WHEN Molly Kochan was diagnosed with incurable cancer aged 42, she wanted to make the best of the time she had left.
While most people might draw up a bucket list of travel, skydiving or swimming with sharks, Molly had an altogether different idea — to have sex with as many men as she could.
She dumped her husband of 15 years and went on a sexual odyssey, sleeping with more than 189 men including a Ryan Reynolds lookalike, a mortician wearing clown make-up and a lover with a foot fetish.
Molly recorded her adventures in a podcast called Dying For Sex. Now, it has been turned into a TV miniseries which kicks off tonight, with five-time Oscar nominee Michelle Williams in the central role.
Comic Rob Delaney plays Molly’s neighbour who brings out her inner dominatrix by asking her to kick him in the testicles while wearing a pair of high heels.
Molly died in 2019, aged 45, but never regretted her choices saying: “Sex makes me feel alive, and it’s a great distraction from being sick.
“I don’t think I would do any of this stuff without the cancer. Even though I’d maybe want to, I’d be a little more cautious about everything.”
Michelle, 44, said playing Molly had its challenges — not least faking six orgasms in a row.
She said: “You’ve already done, like, four scenes, and then it’s five o’clock at night and you have to do six masturbation sequences with six sculpted, individual orgasms, and you’re like, ‘Woo! OK!”
‘Opened my eyes’
The Brokeback Mountain star said the series “definitely opened my eyes in a way that was also like, ‘God, I’m such a dummy for not having realised this stuff sooner.”
Molly went to the doctor with a lump in her breast when she was 33 but was told she was too young to have cancer.
Six years later she was diagnosed with breast cancer that had spread to her lymph nodes.
Gruelling chemotherapy, radiation treatment and a double mastectomy left her infertile but alive.
But, in 2015, she started suffering hip pain and underwent further tests which revealed the cancer had metastasised and was now in her bones, brain and liver.
In other words, it was terminal.
She would always say sex felt like the antithesis to death. Being physically on fire made her feel alive.
Nikki Boyer, Molly's best friend
Molly was in couple’s counselling with her husband when she received the devastating call from her medics.
She ended her marriage six months later to “seek joy”.
By her side through it all was best friend Nikki Boyer and the pair hit upon an idea for a podcast in 2018 after they met for lunch one day and Molly had already been on two dates and had kissed a stranger in Dunkin’ Donuts.
The Dying For Sex recordings between the friends, released a year after Molly’s death, have been downloaded an incredible five million times and chart Molly’s hilarious sex-scapades as well as her journey through ill health.
Nikki told The Times: “I don’t think she had a clue how profoundly it was going to land in the world. She would always say sex felt like the antithesis to death.
“Being physically on fire made her feel alive.”
I literally wanted to hump everyone and everything that I saw. I was horny all of the time. I felt like a teenager.
Molly
Molly’s sexual urges were fuelled by menopausal hormones which were expected to dampen her desire but had the opposite effect, making her feel “horny all the time”.
She said: “I literally wanted to hump everyone and everything that I saw. I was horny all of the time. I felt like a teenager again.”
Before leaving her marriage, Molly tried to save their relationship, embarking on “virtual affairs” as she started posting sexy selfies on a dating app.
But the union fell apart and Nikki claims that after Molly told her husband, a waiter, during their therapy session that her cancer had returned, he said: “Can I get back to why I’m so angry.”
Molly said of her marriage: “Sexually, we had difficulties before cancer came along.
Raunchy hook-ups
“I had spent a really long time pushing him away because of my own issues.
“Right before I got diagnosed, I was kind of looking to recharge our sex life and then the cancer showed up.”
So began a number of raunchy hook-ups as Molly posted lingerie shots of herself on dating apps and locked eyes with strangers.
Nikki and Molly counted liaisons with 183 men before giving up. She reveals in her podcast how she threw caution to the wind, inviting men to her home, saying: “What are you going to do to me? Kill me? I’m dying”.
Molly also wrote a memoir called Screw Cancer: Becoming Whole, in which she wrote: “Whenever my health scares escalated, so did my sexual adventures. It was a way to trump the distraction.”
Nikki said: “Molly was just so open. There was one guy that wanted to be in a cage in her house like a dog. Molly said ‘I’m so interested in learning why.’ I said ‘What the f***?’”
“I’ve done any and all number of sexual experiences in my 30 year career, but I’ve never masturbated on film before and I was nervous.
Michelle Williams, actress playing Molly
Nikki said Molly would never date a married man as “she didn’t want any part of that”.
Michelle has told how Molly’s story had a profound impact on her and left her in tears as she researched the role.
She said: “I’m not a crier. Things don’t get to me.
“I’m thick skinned. I’m savvy. It takes a lot to break through that.
“As soon as I had that reaction to that podcast I thought, ‘Well, I’m sunk. Whatever this thing is, I’ve already emotionally signed on.”
Michelle said writer Liz Meriwether pushed her to the limit with some of the scenes, despite her being an experienced Hollywood actress.
“I’ve done any and all number of sexual experiences in my 30-year career,” she said.
“But I’ve never masturbated on film before and I was nervous.
“It’s much easier to portray mutual desire than just the desire for oneself.
Being abused, aged seven
“But God, when Liz wrote those scenes when Molly’s alone in the hotel and by the end she’s masturbating to anything, masturbating to a goldfish bowl, I thought ‘Liz, you’ve really done it’.”
While Dying for Sex is primarily about Molly’s hunt to have an orgasm for the first time, pal Nikki says that by the end, her friend was looking for something more meaningful.
Molly wrote before her death: “I wish I could cap off the whirlwind hospital story with an amazing tale about a guy who swept me off my feet and made me blush, but my visitor never showed up.
“I realise I did get to fall in love. I am in love. With me.”
Nikki says sex was also a way for Molly to regain agency over her body after being abused by a boyfriend of her mum when she was just seven.
Nikki, who is played by It Ends With Us actress Jenny Slate, said she hoped Molly’s story would inspire “people to nurture their relationships”.
She said: “People can think all day about what they would do, but you never know what life will throw at you and how you will react.
“What’s on your bucket list? What do you want to live for?”
Molly also left a poignant message in a blog post movingly entitled I Have Died.
She wrote: “So many people who die, specifically of cancer it seems, write viral letters about embracing life.
“Eat an avocado a day. Tell your mean neighbour his lawn looks nice. Don’t hesitate, quit your job, go to Bora Bora…
“I don’t have those kinds of life lessons to share. I know what I did at the end of my life. I know what brought me joy. But that would surely not affect you.”
Now it seems Molly’s life will have a bigger impact than she could ever have imagined.
- Dying For Sex is on Disney+ from tonight.