscar nominee confessed that “there are words that float to your head like ’embarrassing’ or ‘risky’” when she had to portray onscreen orgasms, but “the truth is that they have no place when you’re trying to make a piece of work.”
Williams says that she dismissed any anxiety by popping “them like the little bubbles that they are.”
“The Greatest Showman” star is hoping that the show will prompt women to think about and explore their own sexual desires.
“I’ve been hearing women saying, ‘We’re going to have a viewing party, we’re going to be watching this together,’” she shared, “and that’s really exciting for me to feel like I’m a part of something that people connect to.”
Other celebs on the red carpet included Slate, Delaney, Jay Duplass, Williams’ husband Thomas Kail, and her best friend and frequent plus-one, Busy Philipps.