Lizzy Caplan Says She’s Better Than Jon Hamm[VIDEO]

Lizzy reveals why she’s “better” than her friend, actor Jon Hamm. Jon then decides to join Lizzy on our stage and plead his case. Read More...

Lizzy Caplan Talks Nudity with Jimmy Kimmel & Jon Hamm[VIDEO]

Lizzy talks with Jimmy and Jon Hamm about all of the nudity involved with filming her show “Masters of Sex.” Read More...

Conversations with Lizzy Caplan of MASTERS OF SEX [VIDEO]

Q&A with Lizzy Caplan. Moderated by Jarett Wieselman, BuzzFeed.

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Michael Sheen says prickly Bill Masters will always have his sympathy! [VIDEO]

Michael Sheen talks to Gold Derby editor Daniel Montgomery about his continuing role as pioneering sex researcher William Masters in Showtime's drama series "Masters of Sex."

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"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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Lizzy Caplan talks about her dramatic 'Masters of Sex' Role! [VIDEO]

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"I believe that the best dramas have moments of comedy and levity and the best comedies have moments of real depth, and emotional depth."

The full Drama Actress Roundtable can be seen on 'Close Up With The Hollywood Reporter' when it premieres Sunday, Aug. 2, at 11 a.m. ET/PT on Sundance TV and HollywoodReporter.com.

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Actors on Actors: Lizzy Caplan and Allison Janney [VIDEO]

Though one’s now starring in a drama, the other in a comedy, Lizzy Caplan (“Masters of Sex”) and Allison Janney (“Mom”) have both famously spent time in the other category — and agree that the lines are now getting blurred. Their back-and-forth banter at Variety’s “Actors on Actors” studio proved the point, as the actresses chatted about the thrill of doing theater, and the emotional toll of getting into character.

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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...

Lizzy Caplan talks 'Masters of Sex' Emmy nod, her love for 'Real Housewives'!

Via EW.com : Lizzy Caplan prepared for today’s Emmys announcement like anyone would: by reading her horoscope. Which didn’t give her the most hope. “They were all bad!” Caplan told EW. “And then I just started laughing and realized, I really need to get a life.” Thankfully, the stars were wrong—because Caplan woke up this morning to the news that she had been nominated for her role as Virginia Johnson in Showtime drama Masters of Sex. This marks Caplan’s first Emmy nomination, and she’s ready to celebrate despite waking up at 5 a.m.: “F— sleep.”

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: What were you doing when you found out?
Lizzy Caplan : I was sleeping soundly, not a care in my mind. No anxiety dreams about it whatsoever. I was in a deep slumber. I did not wake up to watch it. I figured, you know, if it were good news, people would call me. And why wake up at 5 in the morning for bad news? That’s too long of a day to ruin.

EW : But it was good news, so how did you find out? Who called you?
Lizzy Caplan : My friend, actress Lindsay Sloane, called me and was losing her mind because I was talking to her last night. I’m homesick, and so I’ve had an opportunity to really think about it for the first time. I have not thought about it at all until this week. And, I mean, just very, in the back of my mind, I really did not think that this was going to happen. I really did not. If anything, I was rooting for the show and for Michael. But late last night, I was online and I decided to read my horoscope for today. And they were all bad! And then I just started laughing and realized, I really need to get a life, this is lame. There’s so much more important stuff to think about than this. And so I went to bed kind of at peace with the whole thing.

EW : What was your favorite scene to shoot this past season?
Lizzy Caplan : Michael and I have been asked to do some very intense scenes and episodes together that, I really believe, just stretched me as an actress in ways that I didn’t think I’d ever get the opportunity to be stretched. Also, all of my scenes with Julianne Nicholson really resonated with me on an eerie level. I’m very, very obsessed with that woman, and I think the friendship we created onscreen is special and I’m very proud of it.

EW : What show—old or new, on or off the air—would you give a Lizzy Caplan Emmy to, just because you love it so much?
Lizzy Caplan : I really want to answer this beautifully. I really do. [Pause] God, it’s such a bad answer, but I’m going to say I would give the Real Housewives franchise an Emmy for being the necessary McDonald’s for my brain at the end of a very, very long day.

