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"Lizzy Caplan and Michael Sheen have startling, unexpected chemistry in Masters of Sex, but it was the female supporting cast that hooked me in when the show first began. Anyone who felt the same will thrill to the news that Annaleigh Ashford and her dry-humored, quick-witted hooker character, Betty, will return this season&amp;#8212;in a major way. Like a Sarah Silverman is her ex major way. I talked with Ashford about her Masters return (season two premieres Sunday on Showtime), playing a midcentury lesbian, and the one way women are no-doubt-about it superior to men.\nPinterestFacebookYou&amp;#39;re a Broadway girl&amp;#8212;you starred in the original production of Kinky Boots. How did you get cast as Betty on Masters?\nI was originally brought in to read for the character of Jane. I was much more interested in Betty, but I was a little on the younger side of what they were looking for. So I went in and read for Jane, and just as I was getting on the train afterward, they called and said, &amp;quot;Can you come back and read for the hooker?&amp;quot;\nWhat made you so interested in playing a prostitute? Some people would surely be intimidated by that.\nIn the late 1950s, the woman&amp;#39;s place in society was second-class. This was the one area that women had a little bit of power over men. Betty knows more about sex than Masters, this extremely educated upper-class man. He knows it, and she knows it.\nOne of my favorite things from season one was the sequence where Virginia and Masters come to the brothel to study the hookers&amp;#39; behavior. What&amp;#39;s it like to shoot such intimate scenes with everyone naked?\nWe deal with sex on the show the same way Masters and Johnson did: We deal with it as science. So it was fun and interesting, especially since all the girls were incredible actresses and such good sports. We filmed most of those scenes at an old Victorian house in Pasadena.\nBetty&amp;#39;s story line in season one is very emotional. She&amp;#39;s a lesbian, but she&amp;#39;s agreed to marry a man&amp;#8212;and because he&amp;#39;ll want children, she asks Masters to reverse her tubal ligation. But when he tries, we learn that she has too many reproductive problems to get pregnant anyway. Why do you think Betty was willing to go through all of this for a relationship her heart wasn&amp;#39;t in?\nThe fact that she would give up the love she had for someone else to advance in life by being with a man she didn&amp;#39;t love&amp;#8212;for so many women before the women&amp;#39;s lib movement, that was how you changed your station in life.\nPinterestFacebookAnd I&amp;#39;m assuming that she hasn&amp;#39;t backed out of that arrangement when we&amp;#39;re reunited with her in season two?\nShe&amp;#39;s still married to the Pretzel King and hiding so many secrets from him. Then we meet Betty&amp;#39;s former lover.\nPlayed by Sarah Silverman. I was so pleasantly surprised when they cast her.\nI was so excited to work with her. She&amp;#39;s one of the most important comedians of our time. And comedians are often great actors, because as storytellers they&amp;#39;re extremely honest. We had a ball.\nIs there anything you can say about the story line?\nOnly that it&amp;#39;s extremely complicated and unexpected. I think it&amp;#39;s really important that the show is looking at that alternative lifestyle.\nEarlier this year, largely because of Masters, I wrote about the fact that women are having better sex on TV than ever. Exploring a lesbian relationship on a show like this feels like a big piece of that puzzle.\nPeople often forget that women can have more orgasms than men and by more different ways. I think the show is a reminder to our culture that women are superior to men, physiologically, when it comes to sex.\nOne clothes-on question for you&amp;#8212;do you get to keep any of these fantastic vintage fashions you wear?\nAh, I love the clothes. The costume designer and I believe that Betty would be looking at the magazines of the day and taking cues from Hollywood stars, and now that she&amp;#39;s married to a wealthy man, she gets to be quite fabulous this season. But I&amp;#39;m a good girl&amp;#8212;I leave everything in my trailer."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://feeds.glamour.com/story/annaleigh-ashford-on-masters-o>