time, as well as my representatives didn’t think that it would be something I would be interested in because it’s such a dramatic piece. But I read it and really fell in love with it. It surprised me as well as them.” She decided to take the plunge and audition. “The audition itself was with John Madden - the director of the pilot and myself, in a room, in full 1950’s hair and makeup, and we read through every Virginia scene in the pilot script over and over again. It was close to four hours and I remember leaving feeling like I’d never wanted a job more…afterward I went out for drinks with him and Michelle Ashford, the creator, and Sarah Timberman the producer, and we just talked. I spoke about why I felt so connected to this woman and how it had picked up all sorts of things in me just reading the script, and how passionately I felt about the story.” She didn’t get her hopes up about landing the role. “Sometimes when you want something so bad… you just get to the point where you expect the ones that you really, truly want to slip through your fingers, because you spend so much time not getting the ones you want.” Fortunately, this didn’t turn out to be the case. The show wrapped up its third season now, and Lizzy was nominated for an Emmy in 2014 for her stunning portrayal of Virginia Johnson. Watching Masters Of Sex, one can discern how deeply Lizzy has integrated herself into the psyche of Virginia, who was a gamechanger for gender politics and the social understandings of human sexuality during a time when even the word “sex” was taboo to utter. “Her experience has colored my day-to-day life and vice-versa which is this amazing, terrifying thing.” For Lizzy, Virginia truly embodies the struggles of the modern day woman with regards to society’s willful shutting-out of complicated female archetypes - those who are possessed of contradictions that befuddle the status quo. “I think women’s brains work in infinitely more interesting ways than men’s brains. I feel like there’s this scary, untapped well of fascinating female characters…and I’m lucky enough to be playing one right now…I mean, I play an ambitious, career-driven woman who is not showing up for her kids in the way that would then and now be considered hands-on mothering. She’s having a long-term affair with a married man. She’s friends with the wife of the married man. So this is a deeply flawed human being ...you don’t get to see too many female characters like that in film. They’re all pretty two-dimensional.”
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Lizzy sees incremental changes occurring in the film industry regarding gender discrimination, which though may be minuscule, still hold significance. “One-hundred percent with zero hesitation I pronounce myself a feminist. It’s definitely in the transitional period from a dirty word to an accepted word. You still see women in positions of power shying away from that label and it is astounding to me, being that the definition of feminism, is you would like to be considered equal to a man. It has nothing to do with hating men or hating femininity or even hating sex. For some reason those ideas are all clouded around that term.” There are other noticeable changes that Lizzy identifies as having significant implications for female actors. “I mean, the number one movie this weekend was Spy. And that’s a major thing. Any time any female driven comedy is number one, it’s a major thing. And I have to say I get a perverse pleasure from Spy kicking Entourage’s ass... when Entourage first came out it was more acceptable to portray Hollywood as this hedonistic, gluttonous culture with so much money and just the toys and planes and the shit that comes with it… But quite honestly, the female roles on Entourage are so fucking shitty. It’s always the girl fawning over the not-particularlyinteresting guy. That makes me nuts.” Lizzy, like her character on Masters of Sex, is a female role model working during a time when society digs its heels in when it comes to equality for women. In this way she is leading a parallel existence of sorts to Virginia Johnson. Upon stepping back and enumerating the ways in which progress has been achieved over half a century since Virginia’s hay day, the symmetry is quite spectacular and eye-opening - showing how far we’ve come yet just how far we still have to go. The third season of Masters Of Sex is currently under way, and Lizzy has a few films up her sleeve, including a Christmas comedy that she’s acting in alongside long-time friend Seth Rogan. “I’m a sucker for a Christmas movie, especially funny ones… I just like Seth and those guys so much and I want to be involved in what they’re doing, but it’s definitely a movie about four guy friends. And they happened to cast, or they chose to cast, really interesting comedic women in all the girl parts so I’m really excited about that one.” Interview by Marianne White