EW : I don’t think it could get more beautiful than that. What’s your favorite branch?
Lizzy Caplan : Oh, I don’t pick favorites. They’re like my children, I love them all equally. Except Miami, I don’t watch Miami. There are too many of them, I had to put my foot down.

EW : Well, have a great day, and don’t read your horoscope again.
Lizzy Caplan : Yeah! Yeah, I guess horoscopes aren’t always accurate. That’s what I’ve learned this morning!
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Lizzy Caplan Shows Uninhibited, Dramatic Side In ‘Masters Of Sex’!

Via Deadline.com: After a career mostly spent in comedy, Lizzy Caplan has taken on the serious role of sex researcher and proto-feminist Virginia Johnson in Showtime’s Masters Of Sex, based on the 2009 biography by Thomas Maier. Caplan says playing opposite Michael Sheen, who stars as Dr. Bill Masters, was clever casting on many levels. “It seems like a smart choice to put an actor as established and respected as Michael Sheen opposite a comedic actress, because it mirrors the relationship between Bill and Virginia,” she says. Caplan, who’s still not past the “blind-gratitude phase” of the role, discusses her admiration for Johnson and those awkward sex scenes.
AWARDSLINE: Did the subject matter of Masters Of Sex ever give you pause?
LIZZY CAPLAN: Not really. Of course, in reading it and knowing what was to be expected of me if I ever got the role, that’s something I think anybody would think about. But I was so enamored with this woman, and her story, and who she was, that I knew it would be such a privilege and an honor to get to play her. Part of who she was, was this unbelievably comfortable-in-her-own-sexuality type of woman in a time when that was not exactly the norm. So I knew if I were to get to play this part, I had to figure out a way to be completely OK with it, and it didn’t take very long. Clearly, I’m not squeamish about it or else I don’t think I would’ve tried (out) for it.

AWARDSLINE: Virginia passed away last year, but you tried to meet with her. What were you hoping to get from her that wasn’t in Maier’s book?
CAPLAN: I had this fantasy that Virginia and I would become close friends and potentially vacation together, and certainly talk on the phone all the time. (Laughs.) I think she was 87, 88, and you know, was not particularly interested in living out those last few years of her life in the spotlight. So she wasn’t really interested in meeting any of us. I held out hope that the show would come out and she’d watch it, and secretly fall in love with it, and want to come hang out with us, but that never happened.

AWARDSLINE: Virginia is a real trailblazer in so many areas of her life—what parts of her personality attracted you to the role?
CAPLAN: She was definitely a trailblazer, and that would’ve been enough for me to fight very hard to get to play this role, but her personality was the key to everything. (Virginia and Bill) find themselves in very odd situations over the course of their career, and it’s Virginia who’s able to make human connections along the way. Bill Masters is smart enough to know that he was incapable of making human connections at times, even with his own wife. So, he knew that he needed this other half in order to accomplish what he wanted. What fascinates me the most about Virginia is this never-ending quest for meaning in her life, and that, I think, is universal. It makes no difference what decade you’re looking at. What she was striving for was this interesting career, an identity outside of being somebody’s wife.

AWARDSLINE: Is there a lot of rehearsal that goes into the show? The sex scenes seem like they would require a lot of technicality.
Lizzy Caplan Master of Sex interviewCAPLAN: We never really have enough time to do anything. Such is the nature of doing a television show. But the directors who come in definitely take the time to sit down with whoever has to do a sex scene. Michael and I have a lot of these meetings because we have a lot of these scenes and, more often than not, the director is far more uncomfortable with the conversation than (us). This has now become old hat. If you take a step back and think about what it is we’re actually choreographing, it would be very odd for somebody to hear some of these conversations. But it’s so much a part of the gig that we’re kind of used to it now. We try to make it a very safe and respectful environment, especially for people who are coming in and aren’t so comfortable, like guest stars who are asked to do certain things. But I mean, it’s still weird. There’s no way around it. It’s definitely a strange way to spend a Monday morning, but it’s about as ideal as a situation like that could be.

