The L Event - Interview with Laurel

Laurel’s appearance at the UK L Word convention was unexpected.  Although she was originally billed to appear, the filming schedule for the final 2 episodes had been rearranged, which meant that 2 weeks prior to the event Laurel had cancelled.  She was upset at not being able to attend and felt she was letting fans down.  So, when the schedule was again changed she pulled out all the stops and made the long journey to the UK so that she could appear on the Friday night.  Although she wasn’t able to stay the whole weekend she did put in a very long and gruelling Saturday.  If there was any doubt about how strongly Laurel is committed not only to The L Word show, but also to the strong fan following the show brings, then those doubts were well and truly quashed that weekend. 

It’s 10am Saturday Morning of the UK Convention.  Despite little sleep, and obviously jetlagged, a fresh faced and endearingly enthusiastic Laurel joined Angela and Tracey for a chat. We’ve given her the topics, and away she went! Occasionally, you’ll see a follow up question, but for the most part, this is Laurel, in Laurel’s words. Enjoy!

Laurel on the Convention
The reaction is amazing.  You know just listening to fans talk about the show and how they identify with your character.  I received fan mail the other day from Europe, and it’s fantastic to see how far reaching the show has become. I want to try and get Kate and Leisha to come over. (For the next one?)  I don’t know if Jennifer would, she’s a really private person, and she’s just had her baby.

Laurel on Tina
It’s been an interesting journey to see what Ilene’s vision of who this woman is and to incorporate my own ideas and really stay true to what she wanted.  It would have been easy to just read the character and make an assumption on who she is. 

I had done a lot research because I played a young baby butch of 17 in 2 Girls in Love, so I knew how much research and detail needed to come into this character, and I think there is a huge responsibility to tell a truth when you take on a character like this. 

It‘s very important to me to not have any contradictions in the character. I have been able to go to Ilene and say, this feels contradictory to who this woman is, and now as I’ve learned who she is, mostly it’s worked out.  She is written really well. There was only one time the second season (when it didn’t work out). It was the first love scene with Helena--it was a seduction where Helena seduces Tina by the pool--and there was very little dialogue and very little going on at the time. Sometimes that happens when it’s a first draft, and you know that it’s going to change. I went to Ilene and said, “Why do I sleep with this woman?” At that time, Tina was 6 or 7 months pregnant, not feeling that great about her body but happy to be pregnant and feeling the joy and the beauty of that. However, she was alone and lonely because she am not sharing that with her partner. Yet,  in this pool-seduction scene, “Helena” only said a couple of words, and Tina’s  like . . . Woo Hoo!” (Laurel mimes tearing her bra off).  This seems different from where my character stands.  She doesn’t hop into bed that quick, She needs to have a connection first.  I asked, “Can we find a way for Helena to say something or have something happens” so there would be this connection because this is what I know the truth of my character to be . . . that sleeping with someone is very serious for her.

I told Ilene the story I knew of a friend who was pregnant and did not feel very sexy at the time, and her partner went over all the points of her body that were beautiful, her belly, her breasts. It was very seductive, and that stayed in my head--the celebration of the pregnant body--and then we incorporated that into the scene because Tina feels really insecure like, “Why are you interested?” As she looks down at her body, and Helena says, “This is what is so beautiful, this is what is so sexy”, and she sort of rubs Tina’s belly, and then it all kind of makes sense. 

I always thought they would bring more of Tina’s “back story” in.  I think it’s really strange that Bette and Tina have had a child, and you don’t really know very much about her parents.  I guess when I initially did the pilot, I had a different back story for her.  I kind of thought that Tina had maybe come out in college.  But you know Tina was very specific to Ilene, and she told me that Tina has only been with men, but she probably wouldn’t put a label on anything. 

She had a very liberal mother, so coming out wasn’t very difficult for her, she could be very open right away, she was like “Oh, I’ve fallen in love with a woman…this is what’s going on”.  I think it’s really important when you see her later that you know that she is a follow-your-heart character and doesn’t have much of a label. 

Tracey: So do you think Tina found her autonomy in season 2?

I think that she isn’t all the way there with her autonomy yet.  I do want to say this, though: I think there is a misunderstanding of Tina’s history within the relationship.  She worked the entire time.  She offered to pay her share of the mortgage and was told don’t worry about it. She decided to take time off to plan her baby.  She was never a kept woman; she was never a trophy wife.  It was just a decision they made together and that she would take the time to relax so she could get pregnant. 

