To celebrate 20 years of The L Word we’ve made our April 2020 cover story available online. You’re welcome!
WORDS ROXY BOURDILLON, COVER PHOTOGRAPHY BY KHAREN HILL
When Leisha Hailey was little she had short hair, wore tomato-red jeans held up by rainbow striped braces and was rarely seen without a crayon in her hand. I know this because the day before our interview, she shares possibly the most adorable flashback photo in recorded history on her Instagram. The caption? “Zero changes.” Her L Word co-star and best bud Kate Moennig comments, “Perfection”. Jennifer Beals writes succinctly, “Beyond [emoji heart]”.
Born in Japan and brought up in a small town in Nebraska, Leisha was a creative powerhouse from the off. Long before she earned a place at the prestigious American Academy Of Dramatic Arts or snagged a lead role in the biggest lesbian TV show of all time, she was attending painting classes and performing in every community theatre play going. “I was a bit of an odd duck,” she chuckles down the phone on our transatlantic call.
It wasn’t until adolescence that Leisha began questioning her sexuality. Looking back, the signs were clear. Like so many queer women, she harboured excruciating crushes on female friends and teachers. “I just didn’t know what it meant. I honestly felt like a monster. If I’d had a show like The L Word, my past probably would have been a lot different.” I wonder, if by some divine intervention, she had the chance to speak to that fearful, freaked-out kid now, what words of wisdom would she impart? She pauses to reflect. “That’s hard.” In the end, her message is brief, to the point and everything little Leisha needed to hear. “I’d hug her… and tell her she’s gonna be ok.” Oof. We’re only two minutes in and already I’m experiencing all the feels.
You can rest easy, Pieszecki superfans, because Leisha really is as awesome as you suspect she is – irresistibly charming with an infectious laugh and open spirit. But then, it’s hardly surprising she’s so dreamy. After all, who doesn’t love Alice, The L Word’s wise-cracking, gossip-loving, glue-that-keeps-the-gang- together? She’s funny as fuck and totally relatable. So many of the gay women I know think they’re an Alice. I might as well come out of the closet and confess
to you right now that I am one of them. At least I hope I’m an Alice. She’s the best. She feels the same way about shots as you: “That’s so gross. Shall we get another one?” When Dana’s parents straight-washed their daughter’s funeral, she was as enraged by the lesbian-erasing BS as you were. And when she discovered that Shane and Jenny had been making the beast with two backs, her reaction mirrored 99% of the women watching. She entered full-on meltdown mode and immediately texted everyone gay in her phone contacts: “OOOMMMGG!!!!!”
Alice gifted queer culture with some of The L Word’s most quotable one-liners: “Lesbians think friendship’s another word for foreplay”, “What if the brownies were gay?” and, a personal fave, “Why is my mom such a slutty, slutty, chicken-chasing pervert?” She created the iconic Chart, a hook-up map scrawled across a whiteboard turned actual social networking site, about which Leisha quips/makes the excellent point, “I have always said that Alice invented Facebook”. Side note for all you fun fact fans: The Chart debuted in The L Word pilot, in January 2004. A few weeks later FB was launched. Oi, Zuckerberg, I think you might owe some queer folk stacks of cash.
But back to our gal, Al. Whether she’s knitting a flamingo-pink harness for a strap-on dildo at Stitch ’n’ Bitch or being embraced by a lesbian vampire named Uta, Alice never fails to entertain. Make no mistake, though, she’s more than a mere class clown. We’ve seen her go through major heartbreak. We’ve gone through major heartbreak with her – RIP Dana. As a die-hard Dalice shipper, I feel obliged to let Leisha know that, to this day, I can’t listen to the song You Are My Sunshine without welling up and picturing Alice crumpled in a heap on the floor of the hospital corridor, her gift shop novelty daisy warbling poignantly beside her. “I know. Urgh. One of the worst days at work. We were saying goodbye to Erin [Daniels] that day. It wasn’t just the character. It was pretty easy to get there emotionally, put it that way.”
Perhaps it might seem excessive to say that a moment from a TV show had such a lasting impact on me, but this was, we must remember, no ordinary programme. Today queer characters crop up everywhere from soaps to sci-fi, but when The L Word burst on to our screens it gave millions of previously isolated LGBTQI women unprecedented representation. More than that. It showed us not only that there were other people like us out there, but that our stories were worth telling – that we, in fact, had worth. For the queer women on TV and watching at home, The L Word changed everything.