AWARDSLINE: So many of the moments between Virginia and Bill are about subtext. Do you play with that on set?
CAPLAN: One of the things that we do very well on the show is keep everything as ambiguous as possible. We’re always striving for that, especially the relationship between Bill and Virginia. We do not want (their relationship) to be something that’s readily identifiable. We don’t want to back ourselves into a corner by identifying what things are, especially because that would be untrue for the characters. They have no idea what it is that they’re doing with each other from moment to moment. But, yes, I do think that the subtext is equally, if not more, important in every single scene. So much of Bill and Virginia’s relationship is never spoken about directly. It’s all done with how they look at each other or what they don’t say. So, when we show up for work every day, Michael always has very clear ideas about what Bill’s thinking, and I always have very clear ideas about what Virginia’s thinking. The best days are when we never tell each other, and we just do the scenes. It’s exciting.

Photography by J.R. Mankoff
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MarieClaire Interviewed the Real Master of Sex, Lizzy Caplan! [PHOTOS]

It's Showtime's shockingly smart—and just plain shocking—Master's of Sex, returning this month, actress Lizzy Caplan graduates from funny-girl sidekick to serious, seductive main attraction. Read the rest of this very intersting interview by clicking on the "read more" button!
"I had to take a bath yesterday, and Yen, my dresser on set, had to strategically place bubbles over my naked body," says Lizzy Caplan. "I may be naked on camera, but Yen's job is to place bubbles over my boobs. So who had a more ridiculous day?"

Making light of public nudity has been a job requirement ever since the 32-year-old actress signed on to Showtime's Masters of Sex, which returns for its second season on July 13. If you haven't seen the show (and you should fix that), Caplan plays the real-life Virginia Johnson, a twice-divorced, sexually enlightened nightclub singer in late-1950s St. Louis who becomes secretary to the prominent, married gynecologist William Masters (Michael Sheen) and collaborates with him on a series of groundbreaking studies of human sexuality. Their methodology? Record hundreds of subjects in the act—and eventually participate themselves. Taking on the decidedly un-acerbic Johnson is a departure for Caplan, who made her name playing prickly snark queens like Casey Klein, the disgruntled cater-waiter on Party Down; Gena, the coked-up bridesmaid in Bachelorette; and, most iconically, crazy-haired Janis Ian, the scene-stealing outcast in Mean Girls. Growing up in Los Angeles, the daughter of a lawyer father and a political-aide mother, Caplan honed her withering wit the old-fashioned way: scouring newspaper comics and reading joke books from the library cover to cover ("I took being funny sort of seriously"). Though, like Janis, Caplan wore her hair black and her thrift-store clothes baggy, her performing arts high school was nothing like the one in Mean Girls. "It was kind of the weirder you were and the gayer you were, the more interesting you were." She began acting at 15 and turned down NYU to keep at it, making her the black sheep in her "tremendously academic" family. ("But," she points out, "the black sheep with no student loans. How you like dem apples?")

These days, she plays an actual adult on-screen, and in her own life she's getting there, too. Where she once shared an apartment with a rotating cast of platonic male roommates, now she's "obsessed" with renovating and decorating the midcentury-modern house in L.A. she bought earlier this year—which she shares only with her cat, Stephen Colbert. "It was very fun coming home to a house full of rowdy dudes, but I don't miss having to make small talk with all the random girls who passed through our door," Caplan says. "Perhaps it's a sign of some newfound maturity, but I finally see the value in having a sanctuary." Come Saturday night, you'll find her cooking for friends at the "very long, very raucous" dinner parties she throws. After dinner? Perhaps a game or two of Scattergories, though she notes, "My friends usually won't play with me. Apparently, being aggressively competitive and in everybody's face isn't as adorable as I think it is."