I think what Ilene and I talked about was that it’s what happens when someone says “I am going to have a baby. My identity is going to be motherhood now, and I am going to leave all of this behind!”  What Tina realizes is that is so not a good way to look at it.  You should carry on working and then figure it out.  Because what happens if you do miscarry? What happens if you don’t get pregnant right away? 

I think the mistake she made was to just drop everything and just go there and then she just started shrinking into Bette’s identity.  I don’t think she did that right away in the beginning.  When they first met I think it was more balanced.

Laurel on Love Scenes
I often get asked what it’s like to make love to a woman on screen. 

It’s always been just a job. You know no matter whether it’s with a male actor or a female actress, it’s just a job because there are so many people in the room with us.

Most of the time I am thinking “How would my character make love at this point?” What’s the situation with her partnership? Prior to the baby, after the baby?  Is she tired? Are they in a good spot?  Are they fighting?  You know we have kind of really run the gamut with the relationship, and there have been some really painful scenes. Is there trust?  Is there not trust?  And so for me just because you are making out with someone (on screen) doesn’t mean you can just relax and think…. “Hey I think I’ll just relax and make out!”  Because all of a sudden that would be Laurel in that moment, and I can’t play what Laurel would be in that moment because I have to play Tina. You have to create where that character is because I believe that people behave and act differently even in a sexual act if their relationship is positive and loving and warm or if it’s been damaged through betrayal.

Jennifer and I talked about the love scenes, and there is so much blocking, it’s like “if you bring your arm here and do your left arm here and your right arm there, and swing your leg over here . . .Yeah that works for me! Ok!”  By the time you have blocked it all out, it’s all so technical and there’s a camera there.  We used to say that it is very like Fred Astair and Ginger Rogers, and it is.  It’s just like a dance step.  It’s just like learning stunts.  It was very similar to learning a fight scene in Angel. 

A sex scene in the L word is just like a stunt scene in Angel!  The emotion behind it is different, well except for maybe the last scene in the first season.  But it’s so technical because actresses all have different clauses as to what they can reveal and what they can’t on screen, and there are all these different types of articles of clothing that make it appear that you are nude, so you have to be really careful.

To be quite honest the first love scene we did in season 1, Jennifer was taped so I had to keep my hands in the same place, so after a while I felt like I was climbing a tree, you know and I remember saying, “I don’t want to look like a bad lover,” but I can’t move my hands, so we had to try and make that look natural.  Rose Troche was directing that episode, and it started to become like a joke, because you have to find all this humor.  At the same time you don’t get that long to film a scene like that because you know we film a whole episode in about 7 or 8 days so you have a sex scene that will take up two minutes or maybe three minutes of an episode, and you have another 50 minutes or so to film, so we have a joke that the sex scene will come at the end of the day when they have 5 minutes and they are like, “Ok, go!”  And you’re like, "Hang on a minute!!!"

Laurel on Season 3
It’s going to be a difficult season.  It’s going to be one of the most complex I think.  I’m actually very nervous about the season that’s about to air, and if anyone is going to be the hot couple, I think it’s going to be Shane and Carmen this year.

If you look at Bette and Tina’s history, they have come together because of the baby, but they didn’t process the infidelity, the cheating. They didn’t process some of the problems and the co-dependency that went on, and I think when you come to look at Bette and Tina you will see that there really was a lot that wasn’t processed, so their relationship is sort of band-aided, but not really worked out.

I think that’s very real.  I think that happens to a lot of couples, and that is what Ilene is interested in exploring, and what does it mean when you add a child to the whole mix? Were they really ready for it?  How well is their relationship functioning?

You see that the relationship at the end of the first season wasn’t functioning so well, so I think a baby adds another whole level, and you have to be in this place where you are really in sync with each other, and you both really need to know that it’s going to be hard. I know this because I have a baby now! 

I think it’s important to the story.  You also have to have somewhere, hopefully if the show runs for a long time, for relationships to go.  I think there wouldn’t be a lot of drama if we were to just stop home, make out and watch TV, and look after the baby. There wouldn’t be a lot of drama if we were perfectly happy, and there weren’t any temptations and there weren’t any job issues.   You know this is TV, and the Network knows that what people like to see is a bit of drama. 

What’s really going to happen third season, or what I think will be interesting,  is to see where Tina is. I think Ilene set her up so that once she has the baby, she’s feels great and it’s all going to come together for her.  What you see is the circle becoming more complete, and what ends up happening is that she finds that it’s actually ok for her to go back to work.  There’s a great opportunity for her and all of a sudden it’s really coming together.

