Power lesbian: Jackie Warner, owner of Beverly Hills gym Sky Sport and Spa, is blazing trails as the out lesbian star of Work Out, Bravo's hot new reality show.

Having watched the first couple of episodes of the new Bravo reality series Work Out, I'm a little daunted about meeting its star, personal trainer Jackie Warner, at a Beverly Hills restaurant-bar.

Not that Warner, who's 37, seems overly intimidating on TV. Yes, she's an extraordinary physical specimen, complete with eight-pack abs. And she's an alpha gal, to be sure, as seen clearly when she disciplines the other trainers who work at her hoity-toity Beverly Hills penthouse fitness center, Sky Sport and Spa. But she also has a sexy warmth on camera: She's usually grinning, even when making employees toe the line or clients work their asses off.

No, the fear factor in meeting Jackie alone is wondering whether her girlfriend of 4 1/2 years, Mimi, may be lurking. The fiery blond Brazilian--an artist and fitness pro herself and 11 years Warner's junior--is a jealous sort. On one episode of Work Out, Mimi dispenses some discipline of her own to oversexed trainer Rebecca after the flirtatious employee playfully moons her boss. And when Jackie dares to visit a strip bar with the trainers or doesn't call Mimi when she's supposed to, there's hell to pay.

Then there's Mimi's tendency to bite. Her on-camera love nips are just this side of The Hunger. "Anytime I see her, at any function, there is biting," Jackie affirms with something between a smile and a grimace. "I have scars; it's embarrassing. Try explaining a bite mark on your arm when you're wearing a tank top."

Warner, who's a charmer in person, is nothing if not frank. But perhaps we've gotten ahead of the story. Let's not skip over the most important point: Bravo is going to broadcast a reality series starring a lesbian, and quite a hot one at that.

Forget The L Word--Jackie and Mimi's dyke drama is the real deal, and many lesbians who watch the show will identify. And Jackie's androgynous cross-gender, cross-sexuality appeal should resonate with men and women of other appetites as well.

"Gay men love me," she says matter-off-actly. "I get mobbed every time I go to the Abbey [the popular West Hollywood restaurant and hangout]. And I do get hit on by a lot of straight guys. I think a big part of it is that I grew up in a small town surrounded by straight people. I'm extremely comfortable with my sexuality, and I can be flirtatious. I don't know what it is, but I get hit on so much more by straight women than gay women."

When Work Out executive producer Amy Shpall began her talent hunt she wasn't even looking for a gay gym owner-just an upscale site with great characters. When Warner (and Sky Sport) became one of three finalists for the six-episode series, her athletic drive trumped any doubts she had about making her life so public.

"I'm highly competitive," she says, "so even though I was fearful about it and I knew my relationship would be quite stressed over it, obviously I wanted it and went for it." As for the gay element, "I didn't even come out to them initially. But you should have seen their eyes light up when I did. They were thrilled to have a lesbian, and it really did create a lot of story lines throughout the show."

There's always a big dose of unreality on reality TV, of course. Even when swept up in the travails of the characters at Jackie's gym--will headstrong trainer Brian be fired? Will exhibitionist Rebecca get in trouble after she shows a photo of her boyfriend's penis to one of the gym's celeb clients, singer Jody Watley? Will cute new gay trainer Jesse (there's a second gay man on staff, the hunky Doug) fit in with the others?--most viewers know by now that reality producers enlarge microdramas to macro proportions. But Warner still had to do her alpha darnedest to stay true to herself.

"There were lots of things I was asked to do that I wouldn't," she says. Warner admits that she and executive producer Lori Kaye (cocreator of last year's gay filmfest hit L.A. Dolls and a onetime contributor to this magazine) "were pretty much like this." Warner knocks her fists together in a universal sign for butting heads. "I'm not a 20-year-old actress dying to break in, so you can't control me. You need to capture who I am, not try to create a situation I am not agreeable to."

Such as? "They wanted me to be more emotional; they didn't think certain things were dramatic enough with Mimi," she says. "I'm like, 'We're two attractive lesbians, we make out, we fight, we bite--what more do you want?'"

Kaye's version of their working relationship isn't much different. "When I met Jackie the first time at the gym, I thought she'd be a handful--and I thought she'd be great TV," she says. "I was right on both counts. Let's face it, she's a strong broad."

Fighting, biting, hot lesbians--we're a long way from Fairborn, Ohio, where Warner was born. Her parents moved to the West Coast when she was a baby, though, and she spent her first four years on Venice Beach in Los Angeles. Literally.

"My parents would take me to the ocean every single day and put me in one of those portable playpens on the beach," says Warner. "It was the height of the early '70s, with hippies and lots of drugs, especially acid. So I was raised with a bunch of kookadoodles walking around and talking to me. It was great."

Her father, a Vietnam vet, was one of the drug takers, which exacerbated the fact that he was already "whacked out" by his war experience. "Once you are raised around mental illness, you learn to not judge and to feel just maybe a little extra for people's sadness and frustrations," says Warner. Her father wasn't much of a presence in her life after age 4, when her parents split (he died when she was 18). At the urging of her wealthy grandparents, she and her mom then moved back to Fairborn.