While comfort still reigns supreme in Caplan's world, she admits, "I now understand the power of being a better-dressed woman, as opposed to a strange little street urchin." So she may rock Wes Gordon and Timo Weiland on the red carpet, but in her off-hours she relies on a uniform of jeans and a gray T-shirt. And though her style acumen is growing, she's also happy to skewer the aesthetics-obsessed. Case in point: "Fashion Film," a web short Caplan starred in last year for Viva Vena! (Vena Cava's diffusion line), in which she floats around in a wispy dress and a flower crown, breathily describing her many creative endeavors ("I like to collect things. I'm good at it. I just make my art")—until a friend shows up and informs her she's in a commercial. "That supercharged hipster shit is definitely not me," Caplan says, laughing. "There's a part of me that's actually jealous; if I could derive that much pleasure from a flower or a raindrop, my therapy bills would be way, way, way lower."

 Never has she appreciated the worth of clothing more than in playing Johnson, a character with extremely modern views on female sexuality—if you ask Caplan, Virginia's still ahead of the curve—and an extremely retro wardrobe. "The first thing I do in the morning is put on a girdle, garters with stockings, and a long-line bra," says Caplan. "Just doing that starts to make me feel like I'm in her skin. The simple act of clipping stockings to garters—there's an elegance to it. It's so sexy."

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Lizzy Caplan's ‘Sex’ Education:‘I Thought There Would Be Backlash About the Nudity’

Via TheWrap.com : Caplan talks with EmmyWrap about playing orgasmic 1950s researcher Virginia Johnson in “Masters of Sex”. Lizzy Caplan never expected her dream role to be in a drama series, let alone one based in a hospital. Read the rest of this very intersting interview by clicking on the "read more" button!
Her agents didn't think she be into a project like that, either. But the actress gave “Masters of Sex” a closer look and soon became smitten with Virginia Johnson, the pioneering sex researcher she plays in the Showtime series. And now, deep in production on the show's second season, Caplan remains captivated by Johnson, a singer who became a household name for her work studying orgasms along with partner William Masters. The actress, who previously starred in “Bachelorette,” plays a sexually liberated woman in the late 1950s with remarkable aplomb. Her Johnson is complicated but deeply humane, the perfect counterpart to Michael Sheen‘s awkward Masters. “I'm pretty in love with her myself,” Caplan told TheWrap during a break in shooting. “She does some things I shake my head at, but she's pretty great.” As liberated as Johnson was for a woman at that time, she was also very private about her personal life. Thomas Maier's 2009 biography of the same name as the series is the show's main source material. It is based on the author's collaboration with Johnson in her later years, so some of the details might be understandably fuzzy. “She was fiercely private,” Caplan said. “She wanted the work to speak for itself and didn't want to attract attention to what was going on behind the scenes,” which was her affair with the married Masters. “One luxury of playing a person that people don't have a lot of specific knowledge about is that it's not like playing Marilyn Monroe, where it can be an impersonation. This was completely open to my interpretation.” Some characters and situations in the first and second seasons are completely made up, like the doctor Ethan (Nicholas D'Agosto), but a character like Virginia “doesn't require us to embellish that much,” Caplan said. “She is such an interesting character she doesn't require it.” The requisite nude scenes weren't a big problem for Caplan, who “broke the seal” for that on “True Blood” and is willing to bare all as long as she's convinced the flesh-flashing isn't gratuitous. “Learning more about the real Virginia, I talked with parents of friends that had seen her speak at college, and they told me how sexy and sensual she was,” Caplan said. “I realized if I was going to be nervous about it, I shouldn't be playing her.” The sex scenes in the series are almost comically clinical and sometimes profoundly sad, with much of the carnal activity taking place in exam rooms with fluorescent lights buzzing. “There are none of the tricks you can put on screen to make it look intimate and not totally awkward, which is the point,” Caplan said. “The first season had some of the oddest love scenes I've ever been in or seen.” The series paints Johnson as a reluctant sex partner to her prurient boss, who suggests they conduct research on each other to more closely monitor their sexual response. The more intimate they become, however, the more difficult it is for both to keep up their clinical front. It is a measure of Caplan's equanimity that the scenes don't come off as overly skeevy. Caplan's matter-of-fact attitude also helps keep sex scenes with other couples grounded, no matter how ludicrous research methods sometimes seem to modern eyes. “I thought there would be backlash over the nudity,” said Caplan, who has gotten to the point where she can watch her sex scenes with hands over her eyes. “At this point, I've lived in this person's skin for 2 1/2 years from the pilot. It doesn't even feel like me. It feels like her.” Caplan had appeared in shows like “Freaks and Geeks” and “New Girl” over the years but had been seeking a non-broadcast series for a while. “It's been a dream of mine to to cable TV,” said Caplan, who admitted she was searching for a comedy before “Sex.” “I had no idea it would be something as rich as this.” Read More...

