For three seasons, Lizzy Caplan and Michael Sheen have anticipated the sexual revolution as real-life sex researchers Virginia Johnson and William Masters in Masters of Sex, a fizzy mixture of fact and fiction.
As the show enters season four, which takes place as the 60s become the 70s, the world seems to have finally caught up with the prescient pair. Which may not rest so well.
"When we first met Virginia, it was 1956 and she had a very modern, ahead of her time way of approaching sex and her own sexuality," Caplan tells TimeOut. "Now it's the Swinging Sixties so everybody's bed-hopping and wife-swapping and going to key parties. I really think that would bother Virginia, she likes being a vanguard and so with everybody starting to catch up, there is a part of her that wants to tell everyone 'Well I did it first, so... don't forget that!'"
When we first encounter them in the new episodes, Masters and Johnson are separated from each other, both geographically and emotionally.
"Virginia's acting out in all kinds of ways," says Caplan. "She's drinking quite heavily now and she's also being really slutty, as only Virginia can, but what's interesting is as the world around her is starting to adhere to these more progressive ways of thinking, Virginia is now moving towards this more traditional idea of what she wants: marriage, commitment, all of that."
