Shannon Murphy On Balancing Comedy & Tragedy In Michelle Williams And Jenny Slate Series ‘Dying For Sex’, The Director’s Most “Auteur” TV Gig Yet

deadline.com:

Shannon Murphy wants to change the conversation around death. “I’ve been obsessed with death from such a young age and in many ways it’s this great adventure that we will all go on,” says the Australian director. “If we start changing the way we talk about it and look at how we can guide people through death and mourn them without hiding it from society, it could be beautiful.”  It’s this attitude and her curiosity with the unknown that drew the acclaimed theatre, TV and film director to her latest project Dying for Sex, FX’s new limited series starring Michelle Williams and Jenny Slate.

The eight-episode series, which launches on Hulu in the U.S. and Disney+ internationally on April 4, is based on the heartbreaking true story of Molly Kochan (Williams), a woman who gets a Stage IV cancer diagnosis and decides to leave her husband of 15 years to explore the full breadth and complexity of her sexual desires for the first time in her life.

Kochan originally created a podcast with her best friend Nikki Boyer (Slate), where she chronicled the highs and lows of her sexual odyssey as she bravely stared death in the face.

It was eventually released on Wondery in 2020, a year after Kochan died at the age of 45 with Boyer by her side. The series, which also stars Jay Duplass, Rob Delaney and Sissy Spacek, is written and co-created by Kim Rosenstock (Only Murders in the Building) and Elizabeth Meriwether (New Girl), who also serve as exec producers with Murphy.  “I’m always inspired by writing that feels tonally unusual and incredibly hard to execute,” Murphy tells Deadline. “When I read the script for Dying for Sex what drew me to it was the exquisite tension between raw emotion and brutal comedy.