Lizzy Caplan On The Cover of June's Issue of The Wrap! [PHOTOS]

Lizzy Caplan is On The Cover of June's Issue of The Wrap! More photos to follow soon!

 

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7 Surprising Things We Learned from Caitlin Fitzgerald’s InStyle Photo Shoot!

 

Via InStyle.com: With her naturally elegant disposition, it’s easy to see why actress Caitlin Fitzgerald landed the role of Libby Masters, the embodiment of 1950s wifely perfection, on Showtime’s hit drama series Masters of Sex. The show’s plot delves into the secret sexual revolution of the 1950s and the pioneers who forged the first scientific studies of human sexuality. Although Fitzgerald was reluctant to divulge details surrounding the upcoming season, she did open up about herself on the Malibu beach set of our fashion feature “Lines In The Sand” from InStyle’s July issue.

1. WHEN IT COMES TO STYLE, SHE'S A NO FUSS KIND OF GAL

“My personal style is tomboy chic. I just like to keep things simple and I lean towards clean shapes and colors in general. I travel a lot so I like my clothes to go with all of my other clothes. I have a lot of black, gray, white, and navy. Just easy neutrals to match with.”

2. SHE BROUGHT THE WORLD'S CUTEST COMPANION TO THE PHOTO SHOOT (HER PUPPY, CHARLIE!)

“I’ve had family dogs growing up but Charlie is the first dog I’ve ever gotten on my own and he is perfect. He is a Norfolk Terrier and is five months old and eats just about anything and everything … he’s still learning how to control himself,” Fitzgerald said with a laugh as her pup munched on her complimentary spa slippers from Milk Studios. “He’s the only accessory I need.”

3. A SILENT MONASTERY IS HER IDEAL VACATION

“Big Sur is definitely the most beautiful place I've ever been in the entire world and that says a lot because I'm from Maine and there's a lot of beautiful places there," she told us. "I stay at a silent monastery. You can't talk while you’re in there—nobody talks. The views are beautiful, the monastery is beautiful, the food they feed you is beautiful and it’s a very spiritual, magical experience.”

4. HER DAILY HAIR AND MAKEUP ROUTINES ARE AS EFFORTLESS AS HER APPROACH TO STYLE

“I wash my hair and then I let it dry. And then that’s pretty much it. My hair goes through a lot with filming, shoots and carpets,” the actress revealed. “I try not to put any heat on it if possible—I don't even own a hair blow dryer. But I feel like I might get one now for when I wash Charlie!” For her typical makeup routine, Fitzgerald explained why she keeps things minimal: “I have very fair skin and my hair is very light so I look made-up very quickly when I put on makeup so I try to keep things minimal. Day-to-day I just put on a little mascara and some light foundation.”

5. SHE DISCOVERED THE ONE PRODUCT SHE CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT ON THE SET OF HER SHOW

“The hairdresser on my show [Masters of Sex] just gave me this magical thing called The Wet Brush. For all of my life I have had really fine hair, but I have a ton of it, so the minute it touches water it becomes this snarled mess. I’m pretty sure you can get this brush at any drugstore and it just goes through your hair like a knife through buttah.”

6. SHE RECENTLY GAINED ACCESS TO THE LIBRARY

“I just got my public library card and it gives you access to these awesome programs that you can stream on right onto your phone and tablet!” the actress gushed. “There’s Hoopla, which has a bunch of self-improvement programs to teach you languages and skills and Stitcher, which has some awesome podcasts.”

7. WHEN IT COMES TO BOWLING, DON'T MESS WITH HER!

“I love bowling! And I’m really good at it, not to brag,” she said.