Leisha has had too many memorable fan encounters to single out just one. “It’s so incredible that we have these insanely amazing fans that we do, because that’s what keeps the show alive.” She loves meeting those insanely amazing fans in the flesh. “That’s great because you can hear their feedback in real time and no one likes to talk about The L Word more than the fans, especially if they have access to one of the actors or showrunners or writers. They’re like, ‘Listen, you can’t do this again’, ‘Get rid of this person’ or ‘Bring that person back’. They’re so passionate.” When Leisha started out on this wild L Word ride, she hadn’t an inkling of the monumental effect the show would have. “We had no idea. I mean, we knew when we were filming the pilot we were doing something really, really special, but we didn’t know how the world was going to respond to it. That was the shocking part, when it became a mainstream hit.”
In 2004, when the show first aired, Leisha was the only out lesbian in the lead cast. Over time, she has come to believe that her openness has both helped and hindered her career. On the plus side: “I was living my authentic self. When you can find that within yourself and go out in the world, be completely who you are, that helps you, because people respond to truth.” But she concedes that she has also “hit some walls because of it”. She began to notice that she was only being called in for queer parts. “And that started to get me down, because obviously that’s only one part of me.”
Leisha is, indeed, a person made up of many parts. Dubbed a “renaissance woman” by Jennifer Beals, she has successfully straddled the worlds of acting, painting, music – in bands like The Murmurs, Gush and Uh Huh Her – and now fashion with her covetable t-shirt line, Vintage Gay, which raises money for ACLU’s LGBTQ Rights Project. She is astonishingly prolific. “I like waking up in the morning and getting excited, whether it’s stepping into a character or a painting I can’t wait to start. Something about it just feeds my soul.” And nothing feeds her soul quite like playing Ms Pieszecki.
The original L Word may have ended in a whodunnit non-sequitur in 2009, but now, at long last, the series that sparked a gazillion gaywakenings is back in the shape of The L Word: Generation Q. “It’s something that I had dreamed of doing for years, because I missed that character so much. And watching the
world change made me realise that this character needed to be a part of that.” Pregaming for Gen Q, Leisha and Kate decided it would be useful to rewatch old seasons, but confronted with the horror of mid-noughties style choices – so much hair wax, so many low-slung jeans – they found they couldn’t manage more than a few episodes. “We looked so dated, it was almost too distracting. We were just embarrassed for ourselves.”
Luckily, they didn’t need to scrutinise past performances to click right back into character. The first table read was electric and surreal. “The energy was palpable, because I can’t tell you how hard Kate, Jennifer, myself and Ilene Chaiken worked to get this show back on the air. We couldn’t believe that it actually came to fruition. It was mind-bending.” For women like me, who came out – at least in part – because of The L Word, there’s something undeniably warm and fuzzy about seeing OGs Alice, Shane and Bette back together. Their chemistry still dazzles a decade on. “Friendship is the most important thing about the show.
Without that, there is no L Word, there is no Generation Q. It has to be friendship first and then we link arms and walk through the world together. We all have our chosen families and together we’re all spokes in the wheel, moving forward, helping change everything.”
Alice 2.0 has a bright blonde bisexual bob, a wardrobe full of colour-block boilersuits and regular avocado toast brunches with her old muckers Bette and Shane. Her media career has hit glitzy new heights. She’s being profiled in the LA Times, hailed as “The Queen of Queer Life”, and her face is emblazoned across 20ft billboards all over LA. The ads feature her rocking a designer jumpsuit, perched atop a stool, legs akimbo, the “i” in Alice strategically printed over her crotch. She has ascended the ladder from magazine journo to TV presenter and now has her very own eponymous talk show, which she describes as “a fun, feminist one where you can drink coffee and wine”. When she enters stage left with her trademark side-slide-in to a throbbing theme song by Le Tigre, looking absurdly fabulous in a peach embroidered power suit with matching curtain tassel belt, it’s all just so right. “I think so, too!” agrees Leisha cheerfully. It was easy for her to imagine Alice 10 years down the line. “I knew that I wanted her to have her own talk show, because it was a very clear trajectory from where she ended. I just felt like she would have kept climbing and throwing herself into her career. After Dana died and her relationship with Tasha wasn’t going that well, I felt like she was gonna become a careerist and keep her eye on the prize.”
