This publicity image released by Showtime shows Michael Sheen as Dr. William Masters, left, and Lizzy Caplan as Virginia Johnson from "Masters of Sex." The series premieres Spet. 29 at 10 p.m. EST. THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP/Showtime, Craig Blankenhorn

TORONTO - Filming sex scenes for the hot-button cable drama "Masters of Sex" was one thing. Actress Lizzy Caplan says she had a much harder time watching them.

"This is going to be the first job in a while that I have a hard time sitting still while watching, I think. It's just so different for me," Caplan says in a recent phone interview from New York.

"It's not the most fun to watch the sex scenes, I can't say that's my favourite way to spend the hour."

Much is being made of the frank material in the period drama, a chronicle of groundbreaking sex studies conducted by William Masters and Virginia Johnson that became lightning rods for controversy.

Their research began in the 1950s with laboratory observations of live sexual acts, a clinical approach to intimacy that involved applying a tangle of wires and sensors to their subjects to measure physiological responses to various activities.

The hour-long series delves into those surreal studies and more, finding most of its heft in dissecting the flaws and anxieties of its complicated heroes. The Showtime series debuts in Canada this Sunday on Movie Central in the West and The Movie Network in the East.

Michael Sheen makes his first foray into series television as the controlling, repressed Masters, a married fertility doctor who found an unlikely research assistant in Caplan's progressive Johnson, a divorced single mother of two with no science background but an adventurous attitude towards sex.

Masters was very much a man of his time, while Johnson was remarkable for her ability to rise above the era's marginalized view of women, says Caplan.

"He is a man who has a very, very difficult time acknowledging or understanding his own emotions and when any sort of feeling bubbles up that makes him uncomfortable he shuts down," she notes, adding that Johnson faced her own hurdles.

"She wasn't making these choices as some big sweeping feminist gesture. For lack of a better expression, she marched to the beat of her own drummer. She knew what she wanted out of life and it didn't look at all like what the women around her wanted. And in order to achieve what she ended up achieving in her personal life and professional life, she alienated a lot of people.

"She didn't get a lot of support, her children suffered for it, but at the end of the day, what she and Masters ended up accomplishing really changed the world. So I argue that it was worth it."

No doubt, their research corrected myriad misconceptions about intercourse, reaching millions of readers through books including their 1966 bestseller, "Human Sexual Response."

Eventually, the duo became physically intimate themselves, at first to further their studies. Marriage in 1971 sealed their partnership, and although they separated in 1992 and divorced a year later, they continued to collaborate. Masters died in 2001 at age 85, while Johnson died earlier this year at age 88.

The 12-episode TV series is an adaptation of Thomas Maier's book "Masters of Sex: The Life and Times of William Masters and Virginia Johnson, The Couple Who Taught America How To Love."

And although it features plenty of sex, Caplan says that's really a small part of what the show is about.

"This is a very feminist story in a lot of ways and we have a lot of women writers and it's not really the show to tune into if you just want to see total gratuitous sex scenes," she says.

"It's really about much deeper human connections and intimacy and exploring intimacy to me is far more fascinating than exploring sex. The current climate in pay cable TV, you can see breasts on pretty much any show. This show is really about something."

Nevertheless, Caplan still had to shoot those sex scenes. Some involved Johnson directly, in others, she watches others go at it.

"Doing it, at least you can laugh about it while it's happening and it's so ridiculous and everybody's sort of on the same team," she says of the experience, adding that "like anything else, you get desensitized very, very quickly."

"I find ridiculous, uncomfortable situations highly enjoyable in my life. And so shooting them is not as bad as watching them."

After watching the first two episodes, Caplan says she's mostly rattled by the non-sex scenes.

Best known for delivering zingers in comedy roles, the former "Party Down" star notes she's entering new territory with the layered period drama, which nevertheless includes its own moments of levity.

The lanky brunette is already receiving raves for a role that could launch her into a new sphere of fame, but she admits to a host of professional anxieties.

"I got to a point in comedy where I could be as objective as humanly possible watching myself on camera and this just feels very different. Head-to-toe very different," says Caplan, whose credits include the TV shows "New Girl," "True Blood" and "Freaks and Geeks" and the films "Cloverfield" and "Mean Girls."

"It's a drama, and I just have to prepare myself."

Caplan says she's heartened by the fact the show's most seemingly outrageous bits are actually real, and that viewers may actually learn a thing or two.

"We didn't have to dress it up or fictionalize anything — the stuff that's going to shock people the most is stuff that all really happened," she says, adding that she's surprised by some reactions already.

"What breaks my heart about it is people see Virginia as having more of a male sensibility in terms of how she views sexuality and friends-with-benefits and those types of situations. But I don't see why that's still reserved for men in 2013. I think that if a woman has a no-strings-attached relationship with a guy — or many guys — she's looked at in one way and if a man does it he's looked at in a completely different way."

She derides an enduring "puritanical society" for hampering true sexual equality, and expects her show will have to overcome some salacious expectations.

"There's the inclination to kind of laugh about how uptight people were in the '50s but, you know, people can barely say the title of our show without kind of giggling. So I don't know how far we actually have come," she continues.

"It really is one of those things that having this information, it truly is power for people and it's very lonely and scary to live in a world where you don't have all the proper information. And that's the world we're showing in our show."

News from © The Canadian Press, 2013