"Masters of Sex" creator Michelle Ashford on 30 years of revolutionary research![VIDEO]

"Masters of Sex" showrunner Michelle Ashford talks to Gold Derby editor Daniel Montgomery about the second season of Showtime's provocative period drama.

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Masters of Sex Season 2: Behind the Scenes - The Times [VIDEO]

Creator and Executive Producer Michelle Ashford discusses the time period in which Masters of Sex takes place.

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Masters of Sex Producers on What Makes a Sex Scene Sexy!

Via Time.com : How do you make a show about sex interesting in an era when we’re bombarded by it? Easy. Put three women behind the lens.

Michelle Ashford, Amy Lippman and Sarah Timberman are seated around a conference table ticking off a list of Hollywood sex scenes. "Basic Instinct" “Out of Sight.” “Remains of the Day.” “Ohhh, Remains of the Day,” Lippman coos. “That’s a beautiful sex scene.” It’s all research, of course. As the brains behind the Showtime series, Masters of Sex – which traces the lives of pioneering sex researchers William Masters and Virginia Johnson – the women needed to understand: What makes a sex scene sexy?  So they each sat down one night, with a series of sex scenes collected on a DVD. One by one, they dissected each carnal moment. “We literally had 50 movies,” says Ashford, the show’s creator and showrunner. “We wanted to find out what actually makes something, honest to God, sexy.” What they found, naturally, was that it had little to do with the physical act – and everything to do with narrative. And so as the trio – creator and executive producers, respectively – prepared to film the pilot of Masters of Sex, Ashford made a rule: sex on this show couldn’t just be about sex. “We decided that sex had to be completely connected to story,” she tells TIME, in a profile in this week’s magazine. “So it was either funny or humiliating or curious or revelatory or… something.” Ashford, Lippman and Timberman spoke to TIME about Masters and Johnson, sex on television, and how you keep a show about sex interesting in an era where we’re bombarded by it.

So you guys watched 50 sex scenes. What was the sexiest?
Ashford: We all agreed that Don’t Look Now, the Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie movie, from 1973, was memorably sexy. Michael Sheen (who plays Masters) loved it. We loved it. And our director, John Madden, said, ‘Every love scene I’ve ever directed was influenced by that movie.’ So when we went and watched the film again, we tried to figure out what were we all responding to. We just assumed it must not be trying to be sexy. But that’s actually not true — the sex is very sexy. But what they did was they shot that sex scene and then they intercut it with all these shots of that couple after sex, getting ready to go out for the evening. And so the aftermath of being together is on their faces, what this intimacy has meant to them. And so all of a sudden you get a whole story, because you’re seeing the sex but you’re also seeing the effect of the sex.

Is it rare to get that level of story and sex these days?
Ashford: I think in a lot of shows it’s still as if, OK, we’re going to have a lot of exposition, so we’re going to have two people humping in the background to make it more interesting. Part of what makes Masters of Sex great is its willingness to treat sex like science.
Ashford: We show a lot of sex, but the discussion of sex is incredibly frank. We use the words vagina and clitoris, like, endlessly, and you really don’t find that on other television shows.
Lippman: I mean, I’m not a prude about this stuff, but [before this show] I don’t think I’d spoken the word dildo publicly … well, ever.
Ashford: And now you say it six times a day.
Lippman: An hour! It’s like, is the masturbation with the dildo, with out the dildo…

You talk about more serious topics too – there’s an episode on vaginismus, a rare sexual disorder, and even male impotence. Those are like the least sexy topics possible in a show about sex.
Ashford: We want this show to feel relatable … We want people out there watching, who don’t have perfect sex lives, who suffer from sexual dysfunction and insecurities and many nights of the worst dates ever, we all want those people to watch and say, ‘Well, that’s me.’

So there’s almost an underlying social mission.
Timberman: The show has really given us license to talk about a lot of these taboos.

