Allison Janney On Sex, Sorkin And Being The Tallest Woman In The Room
Playing a woman discovering sexuality in the '50s makes actress Allison Janney think of — of all people — her mother. Janney's mother and father got married in their early 20s, and she doesn't believe her mother had sex with anyone else.
"I remember my mother talking to me about the birds and the bees," she tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. "Of course, I had already known [about them], probably years before she came to me. But remembering the way she talked to me about it — it's just everything about her reminds me of Margaret Scully."
Margaret Scully is the character Janney plays in Showtime's Masters of Sex, based on the story of William Masters and Virginia Johnson, and the research they conducted into human sexuality starting in the late 1950s. Scully is married to Barton Scully (played by Beau Bridges), the provost at the hospital at Washington University, where he supervises Masters' research. Barton is closeted and the two are stuck in a sexless marriage. When Barton betrays Margaret by hiring prostitutes, Margaret finds herself in the throes of passion with another man.
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