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Lizzy Caplan on Keeping Masters of Sex Dangerous and Why Season 2 Is Off-Limits to Her Family!

Via TVLine.com: Lizzy Caplan is terrified — and she is very much hoping to stay that way. As the female lead of Showtime’s Masters of Sex, TV’s erstwhile go-to gal for snark and sass took a big swing to portray human sexuality pioneer Virginia Johnson opposite Michael Sheen’s Dr. William Masters. The venture led the actress down strange, new (and yes, “terrifiying”) roads, yet she met the challenge every step of the way, and thus far has earned a Critics Choice Award nomination for her efforts. With Emmy Award season on the horizon, TVLine spoke with Caplan about the joy of Sex — including why Season 2 may be off-limits to the fam back home

TVLINE | I was just rereading the first feature I ever did with you, from fall 2006: “Cozy Up to The Class‘ Queen of Snark.” Does that sound about right?
Can you please title this feature exactly that same way? Please…?

TVLINE | I shall not. Gosh, we were so young back then….
Remember 2006? The world was our oyster.

TVLINE | Tell me about your first acting role as a kid.
My first acting role as a kid was on Freaks and Geeks. I did it when I was 15 years old, I played Girl No. 1, I was in the pilot and I had one line. Ben Foster was in the scene with me, and I had no idea what I was doing, and then I came back for three more episodes — still didn’t know what I was doing and was very nervous — and since then I’ve been very proud to have been a part of what is probably one of coolest shows ever made.

TVLINE | OK, I was more going for, “Betsy Ross in a third grade play.”
Oh, you want to go back that far? Because I got that. I was a Russian dancer in my elementary school production of Fiddler on the Roof when I was in third grade of fourth grade. I was one of the younger kids accepted into the play, and the plays were pretty impressive, let me say. When we did Wizard of Oz, one of the girls few through the air on a harness.

TVLINE | That’s hardcore. Nowadays, schools would be worrying about lawsuits and such.
I know, this was way back in the Wild West, pre-lawsuits.

TVLINE | Here you now are on Masters of Sex, playing an important, real-life person on a period, prestige drama, on a premium cable network. As far as your career-to-date goes, did you feel like this was your biggest swing?
It probably was, especially since in the years before I took that swing I was fairly content being a comedic actress and not taking “prestige drama” swings, even though it’s always something I’ve wanted to do. It felt like a big risk going after it, but at the same time it didn’t feel like a risk at all, because I felt my chances of landing the role were so slim that I didn’t have anything to lose. I just wanted it so badly, and it had been a while since I had wanted something so badly that I didn’t think I stood a shot at getting.

TVLINE | Is there a greater responsibility or a greater satisfaction – or both – in portraying a real person?
I’m in this weird zone with playing a real person because, yes, she is an unbelievably important historical figure, but I’m not tasked with doing a direct impersonation of this woman. In a lot of ways, it’s my interpretation of a historical figure. That definitely makes it less daunting than having to pull off the storylines that we’re trying to tell on our show while also doing a direct impersonation, something my costar Michael Sheen hasdone successfully many times in his career.

TVLINE | Talk about the trust you’ve got there with Michael, because you two have to go to some interesting places.
We do, indeed, and it’s about finding the balance between having total trust in one another but also surprising one another and letting each other hang there. The relationship between Virginia and Bill is so complex, and spans so many decades, and just gets odder, and their intentions become more and more muddled with each other…. You’ll see, it’s pretty extreme in the second season, and as actors we’re there for each other 100 percent. We hold each other up, but there has to be an element of danger between the two of us…

TVLINE | It can’t come across as overly rehearsed and safe.
Exactly. There’s an instinct to pull the power out of scenes like that because it’s scary to play a particularly graphic sex scene or even a particularly revealing emotional scene, but we don’t do that. We don’t try to dilute it completely by just being buddy-buddy all the time off the set – even though he is mah buddy.

