‘The Girlfriend Experience’ Co-Creator Amy Seimetz On Sex, Society and Sociopaths

We're big fans of Starz's adaptation of The Girlfriend Experience. And over the past several weeks, we've watched as the show (based on the 2009 Steven Soderbergh film of the same name) caught on with friends and coworkers...most of whom were previously unaware they had a subscription to Starz. Of course, you could also watch it online at Starz.com, where all 13 episodes were dropped at once, Internet-style. (We watched it on TV, because we aren't animals.) Created, written, directed and produced by two female showrunners--Lodge Kerrigan and indie darling Amy Seimetz-- The Girlfriend Experience was an atypical look at the world of high-end escorts, through the lens of a particularly opaque protagonist, a young law school student named Christine (Riley Keough, Elvis Presley's granddaughter). While the usual debates raged on about the show's artistic merits as well as its depiction of sex work, we weren't the only ones who thought it was one of the best sleeper hits of the year. Even after watching the season finale*, we still had some questions about what motivated The Girlfriend Experience's aloof and inscrutable central character. Was Christine self-reliant or merely selfish? Shy or sociopathic? Was she a victim or a manipulative exploiter, or possibly both? The show doesn't offer any easy answers, so we went straight to the source: Ms. Seimetz, who along with being the show's co-creator, also plays Christine's older sister.