I learn that Leisha is very into the long-held L Word tradition of the celesbian cameo. The original featured guest spots from the likes of Tegan and Sara, Gloria Steinem and – as if we could forget – Snoop Dogg aka Slim Daddy. Alice’s talk show provides the ideal pretext to usher in even more stars. We see Alice flirting with footballer and “America’s gay sweetheart” Megan Rapinoe and having a heart-to-heart with feminist writer Roxane Gay about being a “bad queer”. Leisha is here for all of it. “Oh my god, I couldn’t wait to get to work on both those days. They’re both such influences to me. I couldn’t believe I got to hang out with them.” As Leisha seems like such a good sport, I decide to turn the tables and ask her some of the “real, but also inappropriate questions” she throws at Megan on The Alice Show. True to form, she plays ball right away. Who is her celebrity crush? “Phoebe Waller-Bridge, hands down.” What’s the gayest thing that’s ever happened on the set of The L Word? “I can’t say it,” she giggles tantalisingly. “Yeah, there are many… I can’t tell you.” Would her response be the same if I inquired about hook-ups, one-night stands and drunken mistakes among the cast and crew? “Yep, that would fall right in line. I can never tell you.”
Her naughty, knowing laugh makes me even more intrigued. One more in this quickfire round. She’s so outgoing, so up for fun and games and chatter – would Leisha ever want to be a presenter, not as Alice, but as herself? “I would love that! It’s a really comfortable place for me to be to sit and ask people questions.” I, for one, would 100% watch that show. “Right? Let’s make it happen!”
With her enthusiastic attitude and cheeky sense of humour, it’s easy to see the similarities between Leisha and Alice. The main difference, by my estimation, is that Leisha is a little more chill and a lot less snarky. She reckons, “I’m very similar to her, except for the fact that she’s the girl who speaks up about everything and isn’t scared to say what she feels and what she thinks of the world. That is a release for me in a weird way, because I can step into those shoes and have that risk-taking side that I don’t have in real life.”
Another parallel is her close off-camera friendship with Kate Moennig, who plays Alice’s best bro Shane. Leisha and Kate see each other “six out of seven days a week”. Their activities are varied and domestic. They do house projects together, visit The Home Depot, cook each other dinner and walk their dogs in the park. “We do everything! You know, Mia Kirshner used to call us ‘pants’–there wasn’t one leg without the other. We just always were like that. We all find our best friends.” They first met during the final round of auditions to play Shane. Think about that for a second. In another reality, Leisha could have been the one looking very Shane today. “Kate was gorgeous and I knew that I was never gonna get the part, but I went in. I gave it my all. They liked me. They just didn’t know where to put me.” A week later, she was invited back to read for Alice, a character show creator Ilene Chaiken dreamed up especially for her.
Another original cast member Leisha connected with deeply was Erin Daniels. Hearing this, I feel duty-bound to let Leisha know that, in my opinion, Alice and Dana were one of the best L Word couples ever. “I agree with you. Some of my favourite years on the show were with Erin.” Does she have any theories about why they were so popular with viewers? “Because I don’t think it was planned that they were going to end up together. The audience got to really get to know them as individuals, but also watch them go through things together. By the time they fell in love, the chemistry was so natural people really believed it.”
In Gen Q, Shane is preposterously wealthy and has a lot of free time on her hands so, obviously, she buys a bar and names it after everyone’s favourite dearly departed, Subaru-sponsored, lesbian tennis pro. Once this storyline was confirmed, Leisha and Kate hatched a plan. “We knew the day was coming up on the schedule that we were shooting at Dana’s bar, so Kate and I texted Erin and were like, ‘Can you come to the set this day?’ She was like, ‘I think so’.
