Exclusive Interview: Pop Culturalist Chats with Sex/Life’s Mike Vogel

Award-winning actor Mike Vogel has done it all in his career. He’s brought the most complex character to life on the screen with ease in projects including The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Cloverfield, Bates Motel, The Help, The Brave, and dozens more.

Currently, he’s one of the stars of Netflix’s Sex/Life. In the series, he plays Cooper Connelly, a successful investment banker, and a family man with a heart of gold. But when he discovers his wife is flirting with her wild, sexy past, Cooper begins his own journey exploring his marriage, fantasies, and himself. As he embarks on that exploration, he learns he has more questions than answers.

Pop Culturalist was lucky enough to chat with Mike about Sex/Life, his character’s arc in Season 1, and building trust with his costars in the midst of a pandemic.

PC: You’ve done it all in your career. What was it about this particular project and script that stood out to you?
Mike: I’m a huge, huge believer in marriage. I’m a huge, huge believer in fighting for love. To have a show that speaks through the lens of a female perspective on what women have to juggle in life, on how incredible they are in dealing with motherhood and marriage, on running a business yet still putting themselves aside for everyone else, a show that tells the story of women’s desires, wants, and needs—I’m here for it. I was happy to be a part of it.

PC: Speaking of desire, as Cooper tries to fulfill his wife’s desires, he starts to lose a bit of himself. How did you prepare to approach his arc in Season 1?
Mike: It’s an interesting question because Billie has a great line later in the season. She says, “My husband has 85% of everything I could ever want. It’s the 15% that I can’t get out of my head.” Cooper reads her journal and starts going down this rabbit hole of imitating all the things that he’s read. He thinks that’s what she wants instead of realizing, “Hey buddy, you already have the majority of what she wants. It’s the other part that you need to work on.” He thinks, “Well, if I can just give her everything that she’s written…,” but what he doesn’t realize is that those memories he’s trying to live up to are ones she shares with someone else, not him.

He had most of what he needed to begin with. He finds himself saying, “If you had only told me somewhere along the way that this was what you needed, we could have done things differently,” but instead he’s left to play catch up. So he becomes this other person, but the question is, is it too late?

PC: There’s so much trust that needs to be built when you’re working on a project like this. How did you and Sarah [Shahi] build that bond so quickly and then also during a pandemic?
Mike: That little curveball. [laughs] We started filming the show three weeks before the world shut down. We were one of the first shows to go back to filming in Toronto, doing a show that everyone said would never be able to be done in this environment. That speaks to how incredible our crew was in Toronto, how incredible the creators and the producers were, as well as Netflix and this cast. I’ve known Sarah for over eighteen years now, and to watch her step into a role that she was born to play, she absolutely knocks it out of the park. There are four of us—Margaret [Odette], Sarah, Adam [Demos], and I—and we were the only four people any one of us could really associate with during that time.

It builds a level of trust and a level of comradery that’s needed for something like this. Casey Hudecki was our intimacy coordinator. She was incredible and indispensable throughout this process. Every one of these intimate scenes was rehearsed beforehand. There was not a hand that was out of place. There was not a move that was made that we did not rehearse. The challenge then becomes how do you rehearse it and make it seem like it’s not rehearsed? But at no moment on set did any of us feel not prepared, unprotected, or not taken care of, and that’s a testament to Casey, Netflix, the creatives, this cast, and everyone who was on board to film something like this during a crazy time in the world.

To keep up with Mike, follow him on Twitter and Instagram. Binge-watch Season 1 of Sex/Life on Netflix on June 25th.

Photo Credit: Amanda Matlovich/Netflix