FX’s Dying For Sex follows one woman’s kinky journey of self-discovery. After learning that her cancer is not only back, but she is dying, Brooklynite Molly (Michelle Williams) decides that she wants to experience an orgasm with another person before she dies. This “sex quest” means that Molly not only leaves her obnoxious husband Steve (Jay Duplass), but she also takes up a revolving door of new lovers.
**Spoilers for Dying For Sex Episode 3 “Feelings Can Become Amplified,” now streaming on Hulu**
In Dying For Sex Episode 3 “Feelings Can Become Amplified,” Molly brings a hot 25-year-old played by Saturday Night Live standout Marcello Hernandez home. What’s supposed to be a simple, steamy hookup soon turns into a hilariously tense scene when Molly can’t figure out what the guy means when he asks her to “clasp” his balls.
As it turns out, series stars Michelle Williams and Jenny Slate never figured it out, either.
“Yes, we’re still trying to figure out ‘clasp,’” Williams said. “Like, is it, is that soft or is that firm? What does it mean to you? I mean, she can’t figure it out. What is it?”
“I’m like, ‘Well, I think of like a purse clasp.’ I’m like, ‘That’s too hard.”
Jenny Slate, who plays Molly’s super supportive best friend and caretaker Nikki jumped in. “You’re clasping your hands. You don’t want to do that,” Slate said.
“Or do you?” Williams wondered.
“I don’t know,” Slate said. “Yeah, you never know.”
“That’s what creates the dramatic tension of the scene!” Williams said. “Yes, everybody wants different things. So it really comes down to the fact that it’s all about communication.”
Eventually, though, miscommunication between Molly and her unnamed, much younger partner foils the chance for further intimacy. As Molly vents her frustration at Hernandez’s character, he retorts that she’s not saying anything. When he asks again what she likes, Molly has to admit she doesn’t know. He replies the older women he hooks up with usually do know what brings them pleasure, which leads to Molly kicking him out.
And that’s the last we see of Marcello Hernandez’s 25-year-old dude.
“We had a lot of fun,” Williams said of working with the SNL star. “We have a lot of laughs, um, and we had a lot like wonderful awkwardness.”
Williams then went on to say that the sex scenes in Dying for Sex are unlike anything else she’d done before. The sheer act of filming these intimate moments created a “unique” bond between her costars and herself.
“Something that I really enjoy about them is that the shared experience becomes so unique and you’ll always have this very strange moment together,” Williams said. “Jay Duplass and I have scenes like that, Rob Delaney and I had scenes like that, and I think at least we will always know what it was like.”
Just as when one window closes, another door opens, Molly’s unfinished tryst with the younger man soon shifts into a totally different kind of “shared experience.” She overhears her gross neighbor, known simply as “Neighbor Guy” (Rob Delaney), masturbating to the sound of her masturbating. Thus kicking off a massive relationship in the series.
To learn how that evolves, you’ll have to continue binge-watching all eight episodes of Dying for Sex, now streaming on Hulu.
