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This article was originally published on March 24, 2025.
FXsDying for Sexis out now.
Michelle Williamswas winding up to kickRob Delaneyin the dick.
Oh, and this woman is on the verge of death.
Also, this is based on a true story.
And its a comedy.
Do it, said Delaney, eyes wild with lust, miming masturbation.
Kick me in the dick.
Her face was an amalgam of horny disbelief and disgust.
She backed up to kick him, connected hard.
Both fell to the floor Delaney groaning in ecstasy, Williams screaming in agony.
We rode the hell out of that thing.
Williams remembers the day as nerve-racking.
But I dont think I hurt him, she adds.
It was all as heavy as you may imagine.
We would kind of all look around at each other and be like, Is this okay?
Lets just keep going.
The show careened from dramatic to absurd to hilarious to unbelievable and then back again.
I was just sort of wondering what the tone would be.
And nobody gave me an answer, Williams says, laughing.
(Williams recommends a butt salve not for adults.)
Williams and Meriwether are identically dressed in white sweaters and jeans.
They both want to order something called tender lettuces, which we all agree is thematically resonant.
The show could only have starred Williams, Meriwether says: We needed the Simone Biles of acting.
Dying for Sexcomes at a fascinating time.
But Meriwether and Rosenstock have managed to make something truly novel.
I think about that a lot.
Thats why sex is an answer to death.
Because its the ultimate feeling before were left without any, says Williams.
She jokingly slaps the table for emphasis.
I got to go home and see my husband!
she says, laughing as she stands up.
Williams, Meriwether, and Rosenstock all Zoomed in 2022.
It destroyed me, Williams says of the podcast.
Its not often that you get such a strong emotional reaction.
You like things, you might admire things, you might be provoked by things.
But to be just obliterated by something?
I cant know when I last had that experience.
She cried and blubbered after listening to it, then listened to it again.
I was like,What just happened to me?Things dont usually get to me like that.
When I ask her to name what exactly she couldnt shake, she thinks for at least a minute.
Its human bravery, she says finally.
I think thats the thing that gets me about it.
Bravery, in the midst of the most impossible circumstances, to do something your own way.
When you have small children, you become thoughtful about the time you spend away from them.
And so I dont work a ton, but I still want to work, Williams says.
She agreed to read the next few scripts when they were ready.
It wasnt necessarily the thing that I saw myself doing.
I got all these kids, she admits, spearing a tender lettuce.
Im going to go do a show aboutwhat?
Then she got pregnant.
When they emerged 20 weeks later, they set out to get Williams again.
Shes our dream, says Meriwether.
And we were like, How do we get our dream back?
Early the next year, Meriwether ran into Williams at the 2023 Critics Choice Awards.
Williams was with her best friend, Busy Philipps, whom Meriwether also knew.
We have more scripts.
Williams thought about it.
She hadnt worked in a while and was getting the itch.
This is getting crazy.
And youre like, Woo!
Meriwether, Rosenstock, and the intimacy coordinator were standing by on set to offer notes.
We talked about how realistic each orgasm was, says Meriwether.
How one should sneak up on you, how the last should be like finishing a marathon.
Williams was game but nervous.
This is not my come face.
In Montana, where Williams grew up, her own sex education was nearly nonexistent.
Sex can kill you or make you pregnant.
No one ever talked about pleasure, she says.
I think I still struggle with it.
Im still a little embarrassed about it or not sure how to talk about it.
In her book, she talks about the No.
1 question she gets asked: Am I normal?
Kochan, alternatively, was this force of acceptance around sex, adds Meriwether.
Meriwether, Rosenstock, and Williams were all riveted by the way Kochan discovered exactly what brought her pleasure.
Sonya becomes a sort of kink doula for Molly, easing her into new notions of eroticism.
I loved it, sounding despondent.
I dont want to have to hurt people to have orgasms.
Whats wrong with me?
Nothing the fuck is wrong with you.
You early millennials are so tragic.
You think sex is just penetration and orgasms.
Because thats what Samantha said?
Sex is a wave.
Sex is a mind-set, Sonya says.
Heres the thing about your body, Sonya concludes.
You have to listen to it.
Yes, maybe its saying something you dont want or you dont understand.
But give it a chance and listen to it.
Her eyes widen as she watches a live domination-and-submission scene.
Thats what I want, Molly whispers.
So when did you figure out that you liked orgasm torture?
Probably when I was canvassing for Obama, he replies.
I work in finance.
But I do want you to step on me, and Im into penis humiliation.
Later, he marvels at her sexual improvisational skills: Ive never had someone check me for ticks before.
How did you think of that?
Were at Hugos in Studio City, Los Angeles, the last place she ever ate lunch with Kochan.
Sometimes I feel like Im talking for her and Im trying to make sense of her.
I think Im probably the best person to do it, but still, she says.
I think shed be like, Thats okay.
Thats not really what I think, but thats okay.
I love you anyway.
She twists a ring around her finger.
This is her ring Im wearing.
They didnt warm to each other right away.
Boyer thought Kochan was quiet and reserved but intriguing.
There was something about her long brown hair and her crystal-blue eyes, she says.
I used to call her an alien model because she just has such a cool, interesting face.
Their friendship was instantaneously intimate, emotionally and physically.
She was such a great participant in life.
She was like, I just want to be with you, says Boyer.
In 2005, Kochan noticed a small lump in her breast and asked her OB/GYN about it.
