The Starz series Three Women, adapted from Lisa Taddeo’s award-winning novel of the same name, is an exploration of female desire and the individual exploration for three different women at different places in their lives, learning what that means for them. Gia (Shailene Woodley) is a writer in search of ordinary women who will tell her their stories and share their intimate experiences, and Lina (Betty Gilpin), a homemaker in suburban Indiana whose passionless marriage leads her to reconnect with an old flame, is one of those women. Throughout the episodes, the audience gets to know Lina better through her relationship and conversations with Gia, her home life, and her own journey of self-discovery.

During this one-on-one interview with Collider, Gilpin talked about what an honor it was to live out Lina’s journey, how dedicated every department was to get every detail just right, that respecting these women’s real stories was of the utmost importance to everyone involved with the project, what made these sex scenes different to shoot from scenes she’d done previously, what she learned from playing Lina, and what she’s working on now.

Collider: What was it like to go on this journey with this character? It feels like you really lived with this woman.

BETTY GILPIN: Yes, and it was such an honor to live it. I’ve never had that experience before, where we were all so in it, every department. I remember talking to the production designer about Lina’s living room, and they were in tears talking about the props in Lina’s living room. I’ve never had a teary conversation with the art department, but I did for this. And I think that really is apparent when you watch the show. The intention and care and respect and passion for really every corner of the show was so present, every day on set. It really fostered an environment where it was the freest I’ve ever been on a set and where every choice was acceptable. We were doing these incredibly vulnerable things, but I’ve never felt so comfortable.

These are quite possibly the four most real women I’ve seen on screen for this long of a period of time. We see sides of them that are vulnerable and intimate, that we don’t typically see because we’re afraid to even talk about certain things, let alone show them, and show them on a series for this many episodes. I would imagine you would need to feel trust and you need to feel safe, so what created that environment on set?

GILPIN: The conversations that we had leading up to filming really made it apparent that story and character and respecting these three real stories was of the utmost importance, and that there was nothing offhand or done fast. Working in TV, oftentimes decisions are made so quickly, so much so that your job as the actor is, “Okay, your deal is the backstory of this person and protecting the story and character, and we’ll deal with the lights and the heavy machinery. You deal with the weird crying stuff.” It felt like story was everyone’s responsibility and everyone was holding it at the same time together. From the writers to the crew and everyone, we were all carrying it together. And as far as the intimacy stuff goes, Claire Warden was the intimacy coordinator and the sex scenes ended up being some of the most powerful emotional scenes to film out of the whole thing, which I was not expecting. I used to just roll my eyes about sex scenes, or not really think about them, or try to put them out of my mind and acknowledge them as this racy toll that we had to accomplish, in order to be allowed to do the weird, clothed stuff. It’s an algorithm box check. These sex scenes felt so vital to the story because it’s all about women wanting things, and admitting that they want things, and reaching out for what they can’t have and getting it. That intentionality and forethought and respect around those scenes made them lovely to film and fun and really emotional. It felt very beautiful.

There’s the moment when Lina reconnects with her old love and they have sex while she’s having her period, which is something we don’t tend to talk about or show on TV series. Was that always written that way in the script? How did you figure out how to shoot that episode?

GILPIN: That’s in the book too. It was very important to us to not have the male gaze factor into these sex scenes and to have them be real. They can be simultaneously beautiful and real. A lot of the sex scenes that I see on TV, and a lot of the sex scenes that I have participated in, as an actor, don’t feel real. To me, they feel very fantasy or corny. They can be unsexy because they seem so sterile and cartoony. Acknowledging that sex is two real bodies, experiencing two real things, it was the first time I had done scenes like that, after I’d had a baby in real life. Lina is a mom, and I had a completely different relationship with my body, at that point. I had never felt more comfortable. It was a strange thing that I realized, “Oh, in this moment, my job isn’t to try to trick the camera into thinking I’m a 12. It’s every department’s job to light me and paint me and sculpt me into lying that I’m a 12.” I’m actually a zitty, menstruating, hair in different places, jiggle in different places, person like everyone else, who’s also had sex. Those are the women that (show creator) Lisa [Taddeo] wrote about. The more we see those women on screen and in books, the less we feel ashamed about being them ourselves.

The thing that struck me most about these women, especially watching the last episode, is how strong they all are, in big ways and small ways. They internalize, they suffer, and they grieve, but they move on and they keep going. What did you learn from playing this character?

GILPIN: A lot of girlhood is calibrating how you are perceived in a room. At least, that’s how I felt. I remember being at school or in the lunchroom and thinking, “Okay, these are the qualities in myself that I need too, mute or turn down in order to be accepted by boys and girls, or by my peers. I don’t wanna seem to much. I wanna seem agreeable or cool.” And Lina, for better or worse, is just incapable of muting and muffling. She’s the kind of person who, when they’re talking to you, you find yourself taking a deep breath hoping that they’ll take a deep breath. She’s like an over-caffeinated deer trying to get to the thing that she wants most. It was such a fun acting exercise to play someone like that, who’s incapable of subtext or cool. For instance, when I’m at the bachelorette party and dancing, when I first read that, I blushed so red. I was like, “I’m so embarrassed. This is gonna be so embarrassing. It’s gonna be so cringe.” But Lina wouldn’t feel a drop of that, so I needed to not feel it. Will I now, in my personal life, be able to get up at a restaurant when no one is dancing and freely dance? I don’t think so. But I’ve experienced it in a controlled set environment, and it was wonderful.

I just want to say that I am still bitter about GLOW not getting a final season and about Mrs. Davis not returning.

GILPIN: Thank you.

What’s next for you? Are you shooting something now?

GILPIN: Yes, I’m in Budapest, in Hungary, filming this miniseries, Death by Lightning (playing Crete Garfield). Michael Shannon is playing President James Garfield. I keep calling him President Andrew Garfield, but Andrew Garfield was never the president, James Garfield was.

Source: Collider