There’s this part of her identity - and I have talked to a lot of women and I actually feel this for myself - where if you decide to have a child for a long time and maybe there was a journey to get there, it’s a little bit of a struggle, and when it finally happens, there’s at kind of completeness. I think it happens with Tina. In some ways that’s where life gets altered, and changes for her and Bette, whose character has always been wrapped up in her work, and then they have this baby and their world is rocked.

Tina actually starts working a lot. In Season 3, you are going to see what happens to both of them, and the flip-flop might change the dynamic of whether they work because they work in a certain role.  But the question is do they work when the roles are reversed?  When the power shifts?  This happens in so many partnerships, and I just want to say not just same sex, but heterosexual relationships too.  We do this as a society where we say the person that’s the breadwinner calls the shots, but that’s not necessarily a happy functional way to go because both people should call the shots because childcare is just as hard as working. You both need to come to some agreement. 

I think that issue is going to be explored very heavily next season.  Can one person go from being the worker to being more of a traditional wife role, and can they support each other at the same time?  Or does one person say “I’ve supported you for so long”-- I don’t mean support financially but, “I’ve stayed home for you,” or “I took care of the work side.”

I think that from what I’ve learned it seems to be a really pressing issue in so many partnerships, and that’s what happens when you have children because the roles are not so set. They are not black and white anymore, and because both are trying to work and juggle this other responsibility, does one person say, “Ok I’m staying home,” How do you make that work, and what happens if the money is running out? 

You know what is really interesting is that it looks like on the surface that the one that has the job and does this is the stronger person, but actually when you look at a relationship, the person that is willing to be in the background, the person that’s willing to be the more quiet and lets the other person be flashier the person, that’s who is the stronger person and that’s the strength and the heart of the relationship is the stronger person.

And you see that in season 2 when all of a sudden Bette can’t exist without it, but Tina can.  She slowly becomes, “Hey I’m ok, and I’ve got all these friends” to see that Tina isn’t falling apart. It was interesting to see.  I think maybe Tina needed that freedom to find out who she was because she was so buried in the relationship. That happens so often--people leave a relationship and you think there’s no way they will survive without their partner, but then they get out and rediscover who they are.

And I don’t think Bette would have been attracted to Tina if she hadn’t rediscovered herself in some way and had gained that strength to say I don’t want it like this. It needs to be different. I need to have a voice in this. And I don’t think if that hadn’t happened that Bette would have been interested in her.  I think Jennifer did a wonderful job when she played the pain of what it’s like to be alone she really went there. It is just wonderful acting, it’s like some of her best work ever. Everyone has been heartbroken, and so I think a lot of the fans really connected to that.  I don’t think you really grow until you have had your heart broken.

Laurel on New Characters
I think that’s the one good thing that Ilene keeps doing.  I think at first the original cast thought, “Oh my God, they are adding all these new people!”  You know I think actors are all overly sensitive, so we were thinking, “What’s wrong with us?!”  But that’s what an ensemble drama is. 

You need to keep adding all these people.  You needed Helena to counteract what was going on with Bette and Tina, and Carmen came in to really test Shane.  Characters need to grow and that’s what happens in real life--you start to get a larger group. I have had people say that there are so many story lines, but I think in order to go somewhere in four or five years then you need to add people like Alan Cummings.  He is just so good, and he’s so funny, and Daniela Sea whose eyes are amazing.  I can remember when she first walked in, I just thought, “Whoa…this is going to be good!”  I think she is a breath of fresh air for the show. 

Laurel on Pregnancy

Angela: You have done something no one else has done, either on TV or in film, which is to incorporate your pregnancy into the role.

That’s why I did it! I did it because I thought that if ever there is a place to do it, this is the show. And I know it’s going to be nurtured.  I don’t know if I would have done it with a male executive producer.  I don’t know if they would have understood it.  Ilene has children and one of the other producers has kids. 

The only hard thing is that the day before my waters broke I think I worked 15 hours! That I wouldn’t recommend! That was really quite hard, and I think that up to that point the pregnancy had been pretty easy.   I think, even myself included because I had never been pregnant before, everyone was really in slight denial over what was really going on. I even ended up missing the final episode and had to go back and shoot it!  So that whole final episode I’m not actually pregnant. I had already given birth, and the first 6 weeks after giving birth is really tough. 

