‘Dying For Sex’ director Shannon Murphy on “leading an orchestra” of actors and going “old school theatre”

When Australian director Shannon Murphy was first approached to direct the FX/Hulu miniseries Dying For Sex, about a terminally ill woman, her first thought was “Why would I ever do that again?” Murphy had broken out in 2019 with her debut feature Babyteeth, which earned her a Bafta nomination for best director, among several other accolades, and centred around a terminally ill teenage girl.

“I went in very sceptical,” she admits of reading the script for Dying For Sex.  “But then I thought, ’Wow, this is actually so tonally challenging’. That’s always why I’m intrigued by a project, when I don’t know how I’m going to pull it off.” 

Dying For Sex is based on the podcast of the same name about the real-life Molly Kochan, played by Michelle Williams, who received a stage IV cancer diagnosis and decided to leave her husband in pursuit of sexual adventure.

The conductor

Pulling off those tonal shifts – the series often jumps from devastating moments to cutting one-liners in the space of the same scene - has helped to garner Murphy an Emmy nomination in best director, having directed six of the eight episodes. She is also nominated as executive producer in outstanding limited or anthology series. 

“It was very much like leading an orchestra,” Murphy says of navigating a cast of seasoned comedians led by Jenny Slate and Rob Delaney, and Oscar contenders, Williams and Sissy Spacek. “They’ve all got the skills, but you’ve got to make sure they’re playing the same song.”

One scene in particular springs to mind for the director. In episode six, a rapidly deteriorating Molly bumps into Delaney’s “Neighbour Guy” on the street - with whom she had been having a sexual relationship – and falls over.

“When we first did it, Michelle’s fall, because she’s so in it, was almost too scary,” Murphy explains. “And I was like to her ‘we kind of need to make it a little bit funny’, because this moment is so tragic. She’s so weak and can hardly breathe.”

It also helped that this was the most aligned Murphy, who is well-versed in the television space with credits including Killing Eve, BBC One’s Dope Girls and Hulu comedy Dave, had felt with a project.

“It was a very different way of working,” she explains, citing how Slate and Delaney often improvised while creators Elizabeth Meriwether and Kim Rosenstock would throw out new lines while filming. “It felt as though we were almost on a theatre project together at times,” recalls Murphy, who began her career devising theatre in Australia, “so I knew how to mould that with them”. 

Sexual explorations

Cancer and death may have been a familiar beat for Murphy but stepping into the world of the kink community was far more of a learning curve. “We talked to a lot of people in that world,” she explains, adding that many were even used as extras in a scene set at a sex party. “We tried to keep it as authentic as possible.”

When it came to shooting sex scenes, of which there are plenty, Murphy often found herself asking cinematographer Brian Lannin for “more female gaze” even if she bristles at the term slightly. “It’s interesting because as a woman, it’s kind of all I know?” she jokes. “But it wasn’t only about what was in the text but also thinking about all my own and my girlfriend’s experiences of pleasure, and the varied experiences that they have had with men, and whether they’ve orgasmed or not, and making that feel really honest.”

Depicting Molly’s relationship with sex in all its entirety also meant exploring the character’s PTSD from the sexual abuse she experienced as a child. “I really felt like Molly should be in control of the camera, literally,” the director explains of these disassociated moments. Williams was given a SnorriCam, a body-mounted camera rig that locks the perspective on the actor. “Michelle actually operated it, which she loved, because she’d never done that before,” says Murphy. “She had the ability to kind of let the perspective drift away from her and then pull it back towards her when she could feel like she was gaining control again.”

Final moments

This breaking of the fourth wall was a technique that Murphy incorporated into the series at other points as well, especially as Molly nears the end of her life. “People often think it’s a way of detaching but I would say it’s not,” Murphy says. “It’s about staying really present in the craft of what you’re watching.”

None more so than in the final episode of Dying For Sex where Molly goes through the “rally” and the “unlinking” – two key transitions a person experiences just before they die. “I felt a real responsibility to represent them in a way that an audience could feel like they had a stronger understanding of what that was like,” Murphy explains.

For the unlinking, a hallucinatory type of experience where time is often described as going in a circle, the director wanted to go “old school theatre” with puppeteers and practical effects. Shot all in one take (though cut up in post-production), the scene takes place in Molly’s hospital room as people from her life pop up and carry out bizarre actions such as juggling dildos or letting off confetti cannons.

“The key is to capture the spirit of the reality of how it felt for that character, and then hope it can translate onto the screen sometimes,” says Murphy. “And it really did with that episode.”

Murphy is now in Prague on production for another TV series which she cannot reveal just yet, though confirms the Czech capital is doubling for New York. She also has several features in development, including an adaptation of The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie for Origin and Searchlight, and another project with SunnyMarch and Anonymous Content which will reportedly star Claire Foy.

“I’ve done my period of this kind of heartbreakingly funny story,” the director declares. “The next thing is going to be completely different.”

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