Betty Gilpin Explains Powerful Sex Scenes on ‘Three Women’: ‘Felt More like a Vessel for the Real Story Instead of Some Algorithm Box Check’
Betty Gilpin first major gig after bit parts as the victim of the week in assorted “Law & Order’s” was in “Nurse Jackie.” As Dr. Carrie Roman, Gilpin described her experience in her 2022 memoir, “All the Women in My Brain,” as “while a dream come true, was a constant frantic tap dance between the two gendered peanut galleries” of the misogynist tone the series took in later seasons and connecting with writers Liz Flahive and Carly Mensch.
“The first big TV job I auditioned for, I was told that getting naked on camera was the necessary toll to pay if I wanted the part,” she continued.
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Flahive and Mensch then went on to create the canceled-too-soon women’s wrestling comedy “GLOW,” which served as Gilpin’s breakout role. She played Debbie Eagan, former soap star turned new mom struggling with her body being a vessel for nourishment of her baby and not her own anymore. It’s through professional wrestling that she was able to feel ownership of her body again.
“I’m back in my body and I’m using it for me. I feel like a goddamn superhero,” she exclaims in a Season 3 episode.
Using her body to provide new insight into her compelling characters has been a recurring theme throughout Gilpin’s work. In Gilpin’s latest project, the long-awaited adaptation of Lisa Taddeo’s 2019 non-fiction book “Three Women,” she plays a similarly dissatisfied wife and mother whose husband won’t touch her. Set in Bible-belt middle America, Gilpin’s Lina suffers physically from fibromyalgia and endometriosis but emotionally from shame.
When Taddeo proxy Gia (Shailene Woodley) comes to town looking for women to profile about their sex lives — the other titular women are Sloan (DeWanda Wise), a polyamorous wife and mother, and Maggie (Gabrielle Creevy), who was groomed into a sexual relationship with her high school teacher — Lina feels broken open. Lina relishes in being able to talk about what she’s feeling in a kind of consciousness-raising meeting of local women Gia puts together as she searches for subjects for her book. “Can I please tell your love story?” Gia implores Lina, because Lina’s journey is ultimately a love story about herself. The reemergence of her high school sweetheart, Aidan (Austin Stowell), whom she begins a clandestine affair with doesn’t hurt, either. But when she divulges this to the group, she’s shamed for being a bad wife and mother.
“Lena is both so sure of what she wants and passionate and positive and hopeful, and also in such pain and so invisible to the people around her,” Gilpin told IndieWire. “She felt like she’s such a prisoner in her body… no one believes her, no one’s touching her, no one’s kissing her. So when she does get what she wants, she’s feeling the most physical pleasure that she could ever imagine. Not to give Aidan too much credit! She feels the pleasure alone… with the vibrator as well.”
Gilpin is at perhaps her most vulnerable in “Three Women,” in full frontal sex scenes that grapple with shame, desire, and women’s pain. But in contrast to her earlier roles, the nudity and sex here feel raw and honest.
“In ‘Three Women,’ the sex scenes are some of the most important scenes in the whole piece. For all of the [characters], the sex scenes are very altering, pivotal moments for these women. For Lina, you’re seeing some get oxygen when they’re about to die, or experience true joy and freedom for maybe the first time ever in their lives,” Gilpin said.
Also in contrast to her previous roles, “Three Women” was the first project Gilpin filmed in which she was one of the leads since becoming a mother in 2020. (Though Peacock’s “Mrs. Davis” came out last year, “Three Women” has been in purgatory since its original network, Showtime, scrapped it in early 2023. Starz picked it up shortly thereafter and will finally air it weekly beginning September 13.) Like her well-loved “GLOW” character, Lina helped Gilpin feel self-possessed in her skin. “When I’ve done sex scenes in the past, I don’t think about my body as the character’s body. I’m like, we have to make Betty’s body look as fantasy-like or fake and smoke and mirror-y in order for the sex scene to go well,” she said. “It felt more like a vessel for the real story instead of some algorithm box check and that felt very freeing.” Thus, a prosthetic C-section scar was used, as well as fake stretch marks: “In addition to the stretch marks I have!”
Though Gilpin laughs that she’s been playing moms since she was 20 years old (the actress is now 38), “‘Three Women’ was the exact project that I needed to navigate both of those feelings,” which she describes as a “duality” of power and invisibility. “You feel both like your most capable self at home in your own body and helpless and a stranger in your own body.”
While Gilpin feels protected and empowered by her “Brooklyn actress bubble” that consists of supportive friends and therapists, Lina doesn’t have any of that and it’s for that reason she feels almost childlike, both emotionally and sexually stunted but also bursting with want, obsessed with Aidan and neglecting her kids in order to hang by the phone like she did in high school. “[Her desire was so] intense that it was able to punch through all of those obstacles.” It’s no coincidence that a traumatic event during that time in her life keeps her reliving that moment, which we see through later flashbacks.
“She was far more shrouded by the shame and judgment [from] the people around her and didn’t have the resources to be seen and heard and celebrated in the way that, deep down, she knew she deserved,” Gilpin said.
Still, Lina’s (and, indeed, most of the other characters’) spiraling is frustrating, like watching someone press on a bruise. “I may be in pain, but this time I’m choosing the pain,” Lina says at one point.
“Three Women” is a heavy show, to be sure, but there is joy to be found in these women’s trajectories. “I was surprised by how fun and sweet and hopeful and passionate Lina was. I think I thought, ‘This is going to be a pretty depressing six months,” Gilpin said. “I loved being Lina.”
“Three Women” premiered on Starz September 13.
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