ER's leading lesbian: as Dr, Kerry Weaver on ER, Laura Innes has experienced coming out and breaking up; now she's ready to love again. (television).

"Women are bigger pigs than men!" laughs Laura Innes in mock dismay. "They were so into Kim for her physical appearance. I expected there to be all these progressive women looking at the real person, but they were like, `Oh, she's such a hottie.'"

Innes, who plays Dr. Kerry Weaver on TV's long-running hit series ER, is talking about her love interest of last season, psychiatrist Kim Legaspi, played by the irresistible Elizabeth Mitchell. The pairing of Innes and Mitchell--who had previously played Angelina Jolie's lover in couldn't have pleased gay women more, if the frisky Web site dedicated to the two women is any indication. It's filled with fan fiction imagining sex scenes between Kim and Kerry, speculation about whether Legaspi will return to Weaver's still-longing arms, and, yes, paeans to actor Mitchell's allure. "I'm a little nervous to check out the Web site, but I get reports," says Innes, sipping green tea at a sidewalk table in Santa Monica, Calif. "I think it's really sweet."

It may have been Mitchell who inspired steamier lesbian fantasies, but it's the talented Innes who made their push-pull relationship believable, as she subtly revealed the conflicting waves of desire and fear that led Kerry into and out of Kim's bed. And while the prickly Weaver hardly seems a lesbian dream date, Innes in person is a lovely redhead who exudes warmth and intelligence. Nonetheless, she proudly defends her often-abrasive character.

"Kerry seems to me truer to form of how an ambitious person behaves," says Innes, 45, who was born in Michigan, studied at Northwestern, and launched her acting career in Chicago theater. "I'm completely unafraid of seeming like the bad guy. I'm much more an advocate of this complex, contradictory person than of somebody who we get to like all the time."

She has also strongly supported her character's discovery of a lesbian identity, which is continuing this season with the introduction of a new girlfriend--firefighter Sandy Lopez, played by The Division's Lisa Vidal. She met Lopez in November, during a surprisingly heroic episode for Weaver, and later mustered the nerve to ask her out. Despite lamentations over Mitchell's departure, Innes thinks her Internet fans won't be too disappointed by the attractive Vidal.

But don't expect Kerry, who started off this season tensely unpleasant and closeted, to suddenly grab a banner and join a gay pride march. "I feel very much an advocate of the story line, but that being said, I don't feel I'm an advocate for having it happen in a way that's going to make the lesbian and gay community happy every minute," says Innes--who is married to actor David Brisbin (he's appeared on ER) and mother of a 12-year-old boy. "The reality of someone's coming-out can happen in all different kinds of ways. For this character, it seems appropriate that it's happened in an incremental way and sometimes a cowardly way.

"If it were me, Laura, and I came in to work after coming out to my boss, I'd be like, `What's the big fucking deal?' But I'm not Kerry, so I honor the tensions that exist for this woman, who has a great deal of difficulty with intimacy. I want to say [to gays and lesbians], `Trust us, we're going to do the right thing.' But along the way there will be some bumps in the road that feel correct to me."

Innes, who has successfully branched out into directing over the past few years--she was Emmy-nominated for an episode of The West Wing and has directed three impressive ER episodes--cares enough about correctness to have influenced the casting of Mitchell. Originally, another woman was hired for the role, but after they shot a few scenes the chemistry felt off, so Innes politely suggested the producers look elsewhere.

"It had nothing to do with the other actress's ability--it's just that with her there wasn't that little buzz, and with Elizabeth there was," she says. "I wanted the mainstream audience to fall in love with this woman."

It wasn't much of a stretch for Innes--as Kerry--to fall in love with Mitchell's Kim herself. "I will say that the chemistry that existed between Elizabeth and I was much better than the chemistry that existed with any of the guys they hooked me up with," she says, smiling. "She's beautiful, a wonderful actress, and a wonderful person." During a crucial dinner scene, early in the characters' flirtation, Innes even let herself briefly feel exactly as the character would.

"I remember during that scene having a real in-the-moment feeling of wanting to kiss her and being amazed that I was feeling that way," she says. "It was great. It was like, `Oh, yeah, this feels right.'

"The producers emphasized from the beginning to view this as one person falling in love with another person, rather than viewing it in a political, social, or cultural way," Innes continues. "That made it very playable. It made it not about anything but the energy between the two of us."

Innes doesn't know where Kerry's going with Sandy or any other female lover on ER, "but I know the writer-producers" (one of whom, Dee Johnson, is a lesbian) "are committed to this story line in a long-term way," she says.

You mean Kerry won't go Anne Heche on us?

Innes laughs again. "Wouldn't that be awful? It would be so destructive to go through this coming-out arc and then have Kerry say, `Oh, never mind.' That's like when I run into certain [ER fans] who go, `You're not really, are you?' They can't even say the word `gay.' So I say "she lowers her voice to a husky, conspiratorial whisper--`Yeah, I am.'"

Kort is the author of Soul Picnic, to be published in 2002 by St. Martin's.