How do you make sure you get the science right?
Ashford: One of Masters and Johnson’s claims-to-fame is that they disproved Freud’s theory that vaginal orgasms were superior to clitoral orgasms — which made half in the women in the world think they were “frigid.” But when we actually went to write that part of the script, we realized we didn’t understand the mechanics. So at one point, we had all these diagrams out to try and understand the difference between. It was hilarious, all of us writers gathered around this drawing, going, “Really, that’s how it works?”

It’s still pretty rare to find women running the show in Hollywood. How do you think your gender influences the way this story is told?
Timberman: It’s something that’s come up a lot in talking about the show that we almost forget – that this is a show that’s run by a lot of women. That’s not by design. But, sure, it’s not the male gaze.
Lippman: And female pleasure is well represented. As women writing a show about sex, the expectation might be that we are most interested in telling stories about love and romance, and while that’s a component of the series, it isn’t necessarily our focus.
Timberman: Right. And, you know, in season one, we make a big deal of that line by Masters, where he says that women are ‘greater sexual athletes’ than men, because they have multiple orgasms.

I was watching the preview of the second season, and within the first five minutes we hear Virginia Johnson talk about asking for a raise, the farce of diet pills, dildos, and female competition. You watch something like that and it’s hard to imagine this not being a show produced by women.
Lippman: I think the thing that gives us license is not necessarily being female, but having Virginia Johnson as a character. She was a remarkable woman, very flawed, very complicated, but absolutely a groundbreaker. And her attitude toward sex was truly unusual – even for today. She was able to separate love and sex.

Right. And she’s a working mom.
Lippman: You know, we all have children. We’re working. We’re struggling with things like, ‘When do I get home because my kid’s in an All Star game?’ and ‘I need to take a week off to take my kid back East to go look at colleges.’ So I think there is a lack of judgment on our part about Virginia as a working mother and an appreciation for how hard it must have been, in the late 50s, to balance one’s professional ambitions with having a family.

When I spoke with Lizzy Caplan [who plays Virginia Johnson], she made the point that your portrayal of female friendships is really quite nuanced. Can you speak to that a bit?
Ashford: I think sometimes female friendships tend to be portrayed as either ‘We’re best friends and tell each other everything’ or ‘I did like you but now we want the same man, so I hate you.’ But the truth of female friendships is they are often as complicated as romantic relationships, sibling relationships, mother/daughter relationships — there’s competition between women, and envy, women can be both very judgmental and incredibly selfless in the love and support they offer one another. There are a million emotions under the sun that play out in female friendships, and I think we’re just committed to making the women (and their friendships) that we portray on our show as very specific. Read More...

'Masters of Sex' Showrunner Reveals Three Year Time Jump Mid-Season

Via THR : THR spoke with Michelle Ashford about the Showtime drama's more intimate second season, the challenges of working with nonfiction and what it took to lure Allison Janney and Beau Bridges back to the show. Masters of Sex is getting complicated. When the Showtime drama returns for its second season this Sunday, Dr. William Masters (Michael Sheen) and Virginia Johnson (recently Emmy-nominated Lizzy Caplan) will venture into new territory, both in terms of their sex study and their relationship. It becomes a less clinical and more intimate tale as the research team attempts to resume their work after being ousted from the hospital that served as the home to their study throughout season one. The second season also manages to fold in several new characters along the way, including those played by Betsy Brandt, Sarah Silverman and Keke Palmer. The Hollywood Reporter caught up with showrunner Michelle Ashford to talk about the three year jump that takes place mid-season, which cast members she and her writing staff couldn’t hang onto and the decision to end the twelve-episode season on a positive note.

How has this process differed for you in season two?
It’s been a crazy journey this year. I knew less of where I wanted this season to end so we were more finding it as we went along. As opposed to last year, where the season took place in about a year, which felt more organic when you’re actually watching twelve in a row. So in the middle of this season we’re going to make a time jump as we’re sort of beholden to history for the milestones we need to reach. We have to be accurate about when those happen so we really have to move — more than any other show I can think of — and one of the struggles is trying to figure out how to do that.

