Based on a podcast of the same, FX’s “Dying for Sex” tells the heartbreaking yet empowering true story of a woman reclaiming her sex life after receiving a terminal cancer diagnosis.
Michelle Williams plays Molly Kochan, who died in 2019 from metastatic breast cancer. Kochan and her best friend Nikki Boyer, played by Jenny Slate, started a podcast in the months prior to her death to document the cancer patient’s journey of sexual exploration.
Kochan received a devastating phone call from the hospital in the middle of a couples’ therapy session with her then-husband, telling her that her cancer had spread to her bones and was incurable. At this moment Kochan left the session and decided she wanted to end her 15-year marriage.
Though Kochan did not admit that she had never had an orgasm with another person as she does on the show, she did admit that her marriage was unfulfilling for her sexually, and in her few months to live she wanted to explore.
Kochan’s cancer journey started at 33 when she went to the doctor to report a lump in her breast and was told she was too young to have cancer – they were wrong. Six years later she was diagnosed with breast cancer that had spread to her lymph nodes and later had to have a double mastectomy. In 2015 – where the pilot episode of the series picks up – she started suffering hip pain and underwent further tests, which revealed the cancer had metastasized and was now in her bones, brain and liver.
After surgeries and radiation treatments, Kochan started hormone therapy that was supposed to suppress her libido, but it ended up having the opposite effect. “I literally wanted to hump everything and everyone that I saw,” she said in the first episode of the podcast.
The podcast documented many of Kochan’s sexcapades that were then adapted for the FX series, including one date who insisted that the cancer patient kick him in the genitals (that part was true).
“I don’t think I would do any of this stuff without the cancer,” Kochan said of her adventurous sexual encounters post-terminal diagnosis. “Even though I’d maybe want to, I’d be a little more cautious about everything.”
Kochan died in 2019, but the podcast “Dying for Sex” came out in 2020. Kochan and Boyer were co-creators of the Wondery podcast. Boyer also served as an executive producer and writer on the FX series.
All episodes of “Dying for Sex” are available to watch on FX and Hulu.
