The L Word Goes out on Top

This Sunday night at 9 PM, Ilene Chaiken's groundbreaking Showtime drama The L Word enters its final season, with one storyline providing a framework for the season:  who killed Jenny Schechter?

As Chaiken told critics at today's TCA convention in Los Angeles, her show is going out on top.  Season 6, she says, is the show's strongest.  "We've had our ups and our downs, but it has all come together."

When asked why Showtime has chosen to promote the show this season by revealing Jenny's death, rather than using it as a big bang surprise during this weekend's opening installment, Chaiken didn't question the network's wisdom.  The mystery angle will be eminently promotable.  And Jenny's demise, she said, "happens in the first 20 seconds of the episode."

Guests to look forward to this season will include Xena lesbian icon Lucy Lawless and gay camp icon from Showgirls Elizabeth Berkley.

And let's not forget the show's fabulous cast, who was in attendance, including another icon, Pam Grier, as well as Leisha Hailey, Laurel Holloman, Katherine Moennig and the incredibly beautiful Jennifer Beals.

Beals spoke eloquently about how much The L Word has meant to its fans -- not just as entertainment, but as a lifesaver for questioning women and men.  She remembers one older lesbian couple who won walk-on roles on the show as an auction prize; the show, they told her, had inspired them late in life to come out to their families.  And Beals began to cry when she recounted other stories of how much the show has meant.

I told Ilene when we started this show, "I want this show to change the world!"   And she said, "Calm down, it's just a TV show."  I want the show to be for that young girl in the middle of nowhere who decides that she's gay and has no one and has to come out to her family.  I want her to turn on the television and have her see the most

 fabulous, resourceful version of herself shown back to her.  I recently got a letter from a young woman who told me she had just come out.  She was 16 years old.  She said it was the loneliest time of her life.  And she said by watching the show, the show had saved her life.  Because she had contemplated killing herself. And that by realizing there were other people who were out there like her and there was a larger community to which she belonged, and in which one day she might be able to take part, she was encouraged.

Beals went on to compare the show to Flashdance, where her character was also an "other," or outsider.  In Flashdance, she says, the woman finds her outlet in dancing.

[On The L Word], in playing this character, it's an extension of what it means to be "other."  I don't know what role will be next.  but what will be the most difficult thing to do is to find something that is written as well and as helpful as [The L Word] has been to people.

The L Word

Season 6 Premiere

Sunday, January 18, 2009

9 PM Eastern

Breaking news: L Word spinoff details

Today at the TCA convention in Los Angeles, Showtime president Robert Greenblatt leaked a few details about the highly anticipated L Word spinoff (which according to imdb.com, is currently titled The Farm.)

As had previously been reported, the spinoff will star Leisha Hailey (aka Alice), who will unfortunately be going to prison.  There, she'll be joined by a whole new cast of characters, only some of whom are lesbians, played by such well-known and hottie actresses as Famke Janssen, and Roseanne's Laurie Metcalf, last seen in the underappreciated and quickly-cancelled CW series Easy Money.

When asked if the new show could be considered a female version of HBO's infamously brutal drama Oz, Greenblatt replied, "That might be a good comparison."

More as they happen, including further details from L Word creator Ilene Chaiken when the L Word panel begins at 3 PM Pacific time today.

Meet Tara -- and T, and Alice, and Buck

This Sunday, January 18, Showtime will begin airing its newest season of The Secret Diary of a Call Girl, as well as the final season of The L Word.

As part of that new lineup, the pay cable network will also premiere a new "dramedy," The United States of Tara.  The show, starring Toni Collette as a woman with Dissociative Identity Disorder (multiple personalities), comes from writer Diablo Cody, who this past year won an Oscar for the screenplay to Juno.

The Tara idea, however, originated with none other than Steven Spielberg.  Spielberg and Showtime president Robert Greenblatt then came across Cody's Juno screenplay, nine months before the film even went into production, and, loving her original voice, hired her to flesh out the idea to series.

So, how much about Tara will be as quirky as Juno?  Well, the show definitely is funny, and honest. Tara's alternate personalities (teenager T; Alice, a Donna Reed-like housewife; Buck, a macho man in a trucker hat) definitely know that they're inhabiting her body.  And even more intriguingly, Tara and her family -- including her gay son Marshall, played by Keir Gilchrist, who was so funny as the kid on the short-lived Fox sitcom The Winner opposite Rob Corddry -- are "out" about her disorder; it's not a secret, kept from a nosy Mrs. Kravitz.  "Your neighbor could talk openly about being on an antidepressant, or their kid taking ritalin," Cody theorized.  "So it seemed unrealistic for it to be this huge taboo in town. ...Obviously some people are frightened, but others are intrigued.  And I think that would be the natural response to something like this."