He dismissed her, telling her it was nothing and that she was too young to worry about cancer.
She felt embarrassed for bringing it up.
Six years later, the lump had grown big enough for her to ask another doctor about it.
By then, the cancer had spread beyond her breasts to her lymph nodes.
They went to therapy and tried to figure it out.
Her doctor told her she was going to die.
About a month later, she began having cybersex with strangers.
Kochan bought sexy lingerie, snapped nudes, sent graphic sexts across international lines.
She couldnt quite explain what she was doing or why she was doing it, at first.
But it filled her with purpose and pleasure, a new sense of herself.
Within a year, she had left her husband.
I dont think that I can self-realize in the context of this marriage for many reasons so I left.
Kochan quickly transferred her sexual adventures from the digital realm into the physical.
The sex was unlike any shed ever had.
She told Boyer about what she was doing early on, and Boyer was impressed and inspired.
I was like, Oh my God, this is so fun, remembers Boyer.
So then her sexual escapades became a check-in with me: Ive got to tell you what happened.
And we put it under this guise of Were working.
We had this fire under us.
TV execs didnt understand it or know how to package it.
One suggested a sexy, fun girlSex and the Citytype thing.
Kochan turned it down; she knew it needed to be more than that.
But the reality of her health intrudes at inopportune times.
I was bummed out, she says of this realization, but maybe Im evolving.
By the fall of 2018, Kochans health was taking a serious turn for the worse.
At their final lunch at Hugos, Boyer recalls her being weak, unable to keep food down.
But both still thought she had years left, not months.
About a month later, Kochan was hospitalized.
The memoir runs directly perpendicular to the podcast in tone its raw, often angry, unvarnished.
I think the book was the wounded parts of her, says Boyer.
I think the podcast was the truest version of her.
And then, when I see Michelle play her, thats how Molly would love to be seen.
Boyer recalls sitting in her car alone in January 2019, acknowledging that Kochan was soon going to die.
They started signing contracts while she lay in her hospital bed.
In her last few weeks, Kochan was, as Boyer puts it, unlinking from the world.
She began hallucinating clocks flying off the walls, alien figures standing behind her doctors, feeding them information.
She was detaching from her body.
I could see it in her eyes.
I could see it in the way she looked at me, says Boyer.
But Kochan kept writing her book, and the two kept recording, though infrequently, on Boyers phone.
She started turning down visitors who would drain her energy.
She would directly address doctors who condescended to her or didnt speak to her with enough humanity.
She began thoughtfully giving away her things to the people she knew would appreciate them most.
The episodes from this time are wrenching to listen to.
Kochans voice gets smaller, quieter, her breaths raspier.
She lets go of the sex.
I dont miss it, she says.
My body did a really good job.
Kochan died on March 8, 2019, at age 45.
She left Boyer everything: her memoir, her laptop, her phone.
She said, Promise me that youll publish my book.
Promise me that youll do whatever you’ve got the option to to get this out here.
She very much wanted to make her mark on this world, Boyer says.
It was an instant hit.
That podcast starts, and its like youre just hanging out with friends, she says.
Boyer had multiple meetings with prospective adapters before the final podcast episode aired.
I talk to her a lot, Boyer says.
And the funny thing is she always said to me, Youre my soul mate.
And I would always be like, I love you so much.
No, youre not my soul mate.
And now Im like,Oh my God.
Shes my soul mate.
I kept saying, I want to go full wingspan, Slate says.
I feel like Im just being given little carrier-pigeon things.
When she got the role, Slate sobbed with gratitude.
She says it feels like the most important one yet.
When it came to portraying Boyer, Slate didnt feel she needed to mimic her.
She cares about the spirit of the thing because she and Molly are spirit partners.
Williamss transformation was particularly overwhelming to witness.
How would she have known thats how she held her shoulders?
Williams says she got her clues about Mollys physicality from photos, the podcast, and her writing.
She comes through so beautifully in the podcast, just her timing, her delivery, she says.
Williams carried a notebook with her on set.
Its my little school notebook, she says, my touchstones.
Its always a specific brand Postalco, based in Japan and has to have a grid pattern.
She keeps the details of the notebook to herself.
You have to build some kind of safe place inside yourself.
Otherwise you wont last.
One of her bare legs is exposed, splayed out from beneath the sheets.
Williams brought it up to Meriwether during one of their first conversations.
And her leg is coming out of the sheets.
Theres gorgeous provocation, and theres so much love and lust in her eyes.
She looks so sexy and in love, Williams says.
That was a beautiful transmission.
She wrote the episodes about Mollys death while thinking of the photograph.
Williams didnt let it go, either.
Its real good shit.
I was allowed to labor for 24 hours without any intervention and without any monitoring.
And I had said at the outset that this is what I wanted, she says.
If I could make something so beautiful, so perfect, what could possibly be wrong with me?
It permanently changed the way she saw herself.
In that moment, I was completely reborn.
I carried that experience with me, being in charge, Williams says.
I really liked being the boss.
She later made the connection between her labor and the death scene.
Life and death are in the room at the same time, in the same place, Williams says.
She left the hospital soundstage and walked outside into the sunlight.
It feels like the most jubilant experience that you could possibly imagine.
She began to run.
I remember how long my legs felt, she says, smiling.
I felt like an antelope or something.
Like I didnt know my body could do this.
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