What significant struggles will we see Masters and Johnson face this season?
Masters being dislocated from the hospital throws them in disarray — not even sort of, completely. He’s like the king without the kingdom. He has to find a place and that journey is very fraught for him and it exposes many things about himself that he doesn’t want to look at. And Johnson also has to question the fact of what does it mean to hitch your wagon to someone else? You’re so dependent, and is that really a safe place for a woman to be, dependent on someone else? For her livelihood and her sense of meaning in her life and all of that. They’re both shaken up and thrown out in the world. It’s a question of where do they land and how do they land. They have to negotiate from scratch who they are to one another both personally and professionally.

What did you learn from the first season that made production run smoother this time around?
We have learned that hanging with our core characters in the sense of the people that come into their lives and stay for a bit is where we do best. Spending time with stories that are "the case of the week" is a little bit less satisfying for us so we have veered away from that. We now have a fluid but strong ensemble of people that weave in and out, and we follow them in a much more serialized way. That works really well for us. It’s a complicated show. The structure is hard to plan out. I do feel like we went in an interesting direction this year and it’s certainly different, as next year will be very different. However long the show goes, every year will look different than the one before. We’re lucky in that respect because we get to follow a real story that had so many twists and turns, you just never really know what’s around the corner.

What is it about the true story of Masters and Johnson that will make each season look so different from the previous one?
Because their careers and their personal lives went through many stages that were very distinct, especially when you’re talking about two people who were literally hiding behind closed doors in secret working on a study that no one could know about, to two people that were on the cover of TIME magazine. That journey in and of itself means that their lives are going to have to change radically. There are very distinct sections of their lives where everything shifts and they reorder themselves and go from there. The other interesting thing about going from obscurity to being very famous is that it sort of brings the real world in more and more because you’re in the public eye. It’s this very interesting dialogue between actual history and their lives. They went all over the map in terms of what their life looks like, so that’s why it changes a lot.

You mentioned that Masters will move forward three years between two episodes mid-season. Why did you decide to fast forward in the middle of the series run and not between seasons?
I did know a little bit about where I wanted the series to end and that was in the beginning of 1961 so our series starts in the later part of 1958 and goes to the beginning of 1961. This is sort of an experiment, to be honest. Most shows, if they’re going to move through history, will end a season and then come back and it will be later, and we will do that as well but I thought, what if you took one episode and show how it moves through time, and you see how time affects relationships? For example, looking at children, if you just see them every day, they seem more or less the same. If you look at them in jumps from one year to the next, they change radically, as do marriages, as do friendships. Every jump is a little surprise in terms of where the character is now and it shows you how time works on people. So that’s one of the things that we tried in the middle of the season. It’s enormously complicated and I’ll leave it up to others to decide whether or not it worked.

This season saw the entrance of several new guest stars. Why did you bring so many additional actors on board?
I did know certain things about this year and just by virtue of the fact that certain characters have come back — for example, Annaleigh [Ashford], who was in three of our episodes last year is now back as a fulltime cast member — so once you know that that’s going to be the case, you know that she’s going to bring a whole life with her and you think, what is that life about and how do we fill it out? That is by definition just going to bring in new characters. And Masters being adrift — he keeps trying to land some place — it makes sense for him and his work and for Virginia and that is going to immediately throw him into odd circumstances that will create new characters. One of the things that was very intriguing to me is that there was an all black hospital in St. Louis at the time that was world-renowned for training more black doctors and nurses than any place else in the world. It was really an enormous point of pride for the black community that they put together this hospital and I found that really intriguing. So I thought, I wonder how we can get that hospital in here, and we did. That’s sort of how both knowing the history of our world and also organically knowing where these characters need to go interact.