"My mother is a perpetual student," says Warner. "I get my recklessness from her--she was never afraid to quit her job, her profession, and start another. I'm the same way. The moment I lose passion for something, I leave it, even if I'm making a lot of money."

When Jackie was 9, her mom married again, this time to a strict, right-wing Christian with whom Jackie had an acrimonious relationship. "It was pretty shocking how things changed in our household," she says, "so I separated from my mom emotionally. She had my brother at that time, and I was kind of displaced. I mainly lived with my grandparents after that. It was painful at the time, but these are the things that form us."

Warner was also formed, outside and in, by sporting activities--soccer, softball, riding horses. By the time she was 14, she realized another crucial aspect of herself: She liked girls. "I was a Christian and went to church every Sunday, and I remember praying to God to take this burden from me," she says. "But after a month or two of that, I thought, Well, it's not going anywhere. I'm starting to get the feeling that God's not really against this ... so I'll go for it. And I've never looked back."

She had a girlfriend off and on through high school and managed to sleep with about half of the school's cheerleaders. But she kept it all on the down low, not coming out to her mother until she was 21. "It was weird growing up in a small town," she explains. "I always felt very claustrophobic, being gay. There's a big difference between small-town gay and big-town gay. Gay people in a large city are way more accepted; the morals are different in a small town."

Warner knew she needed to leave Ohio, so she applied to fashion design school in Los Angeles, telling her grandparents only after she was accepted. "Then they sold my car--which was my graduation present--out from under me. My grandparents were very controlling. They had a lot of money, and they used it."

Warner quickly figured out how to earn her own money. She has variously run a successful cellular company, modeled a little, worked as a script coordinator in films, sold a script of her own, and opened another gym, Lift, before this one. Sky Sport--a sleek space atop an office building--offers chiropractic and physical therapy as well as personal training, group exercise classes, and spa pampering.

Warner sees personal training as much more than just a pricey way to get in shape--she's as much shrink as drill instructor. "Trainers are more like therapists than any other profession," she says. "When you deal with the body, there's a lot of pain people keep inside, and a lot is based on how they feel about themselves from an early age. As a trainer, you have to be empathic and a good listener as well as knowing what you're talking about. I have changed clients' lives--gotten them into AA and out of marriages, seen them through babies and deaths and new careers."

Not even a hairdresser is privy to as many private revelations as a trainer. "You know all the secrets, all the lies, all the affairs," says Warner. "I'm so full of secrets about this town I'm about ready to explode."

She's got some secrets of her own too: She tells The Advocate that she's had some closeted actress girlfriends in the past, but she won't name names. She will, though, tell her Jenny McCarthy story, because Jenny has blabbed in the past about her bisexual adventures.

"We used to make out in clubs," Warner reveals. "It started at [famous West Hollywood lesbian nightclub] Girl Bar one night when she was at the height of her popularity. All the girls were like, 'Oh, my God, I can't talk to her.' But I said, 'I'll go talk to her.' So I walked up and said, 'OK, Fm going to buy you a drink, of we're going to dance. Which do you want?' And she's like, 'You're going to buy me a drink, and then we're going to dance.' We danced like crazy, then went to the bathroom and made out like crazy."

Although Warner says she hasn't always been so suave with a pickup line--"People think I'm so aggressive, but when it comes to women I'm really shy"--she suggests the following strategy with an attractive woman: "First you talk to her for a while, then say to her, 'You know what? You're really funny. You're beautiful too, but you have such an incredible sense of humor.'"

Would that work on her? "No, I go straight to 'You're really beautiful.' If you tell me I'm really beautiful or really hot, I'm like, 'You just got a lot hotter to me.'"

Strangely enough, although she definitely enjoys partying with the gay gals, Warner's not really a denizen of the lesbian scene. "I never have felt part of the lesbian community," she admits. "I think it comes from being brought up in a small town with a bunch of cheerleaders--my best friends have been straight people and gay men. Maybe this show is coming along to help me get more active in my own community, because I care so much about gay issues. But I don't have one lesbian friend, and that needs to change."

There's darling but volatile Mimi, of course, but the Sturm und Drang nature of that relationship seems to have taken a toll. "Here's the thing," Warner explains. "Mimi is young, she is immature, and she also has some deep insecurities about people getting attention other than her. Well, when I'm being followed by a camera all day every day and have to interact with other people that she's not a part of, it creates this drama and turmoil. It was much worse than what you see; Mimi drove me crazy. I would leave after 15 hours of shooting Work Out and come home and deal with five hours of screaming. We have some serious issues that are much broader than the TV show. It's not as intense now as when we were shooting, but they're still there."

If Bravo picks up the series beyond its six-episode run, Warner hopes that a new round of episodes will focus on her actual work as a trainer as much as on her recently turbulent love life.

"The times I'm truly happy and in my natural state is when I'm training, and so much of that was cut," she says. "So many powerful, powerful moments. You think you're weak? Uh-uh--I'm going to push you 10 times harder than you ever thought you could go. You're going to give it to me, and then you're going to feel like a million bucks. That's what I'm passionate about--to show people how powerful they are."

Kort is an author whose works include Dinah! Three Decades of Sex, Golf, and Rock 'n' Roll.

Photographed exclusively for The Advocate by Mark Hanauer