Michael Sheen
We almost didn’t get Michael Sheen at all. I was to be one spot next to the cutoff point for his last interview. Fortunately the publicists at the PaleyFest allowed him to do one more interview with a group of reporters. When I asked him about Masters’ sex appeal, he played it totally cool.
CraveOnline: A lot of female viewers are very attracted to Masters. Are you surprised he’s become the sex symbol of “Masters of Sex?”
Michael Sheen: Why would that be a surprise? I don’t understand.
Where will we see him pick up in season two? Because he was a mess when we left him.
Michael Sheen: Well, that was one of the things I loved about the storyline for him is that he begins season one as a man who is possibly the most defended, guarded, invulnerable man in the world, and he ends the season standing there in the rain saying how much he needs someone, the most vulnerable man.
So I love that kind of journey, but as with most people who are not particularly comfortable with being vulnerable, I don’t think that’s going to last. In fact, the more the pendulum swings one way, the more it has to swing back the other way. So there is something in him I think that has to punish everyone who makes him vulnerable as well, so look out, Lizzy.
Sarah Timberman
Executive Producer Sarah Timberman was also available to answer more questions about the direction season two is going in.
CraveOnline: Moving into the second season, do you have to step more into artistic license than fact based research?
Sarah Timberman: No, really we have so much fact on which we can continue to rely on season two because Masters and Johnson’s documented work spans decades, so we feel like there’s an embarrassment of riches in the source material, in Thom Maier’s book.
So we don’t feel like we ever will need to depart completely from reality over the course of the series. Of course we took license in season one and we’re certainly taking some license in season two in terms of where exactly [they set up]. As you know, the project at the hospital ends at the end of season one and that was a very truthful reflection of reality. We will have Masters and Johnson spend a period of time in the wilderness.
It’ll be a tumultuous season. They’re going to land in a couple of different places before they find their footing again so some of that is of course fictionalized, but we’re trying to remain true to the spirit of their work and also trying to truthfully track how their work evolved over the years. It’s a tall order but Michelle is the best writer for the task. We will continue to touch upon milestones that are absolutely based in reality and then depart again and then come back to reality and then depart again. It’s the nature of this kind of show.
Is there one piece of research that you just can’t wait to work into the show?
Sarah Timberman: We’re very interested in getting to the surrogates work that they did and of course we’re interested in getting to the work they did with couples, which is distinguishable from what we covered in season one because that was research they were doing with strangers who were coupled together in the research project.
This is way down the road, but we’re excited to get to couples coming in who are really helped in a significant way by Masters and Johnson. People who’d been through years of therapy would come in and have life changing experiences, so we’re excited to get there but that won’t be for quite some time. Surrogates are in the not too distant future and that seems very interesting to us.
Possibly season two material?
Sarah Timberman: Maybe. One of the things that we thank Showtime for is the degree to which they encourage us in season one and beyond to continue to come back to the actual research and to document it. If you go back and look at season one, most of our episodes touch upon one facet of their research or another.
We ended up getting to any number of discoveries that Masters and Johnson made. They’re debunking some of Freud’s ideas and they’re really documenting the way in which women experience sex differently from men and we’ll continue in that fashion. We’re going to keep looking at truth because this story is an incredible one and Thom wrote an amazing book. It’s one of these great things of truth being sometimes more fantastic than fiction.