Just as you brought in many new cast members, you’re also saying goodbye to beloved ones, including Allison Janney, Beau Bridges and Nicholas D'Agosto. Why aren’t they returning?
One of the things that I’m discovering about our show is that once characters are sort of in our world, they will come back. It’s going to be one of those things where people go away for a little bit and then they show up again. Actually, one of the things I’m most enjoying is how people go away and come back. You can just say they are going to take a break to do other television shows (laughs). In a sense, you can look at it like that or you can just say that this phase of the character’s story has run its course for the moment but they will absolutely both of them be back. We got in this situation where Beau Bridges was supposed to be in the pilot and nothing else, but we fell in love with him and we kept him — which we keep doing with a lot of these characters — and then once we had him and we knew what we were going to do with him story-wise, we thought, well this guy would have a wife, which led us to Allison. Once we had Allison, we thought, "We’re never letting Allison go." (Janney was recently nominated for an Emmy for her role as Margaret Scully.) In the meantime, they went and got other shows so we didn’t have a hold on them that way. We didn’t sign them for the duration like we do with Michael and Lizzy. But we thought, this is like life. Life goes on and things change and things happen, why can’t we just have them back? So we are already talking about ways to get them back, and we’ll work around whatever scheduling thing. Both actors are game for it. And with Ethan (D'Agosto), we’ve already talked about ways to have him return to this world.

The characters are rumored to have more troubled arcs this season. Why the dark turn, and is there a light at the end of the tunnel?
They are in a little bit of a darker place in the beginning, but in the end oddly — I’m writing it right now — it doesn’t end on such a dark place. I feel like we got really in the weeds with some heavy duty thematic stuff this year, and I can even feel it viscerally. I felt like, God, I want to get out of this. I want some of these characters to sort some of these things out. We actually end in a much better spot in terms of that tonally, which was really fun. They’ve come out of this dark tunnel into the light. I think that’s exciting.

What has been the biggest challenge of turning this couple's real life story into a television show?
A lot of people say that it must be so hard because you can’t do whatever you want. You have to go with what the story is. I have not yet found that to be a burden. In fact, I find that really exciting. What happens is you have this blueprint, yet there are these huge areas that remain blank. It’s a bit like being an archeologist. You have to just get in there and start digging. That’s where our work comes in because many things we’ll never know. We get to imagine them. I realize now I only seem to written nonfiction. I love it. I love the idea of taking a structure of something and then getting in there and just figuring out what was really happening. It’s challenging, but in the best way. Read More...

"Masters of Sex" Creator Michelle Ashford On Getting Intimate With Masters & Johnson!

Via Deadline.com : The story of two 1950s researchers breaking ground in the field of human sexuality sounds like a natural for late-night cable TV, but Masters of Sex is much more than its title might suggest. The Showtime series—based on Thomas Maier’s 2009 book of the same name—follows the professional and personal entanglements of William Masters and Virginia Johnson, whose more than 30-year partnership resulted in bestselling books and a research institute that bears their names. Despite their success, series creator Michelle Ashford says their personal connection is what makes them perfect for a drama. “It is without a doubt one of the most complicated relationships I’ve ever come across,” she says. Hit the read jump below to read the rest of the interview!
Awardsline: When did you learn about Masters and Johnson enough to know they would make a good TV show?
Michelle Ashford: I had been friends with (producer) Sarah Timberman for many years, and we were looking around for a pilot. She saw in The New York Times a review of Thomas Maier’s book and said, “I think we should look at this book. This sounds really interesting.”  Up to that point, I knew (Masters and Johnson) existed, I knew they were famous, I knew (they) had something to do with sex. Then I read the book. It was news as to what was really going on in that relationship and the enormous impact they had. So we optioned the book. A ton of our material is based on (it).  But the reason this happened was because (Timberman) has known (Showtime president) David Nevins for many years. She saw him in an airport, and she had the book in her purse and just handed it to him and said, “Michelle and I are thinking of doing this. What do you think?” We had talked to HBO, we also talked to FX, but David immediately read it, immediately got it, (and) said, “I see this completely.”

Awardsline: How much of the personal interactions did you have to create to tell the right story?
Ashford: Well, Tom’s book is very thorough, and it’s filled with a lot of fact. And he did spend many hours with Virginia Johnson and tried to glean her feelings about things. That being said, Masters was dead, and there are a lot of gaps (about) the emotional substance of what was going on, which is good for us because it leaves us some room to say what was really happening. We can explore all the different variations of their love affair and their professional relationship.

