Not long after Molly Kochan was diagnosed with Stage 4 breast cancer at 42, she left her husband and embarked on a whirlwind journey of sexual discovery.
She dated dozens of men, shared revealing lingerie selfies on Instagram and opened up about her sexual adventures in her blog, a memoir and a hit podcast.
For Kochan, leaning into her sexuality was a way to reclaim her body and femininity, even as cancer treatments took their physical toll.
“I prematurely lost my period, I lost my ability to have children. There was nothing gradual about this. It was all of a sudden,” she wrote in a 2016 blog post. “And the question was how do I find my womanhood in the context of such a dramatic shift of self?”
Buying herself lingerie, she wrote, felt like “a love letter” to her body.
“A way of saying I deserve to continue feeling like a sexual being,” she continued. “I deserve to feel pretty. And for that I am grateful.”
Kochan’s story inspired a new FX limited series, “Dying for Sex,” starring Michelle Williams as Kochan and Jenny Slate as her best friend, Nikki Boyer.
While the show takes a few creative liberties and isn't a "replica" of Kochan's and Boyer's true story, their real-life experiences provided the emotional framework for the series, Slate told TODAY.com.
"Molly and Nikki are real people ... Nikki, who was on set and became my dear friend, is real," Slate said. "And her heart and spirit that went through this, her memories ... those are all real."
Read on to learn more about “Dying for Sex,” which streams on Hulu starting April 4, and about what happened to Kochan in real life.
What is ‘Dying for Sex’ about?
“Dying for Sex” tells the story of Molly Kochan, whose terminal breast cancer diagnosis propels her onto an unlikely path of sexual self-discovery.
While some details have been changed, the eight-episode series is closely based on the real story of Kochan, and on the podcast of the same name she hosted with her best friend, Nikki Boyer.
In the show, Kochan leaves her husband of 13 years, Steve (Jay Duplass) to focus on her sexual reawakening following a likely terminal cancer diagnosis.
The real Kochan opened up about her decision to end her marriage in a 2016 blog post titled simply, “I Left My Husband Today.”
“The truth is, without this diagnosis I probably would have stayed, continued to try to make things work. Because there is a lot of love there,” she wrote. “But there is also a lot of stress. And a stressful environment is not a good one when battling cancer.”
She added that facing the fleetingness of life compelled her to “nurture self expression that I couldn’t find in the context of my marriage” and to “stop second guessing that voice that has been telling me I’m unhappy.”
The identity of Kochan’s real-life husband has been kept private.
“I think he’s probably struggling with parts of the story that didn’t feel they matched up with what he had experienced,” Boyer, who served as an executive producer on the FX show, said in a recent interview with The Times. “I care for him. I wish him so much love.”
After leaving her marriage, Kochan had liaisons with dozens of men, losing count at 183, according to Boyer.
“She would always say sex felt like the antithesis to death. Being physically on fire made her feel alive,” Boyer said.
Kochan opened up about her sexual journey in her blog, “Everything Leads to This,” explaining her desire to connect with her body while facing her mortality.
“In my experience, many people in the ‘death world’ don’t talk about sex. Possibly for many reasons ranging from embarrassment to body denial,” she wrote. “Scars, medication side effects, lack of information from doctors, all of these things make it challenging to want to connect to the body sexually. But being touched and finding intimacy through a diagnosis similar to mine can be powerful and vital.”
As part of her self expression, Kochan shared racy photos of herself on Instagram, which she described in her bio as “the sexy selfies I send to strangers to feel alive.”
The revealing photos are overlaid with statements about cancer and death, such as, “The temporary nature of things is both beautiful and terrifying” and, “Often when I buy skincare products, I wonder if I’ll be around to finish them.”
Michelle Williams says she was moved by Kochan’s fearlessness as she portrayed her in the series.
“The real Molly continued to find ways to explore her sexuality, to feel good about her body even when she was right toward the end of her life,” Williams told Vanity Fair. “She loved to get beautiful lingerie and would take these really gorgeous pictures of herself, but they would be creatively disguising chemo scars or where her chemo port was. She found ways to continue to love herself.”
Jenny Slate, who played Boyer in the series, told TODAY.com she felt a "great responsibility" to tell the story sensitively and honor Kochan.
Slate recalled one spring day during shooting when she saw an tree covered in pink blossoms.
"I just felt so strongly a connection to Molly in that moment," she told TODAY.com. "That beautiful blooming. And it was like watching something blush. It was so beautiful. And I remember thinking, 'I will really, really try to do my best by you.'"
While Kochan did not get the chance to see the TV series come to life, Boyer says her friend would have been thrilled to see Williams portray her on screen.
“Hollywood legend, choosy about her projects, artistic, private,” Boyer said of the actor in her Times interview. “Molly would have been, ‘Yes, thank you.’”
What happened to Molly Kochan?Kochan died in 2019 at age 45.
She pre-wrote a blog post announcing her own death, which was published on March 8 of that year.
“I have died. I no longer walk the earth like you. In a body, that is a blessing when it works, and, when it stops working, I assure you the dropping of it is an equal blessing,” she wrote.
“That’s all I can tell you about where I’m not,” she continued. “As I write this, I know what everyone knows, but most don’t believe for themselves: mortality is real for us all.”
Boyer recalled her last moments with Kochan in her recent interview with The Times, saying she was sitting with Kochan in the hospital when she passed away.
“I woke with just enough time for her last two breaths. I put my hand on her head and my other hand on her heart. I said, ‘I’m here, I’ve got you.’ I was in awe of her in that moment,” she said. “It was one of the most magical things I’ve ever experienced. It was so intense and beautiful.”
Boyer produced their six-episode podcast, “Dying for Sex,” following her friend’s death, which she said “delayed some of my grief.”
“Because I was still working with her voice,” she told The Times. “I felt she was guiding me.”