We were like, ‘No, no, you have to make it happen’. But we didn’t tell her why. We just told her the address and the time to show up. It was a great day.” Scroll through Kate’s Instagram feed and among the sea of pet pictures you’ll find a clip of Alice, Shane and Bette taking a selfie outside Dana’s, and Erin’s radiant face popping up behind them to photobomb. “We didn’t know she was gonna do that trick! She got us back.” I’m curious, what did Erin think about the series that so controversially killed off her character making a comeback? “Oh, she’s so supportive. Every time we get some good news about the show, Erin starts a group text congratulating us. Same with Rachel Shelley. She’s the greatest. I love her so much. It was something that was so special in all of our lives that anyone that gets to do it again, we’re so happy for them.”
Talking about the reboot leads us, inevitably, to discussing the throuple on everybody’s lips. In Gen Q, Alice navigates her relationship with mother-of-two Nat (Stephanie Allynne) and Nat’s ex wife Gigi (Sepideh Moafi). It’s the ménage à trois you didn’t realise you desperately needed in your life. “You know, I have to give the writers credit for it. They came up with that idea and pitched it to me and I loved it, because I thought if anybody is gonna be the person to do that, it’s gonna be Alice. It made perfect sense to me and fit with everything I was thinking relationship-wise. And it opened my mind up to the possibilities. I mean, not only is it a throuple, but it’s three women in a throuple, and not only that, but it’s two exes, so I was really excited about it.”
The shifting dynamics of this polyamorous set-up are mined for comedy, drama and epic levels of hotness. The throuplets also have to deal with the challenging new frontier of throuple etiquette – who holds whose hand on the red carpet? Are the kids’ swim meets for the whole fam or just the ex wives? And, perhaps most importantly, which box sets are throuple members strictly forbidden from watching solo?
All the sexual tension comes to a literal climax in an exquisite three-way that instantly gains entry into The L Word Hall Of Fame For Best Sex Scenes Ever. The performances are fantastic, committed and smouldering, it’s beautifully shot, and the end result is a banquet of erotic delights. It’s the specificity that makes it spellbinding. There are heads tilted back in ecstasy, hands squeezing thighs, hungry mouths everywhere. In short, it’s a real treat. A high-octane queer fuckfest to a Billie Eilish soundtrack. You may find yourself rewinding several times. Trying not to sound too sleazy, I tell Leisha what a hit this scene was in the DIVA office. “I can’t lie, I was very nervous going into it, but Steph Green was our director and she’s incredible. We met multiple times for a couple of weeks. We choreographed it and we thought of different ways for the scenario to unfold. By the time we came to shoot it, we were all very clear on who was doing what, how it was all gonna go down.”
The L Word is renowned for smoking-hot sex scenes, from Shane topping Cherie Jaffe by a swimming pool to Alice and Dana’s foray into Love Boat-themed roleplay. “It’s a very important part to show, because we all need to see ourselves represented and that’s a part of who we are. It’s important that we take that
seriously on our side.” So what’s the secret to creating top-grade onscreen nookie? “For me, personally, the most important part of any love scene is the build-up before it. When things are out of nowhere, it feels gratuitous. It always has to feel earned, because you want the audience to root for what’s happening. You want them to be invested by the time characters have sex.” I assure her that we were all extremely invested and she seems pleased.
While we’re talking about queer desire, I broach the topic of Alice’s bisexuality. In the original L Word, it sometimes seemed that the writers either treated it as a punchline or else forgot to reference it altogether. What’s Leisha’s take on it? “Honestly, I feel like it kind of got put to the side a little, back in the day. But then again, you’re following a character falling in love with whoever she’s falling in love with. You can’t fight that. On the one hand, it hasn’t
really been brought up. On the other hand, that’s just the path she’s been taking. But I do think it’s very important to explore that still, because that doesn’t change. It doesn’t leave you. That’s who she is.”
Leisha’s dog, Banjo, is yapping at her feet, which I take as my cue to wrap up our delightful chat. There’s time for one last question. What has she learned from being part of The L Word legend? “It’s taught me that we have a place in the world. This community has a place.” There may have been times in her life when Leisha felt like an outsider because of her sexuality, as a teenager grappling with her identity or as an actor pigeonholed by casting directors, but consider this: what greater gift can she give her younger self than making gorgeous, authentic art that helps other queer women feel seen? She’s done crayon-carrying, rainbow-brace-wearing lil’ Leisha proud. I’ll leave the last word to grown-up, but still just as adorable, Leisha. “The fact that I had the honour to be a part of this show has changed my life in so many ways. It is profoundly important to me. We have the right to be represented.”
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