Awardsline: Why create composite characters, like the closeted provost (Beau Bridges) and his long-suffering wife (Allison Janney)?
Ashford: When you’re basing something on a book, the book has already been legally vetted, so you really can take the information that’s (there) and you can use it. But you have to be careful when you’re extrapolating about characters that are peripheral. They may be mentioned in the book, (but) that doesn’t mean you can necessarily take that character and create a whole life around them. We knew in reality there was someone in Masters’ orbit that was the mentor figure who seemed to be a closeted gay man. That was really interesting, especially because Masters later on in his career actually tackled the notion of homosexuality. In modern days it sounds sort of barbaric, but he was not coming at it in a judgmental way. He tried to help people. I think a lot of that came from that experience of knowing someone who was suffering in this way.

Awardsline: Virginia Johnson is a single mother working in a verboten field. Is it tough to keep her complex and flawed without turning her . . .
Ashford:. . . Into a super girl?

Awardsline: Well, yes.
Ashford: We talked about that because I think there were elements of her that were the real woman, that were remarkable. She was really smart and didn’t graduate from college and yet managed to pull all this together. So we wanted to introduce her as an extraordinary woman. But we also knew that she’s a deeply complicated woman and the journey she goes on shows a lot of different sides. So yes, we used to say, “Oh, she’s the woman with the super vagina because every man is falling in love with her.” Then we thought, “We’ve shown that part, but now let’s look at what’s fueling some of that.” In season two, we see a more complicated woman, which is way more fun for us and also for our actress (Lizzy Caplan).

Awardsline: Masters has his own complications and isn’t all that likable. Does that create its own challenges?
Ashford: The real Bill Masters made a remarkable journey in his life. It’s so sad that we don’t have the benefit of speaking with him because it’d be really interesting to hear his take on this. But when you look at the facts and the things that happened, it’s clear that (he) was wrestling with big demons, and that he came to a different understanding of his life and who he was and how he moved through the world. We have a very brave and wildly gifted actor in Michael Sheen, who has no problem at all really (going) for a guy who’s inscrutable and off-putting and who just keeps digging at the layers.
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'Masters of Sex' Cast Takes Jabs at 'Game of Thrones,' Talks Awkward Moments on Set!

