‘Masters of Sex’ season 3: Michael Sheen reacts to controversial Lizzy Caplan – gorilla scene

At one given point in time, Showtime’s “Masters of Sex” was the belle of the ball for awards shows. Michael Sheen and Lizzy Caplan were given a robust amount of attention, as was the show itself.

However, things have felt different over the past several months, with Allison Janney as a guest star being one of the only real sources that the show has had for this sort of acclaim. There has also been a lot of controversy over some various things with the show. First, there was a pregnancy storyline added at the start of the season, primarily to avoid some sort of legal action over whether or not the show was doing enough to protect the real-life descendants of some of the show’s characters.

Also, there is the story of “Monkey Business” a particularly polarizing episode that featured at one point an experiment involving a gorilla. In order to see if it caused some sort of sexual stimulation, at one point Virginia Johnson (Lizzy Caplan) chose to flash the stubborn ape. It was something that after the episode aired confused critics, largely because it felt awkward and somewhat out-of-character both for the Virginia character as presented on the show along with the product itself.

As it turns out, there was some dissension in the ranks among those on the show when it came to how to handle this scene. Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Michael Sheen even admitted that he, quite frankly, didn’t like it:

“I hope I’m not being overly disloyal, but I never liked it and I don’t think it worked. It was a very risky choice to make. I think it’s really important to take risks, but not all risks pay off. It’s just that kind of thing has to be very, very carefully monitored. I haven’t watched it yet myself so I can’t really talk about it in that sense, but I know that a lot of people were very surprised by it — and not necessarily in a pleasant way.”

Even if you didn’t like that scene, there are still many things to look forward to this season. Sheen tells the publication that there is a big “crossroads” coming in the season finale for these characters, and to go along with that you are going to have a particularly entertaining scene coming up Sunday where Dan Logan and his wife sit down for dinner with Masters and Johnson.