A FEMALE PERSPECTIVE
It's time to explore older women's sexuality, says Gypsy creator Lisa Rubin . She talks to Sarah Hughes
IT is set to be one of the year’s most talked about shows: a bold look at female desire and one woman’s midlife crisis, which puts 40something sexuality firmly in the spotlight. Gypsy, which arrives on Netflix on Friday, stars the Oscarnominated actress Naomi Watts and has two episodes directed by the acclaimed artistcumdirector Sam TaylorJohnson, who made headlines recently when she distanced herself from the similarly frank, though very different, Fifty Shades of Grey.
The show’s biggest gamble, however, concerns its young creator and producer, Lisa Rubin. Gypsy is her first TV script and Netflix has placed her in overall charge of the series, at the age of 31. It is a huge vote of confidence in the strength of her voice — and its singularity.
The story centres on Jean (Watts), a successful, Manhattanbased therapist who appears to have everything: doting husband, adorable child, fulfilling career. Yet beneath her smooth surface lurks a maelstrom of longrepressed feelings. A chance meeting with a younger woman seems to offer a new path, setting the stage for an intense exploration of female sexual desire.
‘‘I really wanted to examine honestly what it looks like to follow the path that leads to become a wife and mother with a successful career, and to then find that these are now the things that define you,’’ Rubin says, adding her initial inspiration came from the Fleetwood Mac song that plays over the show’s titles.
‘‘What about all the things that came before? Where do the desires you used to have go? And what happens if you stop suppressing the way you feel?’’ she asks.
Keen to explore the idea of a female midlife crisis, Rubin also wanted to examine why society in general, and television in particular, tries to pretend that the sexual wants and needs of older women don’t exist.
‘‘I thought it would be interesting to have a woman in her mid40s being portrayed as desirable and desired, because the world is full of these women and yet we so rarely see them on television.’’
She was determined not to rush the story, preferring instead to take the risk that the audience would wait as she patiently built up her world.
‘‘I really wanted the relationship between Jean and Sidney [Sophie Cookson as the 20something barista Jean finds herself drawn to] to unfold slowly,’’ she explains.
‘‘I didn’t want us to just jump straight in with a sex scene. There is something romantic about longing [and] something sexy about the tease, about thinking about what might happen rather than seeing it straight away.’’
Did she ever feel nervous about the amount of responsibility resting on her shoulders? ‘‘It was incredible and a dream in so many ways but I’m also a practical person and I wrote the script, I know the show, I know the characters, I’m the authority on the material so I felt as though I was the person who would know all the answers to any questions. That made me much more empowered to do the job.’’
Netflix was very supportive, but not everything went her way. ‘‘My plan was to have only female directors because all the scenes are from a female perspective and it’s female desire that we’re examining, but we ended up with three women and two
men,’’ Rubin says. ‘‘I still think it works — I was very conscious that I didn’t want the female characters to be objectified, for this to become another show told from the male gaze.
‘‘That’s where Sam and Liza [Chasin, the executive producer] were so great to work with, because they understood the type of story I was trying to tell and the way in which I wanted to tell it. Sam, in particular, was really important for establishing the language of the show and ensuring we understand this is Jean’s story.
Rubin recognises that the privileged yet dissatisfied Jean, with her lovely house and loving husband (Billy Crudup from
Almost Famous), might not be the most relatable of leads, although counters that we have no problem with male characters suffering from boredom and ennui.
‘‘With a character like [Mad
Men’s] Don Draper people loved him despite his flaws, and I do think it’s interesting that viewers are harder on female characters,’’ she says.
‘‘But I would hope some women relate to her, because I know there are women who feel this frustration, there are women who have stronger sexual drives than their partners, there are women who wonder ‘what if?’
‘‘I really wanted to speak honestly about female desire, how it feels like and what it can mean. It might be polarising and it may make some uncomfortable, but I’m fine with that because people are more than just good or just villains. They can be, and often are, both.’’
Rubin, who grew up in Long Island in a resolutely unstarry family — ‘‘my mother is a social worker and my father works in textiles’’ — acknowledges that Netflix took a huge chance in first commissioning her pilot script and giving her a level of control that is rarely handed to a newcomer.
‘‘I think a lot of people were confused when they met me,’’ she admits. ‘‘Having read the script, I think they were expecting to meet a 45yearold or someone who had been a therapist, and then I’d turn up.’’ She laughs. ‘‘So then they’d think again and go, ‘Oh, you’re not Jean, you’re Sidney.’
‘‘The truth is I relate to all of the characters, and I’d argue that
Jean and Sidney are similar in some ways — they’re just at different points in their lives.’’ — Guardian News and Media