Assembled for a TV Academy panel, the cast and creators of the Showtime series revealed how they do sex scenes and gender equality right, and why most other TV shows do not. Hit the the "Read More" button to read more (LOL).
Via THR.com : Allison Janney was on board to join Showtime's period drama Masters of Sex, that is until the creators told her she may actually have to have sex.
"Do you know I old I am?" she recalled of her response at a Television Academy panel Tuesday night.
The 54 year-old actress revealed that adjusting to the role was a challenge at first. "But then..." she laughed, gesturing to her attractive 37-year-old on-screen sex partner Teddy Sears seated next to her on stage.
Over the course of the hour-long discussion, the show's cast and creators dished on difficult season one sex scenes, took digs at Game of Thrones and delved into deeper cultural issues of acceptance and equality.
Below are seven highlights from the evening:
It's No Game of Thrones
The idea that Masters altered expectations about sex on television in the way the series portrays its steamy nude scenes in context was a theme that ran through the night. Star Lizzy Caplan, who had her fair share of sex scenes in the first season, assured the audience that the scenes never feel gratuitous because they are always in service of a larger story. "Our show is about sex and intimacy whereas other shows are about other things, maybe dragons," she joked, continuing with laughs from audience members, "No disrespect at all, but it does feel at times that it’s like, time out dragons, let's watch these people get it on with each other." Showrunner Michelle Ashford, who previously admitted to cutting much sexual material in the editing room due to her own discomfort, couldn't agree more.
Girl Power
"Our show is led by women, so they understand," Caplan praised the vision of executive producers Ashford and Sarah Timberland, adding with a laugh, "Yeah, women!" Annaleigh Ashford told the packed room that it's a gift to play a strong women on-screen, a description she believes her character Betty fits perfectly. Michael Sheen even chimed in to represent the male portion of the cast: "I don't think it's a pro-woman show," he said. "It's a pro-human being show... All the characters are equal, and it's striking how many shows that's not the case."
Relevancy Today
Various cast members noted that the while the show deals with 1950's issues, the problems are not unlike those we currently face. Caplan told The Hollywood Reporter, "I hope the show makes people ask themselves: are we so much more advanced than we were in the '50s -- especially women?" She noted that she feels most of the questions her character Virginia asks are issues women are still struggling with today. Beau Bridges agreed, touching on a subject dear to his character: "Our human society today has, unfortunately, come up a little short in terms of the gay lifestyle. We're not that accepting."
Honoring The Facts
Ashford and Timberland revealed that they feel compelled to honor the real-life story of William Masters and Virginia Johnson: "We all feel a real obligation and also we want to tell the real story of these people." Honoring the facts, however, doesn't mean the writers won't take creative liberties where there's gaps in the actual story. In fact, they teased that the coming season will feature material absent from the book on which the series is based.
Reading The Book
The creators expressed their gratitude for the biography of the two sex research pioneers by Thomas Maier, as it provided much of the necessary research for them ahead of time. When asked if she read the book beforehand, Caplan deadpanned, "I don't read, Michael?" to which star Michael Sheen confirmed he did: "If you're going to play a real person, you have a duty to read a little about them." In a more sincere moment, Caplan later admitted to reading Maier's work, not once but twice.
Impressive Script
Several cast members suggested they were sold on the series after reading the pilot. Caitlin Fitzgerald praised the writing, joking, "Good scripts are like beacons of light through the garbage." Caplan revealed that she knew little about the real-life Masters and Johnson but that after reading the script it was "no-brainer." Ashford too knew from the moment she familiarized herself with Betty in the pilot that she couldn't turn down to the role.
Growing Up in the '50s
Beau Bridges was a teenager in the 50's and remembered hearing about the real-life sex researchers. "Us guys, we kind of thought we were driving the bus, but then Masters and Johnson came along and revealed it's actually a woman." He called the research findings a "rude awakening" that helped to liberate women. Also worth noting: Bridges initially thought  his character would be a womanizer. "As the provost of the college, I thought I would be getting it on with all these college girls." He later found out from Showtime executives that he would be playing a gay man, which was "a new area for him to jump in" as an actor.
The second season of Masters of Sex premieres July 13 on Showtime.


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Revisiting Season 1: THR Visits the Set of Showtime's New Series 'Masters of Sex' [VIDEO]

Sarah Timberman (writer, executive producer) and Michelle Ashford (executive producer) on bringing the book to the small screen how they manage to deal with showing sex on tv. Michelle Ashford added, "We do show sex, but sex has been seen on TV."

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Showrunners Michelle Ashford, Carlton Cuse, Jenji Kohan Talk Sex, Emmys and Binge-Watching at HRTS Panel!