Cody was also careful to explain that the series doesn't spring entirely from her imagination -- particularly the details about the real-life condition DID.  "I've been able in the past to use my imaginations for situations I've never been in, but in this case, when you're dealing with a sensitive topic like this, you absolutely have to do your homework."

"I didn't want to make fun because [the condition] is serious and comes from a sad place," Collette agreed.  "With all the research everyone's done, it's very personal.  I have a friend who had experience with DID who was blown away by how realistic it was."

In fact, Collette pointed out it was the pilot script for Tara that convinced her to do TV at all.  "I never had any aspirations to work in TV but I picked up this script one day from my agent and read it immediately," she explained.  "As soon as I closed last page turned to my husband and said, 'I have to do this.'  It was so delicious to read, so original and unusual, it's a complete dream for an actor.  It is about a woman with a mental illness, but it goes beyond that, into how a family lives and makes that quite normal for their lives.  It's incredibly funny but also moving and very real.  I like stories you can't fit into a box and that you can relate to as a human being."

The United States of Tara

Premieres Sunday, January 18, 2009

10 PM Eastern

And Now, a Word from...

Lauren Lee Smith
Actor, CBS' CSI

After the departure late last season of Jorja Fox, CSI’s Las Vegas forensic investigations team was down one member – not to mention one lesbian icon. Enter Lauren Lee Smith, the chameleon-like actress who starting in her teenage years in Canada quickly landed a series of ever-more-impressive roles in such shows as MTV’s 2gether, CBS’ Christy miniseries, and the syndicated sci-fi show Mutant X (opposite my fave, Victor Webster!)

In a few short years, Smith became the girlfriend of a boy band member, a Smoky Mountain schoolteacher, a mutant, a Russian stripper spy (on the Canadian procedural series Intelligence) – and most importantly, a chef named Lara Perkins, the love interest for tennis player Dana Fairbanks on Showtime’s The L Word. Recently, I had the chance to interview Lauren about her new role on CSI, where she debuts as CSI-2 Riley Adams in this season’s second episode, airing Thursday, October 16. And of course, along the way, I couldn’t help but ask her what it had been like to become one our icons on Showtime’s groundbreaking gay show.

Must-Hear TV: Back in 2004, you had already found success in quite a few TV shows and in Canadian independent film. What had interested you in joining The L Word?

Lauren Lee Smith: The L Word had a huge appeal to me at the time, because it was something that hadn’t been done before. It was bringing to mainstream television a TV series based on the lives of lesbians. And I just thought that it was an important project, and I thought that all of the people involved I really admired. We had such an amazing group of directors for every episode, and the producers and writing team and all of the actors. Getting to work with Pam Grier and Jennifer Beals was amazing, and the list just goes on and on.

MHTV: You were very young [23 or 24] when you started on the show. Had you ever done love scenes before? Particularly same-sex scenes?

LLS: That was the first time that I did a same-sex scene, yes. Everyone always says, “Oh, is it nervewracking?” And I have to say, it was much easier. Girls look out for each other.

MHTV: But does it make you self-conscious?

LLS: I don’t really have many hang-ups about that.

MHTV: Your generation has fewer hang-ups about the whole issue of sex in general.

LLS: It’s true, I think. Really, I’ve never been a fan of gratuitous nudity or sex scenes, and I pride myself in never having had to fall into that category. But I do find it somewhat ridiculous when you’re doing a love scene, and it’s very unrealistic. So I have no problems doing love scenes as long as there’s a realistic aspect.

MHTV: Even though you’ve got 30 crew members staring at you.

LLS: You know, you put that out of your brain. You have to, otherwise you become very self-conscious, and it’s not real at that point.

MHTV: Did anybody advise you against playing a lesbian when you went into that show, and have you found that you get stereotyped?

LLS: No one advised me not to take it. Everyone was very supportive about the project when they heard about it. There were certainly several more offers after I did The L Word to play lesbian characters, but I don’t think that was necessarily because of me. I think it was because The L Word opened it up a little bit to have more of these characters. So I found that there were more and more characters coming out who were gay. Which is a great thing, I have to say.

CSI

Season 9

Thursday, October 9
9 PM Eastern
CBS