‘We didn't want Molly to die': ‘Dying for Sex' creators on finding the comedy in cancer

Yahoo

19-05-2025

A comedy about a woman diagnosed with metastatic cancer seems like a contradiction in terms, but that's the high-wire act that FX's Dying for Sex accomplishes. Cocreators Liz Meriwether and Kim Rosenstock, who'd worked together on New Girl, teamed up again to adapt the podcast cohosted by Molly Kochan and her best friend, Nikki Boyer, into a limited series starring Michelle Williams and Jenny Slate. The series, which launched in April to critical rapture (98 percent on Rotten Tomatoes), currently ranks in the top of Gold Derby's Emmy predictions for limited series and lead actress Michelle Williams, among other races.
Here, the two executive producers reveal how they pulled off the impossible — capturing Molly's spirit, finding the chemistry between Williams and Slate, and the joke that still makes them laugh.
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Gold Derby: Could you ever have imagined the response that the show was going to get?
Liz Meriwether: I always imagine worst-case scenarios in my head, and I go into every project convinced that it'll be my last. But it's really been wonderful. There's been responses that have just meant so much to us, especially in the world of people who've had cancer, because it was so in our minds of just trying to get it right and put a show out in the world that told you something new about the experience. So those responses have meant an enormous amount to us. And also people who've experienced abuse in the same way that Molly did.
Kim Rosenstock: One of our writers sent us a link to a Substack of the kink community, and said just so you know, they feel really seen, and that was very satisfying, honestly. We did a lot of work. We talked to a million people.
Meriwether: These were areas that have been dramatized before, but we wanted to try to be as authentic as possible and to feel we were showing something new. I got an email from Seth Meyers, which made my whole year. He was really complimentary of the comedy, and that meant so much to me. Because that was another thing that Kim and I and the whole writers' room were very aware of — how do we find the comedy? How do we find the real funny moments?
Rosenstock: We had to learn about so many things, and we had to be really diligent with our research — for the kink community, for the stage four metastatic breast cancer community, for the sexual trauma community. We weren't afraid to admit what we didn't what we didn't know. We leaned on so many experts and real people and our writers' room was incredibly diverse, and a lot of them had experience as caretakers or having been ill with cancer or other chronic illnesses. So we were able to make sure we were at all times checking ourselves and getting real perspectives from people whose lived experience reflected what was happening in the story.
SEE'It's something only the two of us will share': How Michelle Williams and the 'Dying for Sex' cast navigated those eye-popping sex scenes
So to ask the question you asked of yourselves, how did you tackle the idea of finding comedy in cancer?
Rosenstock: It starts with the podcast. That is how the real people, the real Molly and Nikki, got through this together was their ability to laugh at it and make really dark jokes about it to each other. So I think we always took our cue from the real people and the real story.
Meriwether: I think the podcast is so funny, and it was OK, that's the story that we're trying to tell. So it felt if we were telling the story in the right way, it was just going to be funny. Kim and I worked on New Girl for years, we come from comedy storytelling structure. So I think it was helpful, especially in the early episodes, to take all of the dramatic stuff that was happening around them, but to think about it in terms of comedy story structure and how could we build to a set piece, how could we build to a place that felt like the punchline of a joke from a structural standpoint. That was helpful muscle memory that Kim and I took into the project. Then later on in the show, we got to a place where it was OK, that just doesn't make sense anymore for what's happening in the story.
Rosenstock: I also think it was really important to us, especially in talking to people with cancer, people who had dealt with chronic illness, to not let that define who you are. Being sick isn't your defining characteristic once you are sick. And I think, for us, that was a big part of why the comedy was so important. You don't get sick and then the rest of your life is a tragedy. Even if you get a diagnosis of a terminal illness, you can still be funny. You can still laugh. You can still have sex. You can still go out with your friends and have a crazy night. It's just to show that yes, there are very hard, painful, dark moments and days and pits of despair, but there's also these explosions of joy and light and humor.
Meriwether: The other thing that was really important was that we were never laughing at people — isn't it funny that people have these desires.
Rosenstock: Sex was never the punchline in any of the scenes where sex was part of the story. It was always about the people involved who were funny, but what they were doing was never something that we wanted to be the source of the joke. And I think a lot of the real story with the real Molly was about her having this very radical acceptance for what people liked. And I think we had to adopt that ourselves as the makers of this show, we wanted the show to always feel it was accepting of everything that we were portraying.
Given that you are dealing with a real story, how involved was Nikki?