Via Variety.com: No topic – from sex and nudity to binge-watching – was off limits at the Hollywood Radio and Television Society’s Hitmakers Newsmaker luncheon as the creators of some of the most popular shows on TV discussed what it takes to create and maintain a hit skein. Michelle Ashford, creator of Showtime’s “Masters of Sex,” “Bates Motel” creator Carlton Cuse and Jenji Kohan, the mastermind behind the Netflix series “Orange Is the New Black,” came together Wednesday afternoon at the Beverly Hilton for a panel discussion moderated by TV Guide’s Michael Schneider. Even though sex is the main topic of her show, Ashford said she was presented with an interesting dilemma since she doesn’t enjoy watching “tons of graphic sex scenes in the movies or on television.” “It was an odd thing that I ended up with a show about sex since I’m sort of one of the biggest prudes on Earth about this,” she admitted, adding that her goal was to only show sex in a way that related to the story.Kohan had the opposite reaction. “I love graphic sex,” she said. “The more sex the better.” Though convincing the actors to do sex scenes or be comfortable with nudity often poses a challenge, Kohan explained that Netflix has not imposed any restrictions. “We’ve had no limits so far,” Kohan said. “We had some male frontal nudity this season.” When asked if there is such a thing as a drama or comedy anymore, Cuse replied, “Only for Emmys, apparently.” Kohan also wished for an hour-long category and a half-hour category. Cuse said the decision of where to shoot a TV show now often comes down to a question of tax credits. The choice to film both “Bates Motel” and his upcoming show “The Strain” in Canada was “purely economics,” he said. All the panelists expressed their distaste for the pilot process, which Cuse likened to “a form of haiku poetry,” as opposed to the straight-to-series approach. The panelists also weighed in on binge-watching. Ashford said she doesn’t have time to binge-watch shows and, though fans seem to enjoy immersing themselves in 13 hours of nonstop streaming, Kohan expressed nostalgia for the good old days of traditional TV viewing. “I miss having people on the same page,” she said. “I miss the watercooler thing.” Ashford, whose show is based on Thomas Maier’s biography of Dr. William Masters and Virginia Johnson, said “Masters of Sex” has “stayed very close to the truth.” “Masters of Sex” and “Orange Is the New Black” are set to return with new seasons in the summer, and Ashford said season two of “Masters” will move into a completely different element while Kohan said she has tried to incorporate the fans’ favorite things from season one. “The whole season is just dance parties, pie throwing and urination,” she teased. In addition to the third season of “Bates Motel,” Cuse will also serve as exec producer of the vampire-themed FX show “The Strain,” which premieres in July.

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Creator Michelle Ashford Talks Cast and Plot Flexibility! [VIDEO]

Michelle Ashford, Creator and Executive Producer of 'Masters of Sex', talks to HitFix about the flexibility of cast member appearences on the show, making the show unpredictible.

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Michelle Ashford on Keke Palmer & Betsy Brandt's Roles on Masters of Sex! [VIDEO]

Beware of mild spoilers! "Celebified" was on the red carpet for the Paleyfest 2014 panel honoring Showtime's Masters of Sex where they caught up with the show's Executive Producer, Michelle Ashford. She filled them in on the unusual roles Keke Palmer and Betsy Brandt will play, and detailed the fates of Beau Bridges and Allison Janney.

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Michael Sheen, Lizzy Caplan Get Intimate at ‘Masters of Sex’ Paleyfest Panel!

Via Variety.com: Sex was on the brain during Monday night’s Paleyfest panel at Hollywood’s Dolby Theatre, where Showtime’s “Masters of Sex” stars Michael Sheen, Lizzy Caplan, Caitlin FitzGerald, Teddy Sears and Annaleigh Ashford riffed on such titillating topics as the meaning of love, on-camera copulation, and the 2009 Thomas Maier biography upon which the show is based. Buzzfeed’s Senior Entertainment Editor Jarett Wieselman moderated the spirited discussion. “We were looking for ferocious intelligence and people who had an unconventional bent to their work and to the roles that they had chosen,” explained series EP Michelle Ashford of casting Sheen as famed 1950’s OB/GYN William H. Masters and Caplan as Virginia Johnson, a lounge singer-turned-secretary-turned-pioneering sexologist. “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.”

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Masters Of Sex PaleyFest Panel Highlights!

Via Hollywoodreporter.com: 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. But the cast and executive producers at the PaleyFest panel Monday night had plenty to say about last season, including why staying true to a period piece means 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, and Annaleigh Ashford and EPs Michelle Ashford and Sarah Timberman, who said they came directly to the Dolby Theater from shooting a season two scene. 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. 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 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 have been for them, but that they did receive one note: "There's too much sex in this episode."

4. Location, location, location
The Sony studio parking lot and an entrance to one building are 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 about how it was performing his audition for the show, in which he had to read a sex scene, Sheen jokingly added that 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 that theme of discussion ran through the evening. Caplan mentioned how, even amid a love triangle, neither woman played by Caplan and Fitzgerald is portrayed as a "villain" or as the "doormat." 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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