TVLINE | The Lillian/Virginia friendship is one of our most favorite on TV right now. How has it been working with Julianne Nicholson?
That’s so awesome that you say that because that is one of the things that I’m the most proud of in the show – specifically, what we do with that relationship in the second season. So much care and so much love is given to developing this friendship between these two women, and I’ve referred to it as this a couple of times now, but it truly is crafted as a love story. It just happens to be a female friendship, but the intimacy that these two women share and how it requires both of them to break down their own walls…. I think the writers did an amazing job with that storyline. I don’t want to give anything away, but hopefully Season 2 won’t disappoint you if you’re a fan of that relationship, because it certainly didn’t disappoint me.

TVLINE | Showrunner Michelle Ashford has said that she wants each season to feel like a completely different animal. Does that excite you?
It’s blowing my mind. I anticipated the shock of getting this job to have settled in at this point, but now doing Season 2, it’s even more insane to me that I get to show up to work on this show every single day. In terms of what the audience will see as whether or not it feels like a completely different animal…. Masters and Johnson are not in the same hospital anymore, so our sets will feel very different. We have to do a big time jump about halfway through the season, and hopefully that won’t jar people too much, because the story that we’re trying to tell is 30 years long, and we don’t have the luxury of shooting it over 30 years. Playing this role was terrifying in one way for Season 1 and in a completely new way for Season 2 — and if it continues to terrify me onward, then I think I will continue to pinch myself about getting this gig.

TVLINE | Well, when you got this gig, who amongst your family or friends was it most vital to warn, “Listen, I want you to see my new show, but… you’re gonna see things”?
Season 2 should be interesting because for Season 1, Valerie Joseph, our lovely post-production supervisor — because we had a lot more time between wrapping, shooting and the airdate of the show — made “family edits” that artfully cut out everything that had to do with Virginia being naked. Everybody else’s nudity and stuff was in there, but mine was cut out. But [the producers] made it very clear to me last year that that would not be an option in Season 2. So as we gear up for the airdate of Season 2, this will be the first time I have to have that conversation with my family, because it’s definitely not something that I want them to watch. I thought perhaps I would have matured a bit in the last year to wrap my head around it, but I can safely tell you I have absolutely no interest in the male members of my family watching Season 2 of Masters of Sex.

TVLINE | So, Crazy Uncle Lenny got to see some version of Season 1, but that’s it? He’s cut off?
Yeah. I mean, they’ve all created methods for watching it that usually involves a female member of the family telling them when to close their eyes. But I try to stay out of it, because if I were to take that on as my problem, I’d probably have a stroke.

TVLINE | When all is said and done, what do you hope that your portrayal of Virginia communicates to viewers about her?
That’s a big question…. One thing that I’ve been very pleasantly surprised by… is that the story that we’re trying to tell and the way that we’re trying to tell it resonated with the audience pretty much immediately, even though our show’s called Masters of Sex. There’s a ton of sex in it. There’s a ton of nudity in it. But there’s nothing gratuitous about the show that we’re trying to make. I think that a lot of times, for women in particular, sexuality can be tied up with a lot of negative feelings in the media and about ourselves, and if any woman sees our show and it forces them to reevaluate how they see their own sexuality and the ideal of female sexuality in general, I’d say that’s a home run. Read More...

Michael Sheen on the THR's Drama Actor Roundtable! [VIDEO]

Via THR.com : Six of this season's hottest awards contenders -- also including Liev Schreiber, Michael Sheen and Jeff Daniels -- talk to THR about losing movie gigs to the Brads (Pitt and Cooper, that is), worrying whether their agency is fighting hard enough for them and getting jealous over other performances.

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Beau Bridges dishes his dual dumb and smart roles on Gold Derby! [VIDEO]

Beau Bridges ("The Millers" and "Masters of Sex") chats with Gold Derby editor Chris Beachum. He co-stars as Tom Miller, the befuddled father of Will Arnett on the CBS comedy. He guest stars as Barton Scully, the 1950s provost at Washington University on the Showtime drama.

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"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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Teddy Sears talks about Masters Of Sex on Gold Derby! [VIDEO]

Teddy Sears of "Masters of Sex" chats with Gold Derby editor Chris Beachum about the show and his career in general! Masters of Sex returns on July 13th only on Showtime!

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