Meriwether: She was our sounding board for what felt true, Molly's spirit keeping that part of the story alive for us. Because you do get lost in the writers' room, Nikki was this wonderful source of inspiration in keeping us honest and focused on what mattered.
Rosenstock: She was always one of the most excited people when she would get a script or a cut. The first person we would always hear from was Nikki, and it was always a million exclamation points. I could count on one hand the number of times that she had a note or a thought on something that needed to change. One of them was her boyfriend in the show, his name was the name of her brother, and she asked, 'Could you just change his name, because that's my brother's name.' What was amazing really was getting feedback from her along the way that let us know we were on the right path. We were writing a lot of things that didn't necessarily happen and often it she'd be like, 'Oh my gosh, how did you know? This really feels like Molly.'
Was Michelle Williams the person you always had in mind to play Molly?
Meriwether: We just could not have done the show without an actress in the center of it who was so brave and just full of life and love. We needed a powerhouse at the center of the show because it does go to so many different places and has really complicated tonal shifts, and I don't think we would have made the show without Michelle in that part. I'm so grateful for what she brought to it and the fact that she was willing to go there and never looked back. She was in, and then she was all the way in. It was inspiring for us as writers. It inspired all of the actors around her.
SEE'She cast a spell on me': Michelle Williams on how her character's 'radical acceptance of her own body' drew her to 'Dying for Sex'
Her chemistry with Jenny Slate was pretty powerful.
Meriwether: I continue to be in awe of actors, and I just don't understand how that works. How do you meet somebody and then have that kind of chemistry with them? But I do think they are such special people. They both are incredible actors and also really incredible people, and I think that that comes through on screen. The show requires of actors people who can go to really dark places and then pull out of those places really quickly. There's a really intense weird fart joke in the sixth episode, and an ability to have the most serious scene and then to be really silly. … I was so grateful to both of them because I never felt there was something we couldn't do. In fact, it was the opposite. It was, oh, I hope that we can live up to where they are with their performance.
Rosenstock: It was so cool to watch how they built off of each other. Michelle is obviously one of our greatest living actresses. She can do anything, she's the amazing dramatic actress. And Jenny, there's nobody like her in terms of her comedy. She is so unique and special and brilliant. But to watch who they became around each other and what they were bringing out of each other, the comedy that was coming out of Michelle and then the absolute devastating emotional journey that Jenny goes on, was putting these two incredible ingredients together and then watching them just take off. It was very lucky for us because it made the show work. It's a high-wire act, for sure.
Is there a moment really speaks to what you were trying to accomplish with the show?
Meriwether: I am really proud of that fart joke. I am really proud of that whole scene in the bathroom, and I will carry that with me.
Rosenstock; I'm also really proud of your fart joke. (Laughs.) I'm very proud of having put a caretaker on screen who doesn't seem a natural fit for the role — a disorganized, scattered person rising to the occasion and being entrusted with taking care of somebody. That moment where she drops her whole bag on the floor and then has to pick everything up, I'm just proud that we shot it, that that many things were in the bag, that we allowed it to be as long as it needed to be. I can't believe we were able to make a show about women in their 40s where they're not fighting, where they're just friends and they just love each other, and it's them against the world or the medical system. And the story is never about them against each other. I'm really proud that we pulled that off, and that we got to show a lot of crazy fun sex along the way.
Meriwether: And being able to put a death on screen. I felt so moved by the research that we did about hospice and dying, and it was something that I never thought about and was honestly scared to think about. I know we were joking about not having the scripts done, but I think we were putting off writing that episode for a long time because I think we didn't want Molly to die. That's definitely a thing that I have taken with me into my own life is just the thinking about my own death and thinking about the death of people close to me as part of your life and as this natural kind of thing that we all go through and a chance to express yourself and be empowered even in the way that you die.
Rosenstock: Our greatest hope would be that the show would inspire people to start talking about sex differently and that the show might inspire people to start talking about death differently. The show is about sex and death, and death definitely felt like the thing that was more taboo to talk about. We wanted to put that on screen with the same amount of honesty and emotion as we did the sex. Also, it's made me realize that aging is a privilege. I cannot complain. This is how old Molly got to. I think I'm probably the same age as she was in this story, and it makes you think.
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