'Masters of Sex' Cast and EPs Look Back on Season 1
At Monday night's PaleyFest panel at L.A.'s Dolby Theater, the cast and producers of Showtime's freshman drama reminisced about its rookie year, which included one note that questioned "too much sex."
There wasn't much to dish on season two of Showtime drama Masters of Sex, considering production began just a week ago. The cast and executive producers at the PaleyFest panel Monday night, however, had plenty to say about last season, including why staying true to a period piece means even wearing the proper undergarment, even for a non-sex scene.
Lizzy Caplan mentioned that on set Breaking Bad's Betsy Brandt, newly added for season two, asked her how the women handle going to the bathroom wearing such undergarments. "A couple days ago, she said, 'How do you do this?!'"
Michael Sheen joined Caplan on the panel, along with co-stars Caitlin FitzGerald, Teddy Sears, Annaleigh Ashford and EPs Michelle Ashford and Sarah Timberman, who said they came directly from shooting a season two scene to the Dolby Theater. They were watching a scene between Beau Bridges and Allison Janney; Timberman said, "We were both weeping and weeping," giving a nod to the actors' well-received scenes in the first season.
“The truth is, women would run everything but we’re too busy getting ready,” joked Caitlin FitzGerald, who plays Masters’ wife Libby. “We show up at 5 AM and it’s a solid two hours getting hair and makeup. These women did it every day, and that’s crazy – crazy! And they were also cleaning their house and taking care of children and cooking three hot, well-balanced meals – sometimes out of a can – for their husbands. That’s a full-time thing.”
The clothes and dialogue helped Caplan define the period. “I realized how much I rely on saying ‘like’ and ‘um’ and having terrible posture, and mumbling. … My posture changed tremendously, and making sure to say every word” was a challenge. The role, she said, has “made me much more disciplined.”
“That shit don’t fly with me,” Sheen jumped in.
“Hamlet – bleccch,” Caplan groaned in response.
Asked what was his favorite scene of the first season, Sheen finally settled on the one between the glass dildo, named Ulysses, and a prostitute (Nicholle Tom), “in which she had to lie on the bed with the dildo and “go mental – go like bonkers with it for a really long time … and she started doing it and I’ve never seen anything like it in my life. It was the most extraordinary performance — the most extraordinary human behavior, aside from the acting. It was, like, ‘What just happened?!”
“I was leaning toward more comedic roles because I thought that was all I was going to get, but that’s not what I sought out to do as an actress,” Caplan said of her decision to pursue the role. “I wanted to do everything as an actress. Going after this job was about proving to myself that I could do more than one thing.”
Even so, Caplan was skeptical that she’d actually land the part.
“I walked away from that three-hour audition and I thought that was the best audition I ever had and I did not get that at all,” she admitted.
“They must have really wanted Lizzy to do it because I tried everything to get rid of her,” Sheen joked, whose lyrical Welsh lilt is a far cry from Masters’ sturdy Midwestern accent.
Sheen called the series “a perfect combination of an existing structure: real life and real facts which act as a springboard to work from.”
“Even though we know certain things [about Masters and Johnson],” he said, “they were such private, secretive and mysterious people you have to invent as well.”
While FitzGerald worried that Libby, Masters’ long-suffering bride, would be just another “conventional 50’s housewife,” Ashford and EP Sarah Timberman assured her that that would not be the case.
“[Libby’s] motives for having a baby are so much more about need and safety and security and that feels very much contemporary for me,” said FitzGerald.
Sheen praised Ashford and Timberman for their deft and fearless handing of “complicated” subject matter.
“We have this word ‘love,’ and it means whatever it means for everybody and we all put a pretty little bow on it, but nobody knows what that is,” he said. “One of the things I find fascinating about the show is that it’s a show about sex but you can’t separate the sex and the sexuality from the emotions and the psychology that go along with it — all those things go together. Time makes you intimate, that’s just what happens. Those are the ties that bind us.”
Caplan is pleasantly surprised that the show, now shooting its second season, has engendered such a rousing response.
“I really did not anticipate the reaction to be so in line with what we were going for,” she said.
“That’s never happened to me before in my career. When we first aired, we were seen as a show that didn’t degrade women in the least. It was a feminist story that we were trying to tell. It was so refreshing and really proves how smart the audience is and that it deserves more.”
While nobody would disclose what exactly happens this next season — save that “Breaking Bad” actress Betsy Brandt makes an appearance — Caplan did explain how she manages to stay so nonchalant about all the naked sex scenes required of her character.
“Some people flip burgers for a living,” she shrugged. “Some people get naked and grind Michael Sheen.”
Below are some of the other highlights from the panel, as the cast recalled their favorite moments, auditions and all those sex scenes:
1. Michael Sheen and Lizzy Caplan disagree on audiences' smarts
When Caplan was cast for the part of Virginia Johnson, she was then filming the comedy Hot Tub Time Machine and mentioned it was one of the many reasons she took the role, "proving to myself I could do more than one thing," she said. Upon the wild applause the comedy received from the audience, Sheen jokingly condemned the theater. Caplan later praised the show's feminist story, adding "it's so refreshing and proves how smart audiences are to demand more. Hear that, Michael?"
2. Annaleigh Ashford auditioned as a buttoned-up secretary and came out a hooker
The actress talked about how she wore a pink button-up shirt and read for the part of Jane (played by Helene York), but was called back to read the part of the rambunctious brothel worker Betty, as she unbuttoned her shirt as far as she could and put on her now signature accent. The EPs agreed it suited her better. "It was all wrong. But she makes such a good hooker," Michelle Ashford said, to laughter.
3. Showtime gave one sex note
Timberman mentioned how "completely in-step" Showtime and Sony has been for them, but they did receive one note: "There's too much sex in this episode."
4. Location, location, location
The Sony studio parking lot and entrance to one building is used as the hospital entrance and parking lot in the show. Many of the interior hospital scenes were shot in an abandoned tuberculosis hospital from the '30s. "It looked like a Stephen King nightmare," Michelle Ashford said. "It was sexy!" Annaleigh Ashford joked.
5. Teddy Sears' sex audition tape
As the actor talked how it was performing his audition for the show, in which he had to read a sex scene, Sheen jokingly added they had the tape to show everyone at the theater.
6. There's an emphasis on "the more complicated choice"
Sheen brought up the idea of how the show always goes for the more complicated choice, and it's a theme of discussion that ran through the evening. Caplan mentioned how, even amid a love triangle, neither woman played by Caplan and FitzGerald are portrayed as a "villain" or as the "doormat," she said. This three-way relationship, Michelle Ashford added, lasted an entire 10 years in the real-life story of Bill Masters and Virginia Johnson.
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