‘Dying for Sex’ Creators Confront an Even Bigger Taboo Than Orgasms With Molly’s Final Moments

Note: This story contains spoilers from “Dying for Sex” Episode 8.

While “Dying for Sex” already confronts a handful of taboos as the FX series spotlights kinks, BDSM and many, many sex toys, creators Liz Meriwether and Kim Rosenstock wanted to address an even bigger taboo in the finale: dying.

“These two taboos of sex and death in our culture — [we were] wanting to somehow shine more of a light on them,” Rosenstock told TheWrap. “Weirdly, at the end of the day, we were learning more on death than on sex, even, and that feels like something that is even possibly more taboo to really talk about … and really portray with this kind of intimacy.”

In the finale, titled “It’s Not That Serious,” “Dying for Sex” introduces Paula Pell as Amy, a hospice nurse who walks Molly (Michelle Williams) through the process of dying, providing the building blocks to the eighth and final episode’s narrative structure that made tackling Molly’s final moments less intimidating for the creative team.

“Much like people going into this situation feeling sad and scared, we were also not sure how to write it,” Meriwether said, noting the creators initially put off writing that final episode. “It felt new … I didn’t know this stuff. It was great to put it on camera, because I would love to know these things. We all die. It’s this very human, [very] universal experience.”

While both Meriwether and Rosenstock didn’t want to part ways with the character, they drew from Molly’s bravery to make the closing episode “empowering,” with Rosenstock saying “[Molly] was not afraid at the end. She knew what she wanted and was completely in control.”

In their goal to honor the real Molly, Meriwether and Rosenstock decided to pursue a “big departure” from Molly’s real-life story and podcast by giving her a romantic interest in Neighbor Guy (Rob Delaney), whom she builds a love story with during the latter half of the series.

“We wanted to build towards something that we felt like Molly, in real life, had been on the road towards, but died before she fully got there,” Meriwether said, noting that in the podcast, she talks about “finally being open to love and wanting to have intimacy.” “We decided to give that to her.”

The love story, however, isn’t the be all, end all for Molly, as we see her asking Neighbor Guy to leave as she gets closer to death, despite the pair exchanging “I love yous.” Instead, the finale sees her shift her focus to spending her final moments with her best friend, Nikki (Jenny Slate), and her mom, Gail (Sissy Spacek).

“There’s so many kinds of love — I think that is also what the show is about — and you can have love with somebody in that moment, but it’s not about spending your entire life with that person,” Meriwether said. “The real act of love is that he understands — he leaves.”

Though the creators admit the love interest was a “huge engine” for the show, Molly’s shift in priorities reflects a moment from the podcast when Molly tells Nikki she’s done with sex.

“The show is a love story between Molly and Nikki,” Rosenstock said. “That first episode always feels to me like the proposal scene, like ‘Will you die with me?’ And we wanted to really follow through on that.”

After Molly’s death, “Dying for Sex” flashes forward to see Nikki running her own play before reuniting with Noah and Winter, while two older women laughing about sex catches her eye.

Meriwether and Rosenstock had heard from cancer patients that they didn’t want their cancer to be a vehicle for another person to learn to embrace their life, so they instead chose to end with a moment of grief, but not “overwhelming grief.”

“We wanted it to just feel like life continues and what do you do with these experiences, and how do they live in you?” Rosenstock said. “The whole show is about pleasure and pain simultaneously, and I think that final moment with Nikki is about those same things — the pain of seeing these two old women who are laughing, and the pleasure of it.”

“Dying for Sex” is now streaming on Hulu.

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