I think other than that being pregnant and acting pregnant added another layer on the acting, and it was important.  It was interesting to show a woman single and pregnant, and to show other women being attracted to that, which I thought was important.  You see Jane Lynch’s character hitting on my character, and you see the dynamics of that. Jane Lynch’s character was very Alpha and again not paying attention to what Tina’s needs are, but trying to control.  Which is where she had just come from (in her relationship with Bette), so it’s interesting to see how Tina makes her choices. 
There’s something gentle about Helena’s character, especially in the beginning. Then Tina begins to uncover some of  Helena’s dysfunctions, and I think that is when she begins to appreciate the relationship she was in. She also has to forgive Bette for her cheating which is a really big deal, but this was not processed!

Laurel on Helena
You know, she came on the show to be the villain in a certain way, to be the femme fatal. Every show needs to have that kind of character.  I actually read with other girls before I read with Rachel, and she was “it” straight away. 
All credit to Rachel because I think even on paper the character wasn’t credited with layers, and Rachel has played her with such sensitivity.  I think even at times when you see she is still kind of a player that Tina touched her and she really did go there, but the bravado of that player is still intact.  I think it’s really true of people who come from a lot of wealth and they have trouble with understanding how people can turn them down!

I think Helena’s layers will show slowly.  You just have to give a character enough screen time for it to develop.  The layers you have to add in as an actor, which is what Rachel, has done, and I think it’s better to have lots of shades of grey because people are not black and white. 

Ilene does do that because she will have a really complex character and then she will flip it around and show what they are like when they are alone, how vulnerable are they when there is not a group of friends around them.  Next season you will see a lot of what Helena is like alone. 

She also becomes connected to other people, and actually the Tina and Helena relationship continues but not in a sexual way, but it becomes a very important friendship, which is what happens so often in the gay community.  I think what Ilene wants to write about is how ex-lovers turn onto friends, and then you discover that this is a great friend.  This person was supposed to be a friend all along, but you have to sleep with them to get it out of your system first.

Laurel on Bette

Tracey: Was Bette a “Player”?

I think that was a little bit of history for that character, she was a little bit more of a predator, and then she flipped Tina because Tina was with a man, and then she fell in love with Bette. 

I think you see that when she picks up the girl in the bar and she’s been drinking and she’s depressed and she wants to fill the void, but then ends up just feeling really sad. But that happens to people. So I think that is kind of showing Bette’s back story a little bit. 

Laurel on the Show
I’ve been on other shows, and it’s really interesting I have never really wanted to talk about them. 

I’ve never talked about Angel that much.  Don’t get me wrong, I loved it, but I don’t know it’s just the thing about the L word. I have done other movies and talked about other things, but it’s just not as interesting. I am more interested in the social and political impact and how it affects other people, and I feel really connected to what I am doing. 

How many opportunities as an artist do you get? Not many it’s such a gift. I think the thing about the show is that you can relate to it no matter what.  You know people might watch the show and say, I never knew that a same sex couples had the same issues that we have.  Or I have men come up to me, homosexual men who say, “I am just like Tina”. That to me is fantastic because we have reached a male gay couple and that’s great.  I mean who would have thought?

Laurel on Laurel
I can’t do myself, (laughing) right now jetlagged!!! I guess I would like people to see me as gracious, warm, open. I hope people see me as being playful.

I try not to take myself too seriously.   I think you have to take your work seriously.  With a role like this, you have to take it seriously. That this means a lot to people, and you have to remember that it is a gift that has been given to you. 
I think bottom line that I can say that I am a lot more like Bette, and that there is a part of Jennifer that is a lot more like Tina.  I don’t know, I don’t want to say that for Jennifer.  But I think I am a lot more controlling than Tina.
I haven’t seen all of Season 2, but I may have been staying away from that because I was so really pregnant, and maybe I need some distance from it before I can go back to it.  I don’t necessarily like to watch myself. 

I do feel grateful because I have been in this industry a long time, since I was a teenager, and there just isn’t that many great parts, I mean that’s what I told Ilene that this was a gift.

Laurel on the Cast

Jennifer - It’s really hard because I know her so well. She’s luminous and complex. 
Erin - Hysterical…she is absolutely hilarious.
Leisha - Adorable.  I love Leisha. Adorable, open, truth, open hearted, the real deal.  A great friend.
Kate - Saucy, hot. She would be my type, but I’m probably with a lot of people with that one! Mysterious.
Pam - Bubbly and professional and legendary.
Rachel - She is so different from her character, warm generous, without ego, just lovely.
Sarah - Hot tamale! She’s hysterical too. I think she will be a big star.