Soul of The L Word: we may argue about The L Word, but on this we all agree: Jennifer Beals takes our breath away. The star opens up about shooting sex scenes, being a new mom, and giving lesbians what they want.

With its third season just under way, Showtime's breakthrough lesbian series, The L Word, is looking to get hotter and tighter. The critical honeymoon that began with the drama's extraordinary 2004 pilot episode ended with season 2--a fact that executive producer and creator Ilene Chaiken forthrightly acknowledges. "I'm not sorry that we tried any of the things we did [last season]," Chaiken tells The Advocate [see sidebar, page 48]. "But I am excited about the third season because I think that we're back."

Fortunately, Jennifer Beals was never away. By virtue of her acting chops and star power, Beals unshakably anchors the L Word ensemble as lipstick lesbian dynamo Bette Porter, who aspires to run the world and never break a sweat.

The whole of season 2 seemed designed to knock Bette off her pedestal. Her homophobic and demanding father, Melvin, died; sadly, so did the great Ossie Davis, who played the character. After Bette strayed with a sexy contractor, her longtime partner, Tina (Laurel Holloman), left, her for a snarky English rich witch (Rachel Shelley) who promptly withdrew the principal funding for the museum where Bette was director. After the money dried up, Bette's job followed suit. In the finale, a chastened Bette found herself gratefully accepting a second chance at her relationship--as Tina gave birth to their long-wished-for daughter.

It all added up to a major temptation to chew the scenery, but even as melodramatic fireworks exploded all around her, Beals chose to play it real. She got inside her story and made it work.

She has a history that way. Born in Chicago, her mother Irish and her father African-American, Beals was 19 years old when she ripped the neck out of a sweatshirt and aerobicized herself into film history with 1983's Flashdance. Directed by Adrian Lyne and cowritten by Joe Eszterhas, this was just one of a crop of would-be imitators of Saturday Night Fever. With her model's stature and wounded eyes, Beals turned it into something else again.

The "wounded eyes" thing shows up in every story ever written on Beals, and no wonder. Those liquid brown eyes are a gift of nature, and Beals--an agile intellect who majored in American literature at Yale--deploys them to stunning advantage. The Eyes captivated Steve Buscemi in 1992's In the Soup, directed and cowritten by Beals's then-husband, Alexandre Rockwell; oozed sadness opposite Denzel Washington in the underrated mystery Devil in a Blue Dress; agonized over whether to carry a gay fetus to term in The Twilight of the Golds; framed her own accomplished photos of her famous friends in The Anniversary Party.

In The L Word, Beals has put The Eyes in the service of lesbian fans everywhere, using that smoldering gaze to create some of the most erotic woman-to-woman love scenes in memory. Even Chaiken can't explain how Beals works her magic. "I've never met anybody else," says Chaiken simply, "who can do it like she can."

Do people still assume that you have to be a lesbian to play one on TV?

No, not at all. At least they don't say that to me. I heard a rumor that somebody--a studio executive in L.A. who saw some of the show--assumed I was bisexual. Which was a huge compliment to me, because oftentimes I will go Leisha or Kate or Ilene or Rose Troche most often and ask, "OK, is this the right thing to do? Is this not the right thing to do? Am I going to seem like a total chump if I do this?" And so I feel really proud, actually, that somebody would think that I was bisexual--I was pleased with myself. And I don't care, frankly. But I think mostly people will ask the question to get a titillating lead for their article. My older brother is a journalist, so I know how the game works.

You know how it is, huh?

They're selling a story. It's selling, always. I understand why they ask it. The world is too big and there's too many fish to fry to worry about something like that.

Some in the lesbian community have said, "Everyone's too pretty, too rich"--all of that. But on this season there's going to be a more explicit look at butch and femme roles.

Yeah, I think Ilene's explored that so far. But, you know, it is TV. I don't know any group of people in New York who look like the characters on Friends either. But I take their point. It excites me that if people don't like something, they voice their opinion about it. Because this, by and large, is a group that's never been represented. And instead of just saying, "Oh, we're so thrilled to be represented and we'll take whatever we can get," there are very specific opinions of how people want to be represented.

Every time I see you work, I remember that old myth--perhaps Hitchcock said it--that it's not too good for an actor to be too bright. If she's very bright, she's usually not such a good actor. Obviously, you've proven that wrong all the way around.

Or else you're assuming that I'm bright. [Both laugh]

No, I feel pretty well assured that you're bright. But I wonder, do you ever have to turn down your IQ in order to go to work and be as vulnerable as you have to be on-screen?

I don't. What's interesting is this sort of 20th-century notion that the mind and the heart have to be divided. If you can merge the two and bring them to some kind of meeting place, then that's when you will be the most productive, at least for me and my work. There are times when my mind can start to take over and I have to reintroduce it to my heart. [Anne laughs] And sometimes I can get too emotional and not necessarily keep in context the entire episode or the entire show. Every moment is within the context of the story, so it's not necessarily helpful just to be completely instinctual. Everything is about servicing the story. Otherwise, it's just a great big wank and who cares? Just go to therapy.

Let's talk about season 3. Your character, Bette, is at a crossroads. The job's gone. Her father has died, which is a good thing and a bad thing.

Well, it's not a good thing at all. There's nothing good about it actually.

But he's been a source of conflict for Bette.

Right, but the problem is, when somebody dies and they've been a source of conflict, there's no room for a resolution. As long as the person's alive and you still love them, regardless of their shortcomings, there's room for resolution. So there's a finality to that which is hard to sit with. There's always the desire to go back and rewrite everything and have the idyllic kind of Hallmark "Yes, you accept me and my partner."

What was that like, to do those scenes with Ossie Davis and then for him to pass away in life?

It just felt like it was a great honor to be in his presence and to partake even in that infinitesimal way in someone's life who lived in such an exemplary fashion.

The other challenge, obviously, for Bette is that her relationship with Tina has to be rekindled. And then there's a new life that requires more commitment than she's ever given anybody.

Yes, it's true. It's the curveballs that come, one mater the other. The second season was definitely the trials of Job in a way, and then this season has its own trials that aren't as necessarily evident but are profound nonetheless.

In what direction does Bette most need to grow at this point?

[Sighs] I don't know. It's hard for me to presume to say how someone needs to grow. Then I'm standing back and judging her, which is a tricky thing to do as an actor. I think she needs a really good attorney at this point. [Anne laughs]

Having seen the first couple of episodes, I can only say that baby Angelica is a gorgeous, beautiful baby.

Oh, that kid is just--her name is Olivia, and she's just such a delight. She makes me laugh so hard, and she's been so patient with all of us. Oftentimes, working with children can be very hard. They don't know where they are, they don't know why they're there, and they don't enjoy it. But she clearly enjoys being around.

Is Olivia an identical twin, or is she just Olivia?

No, she's just Olivia. I was in the middle of this relatively serious scene with Laurel Holloman a couple of weeks ago. I'm holding Olivia, and she took my hair and started pretending that I had a mustache as I'm holding her. What're you gonna do? You can't do the scene. I just started laughing.

You were expecting your own child while you were working with this child. How did that experience prepare you?

Well, it's one thing to be pregnant; it's another thing to have a newborn. There's all sorts of details that I know now that I didn't know then, which I wish I'd known so I could go to Ilene and go, "Well, can we have Angelica in the sling and trying to go to the bathroom?" This is the reality, you know? [Both laugh] The only thing that was problematic was that I couldn't carry Olivia in the same way that I would carry her if I wasn't pregnant. I had to protect my own baby.

Your own daughter is just a few months old. Are you getting any sleep at this point?

Yeah, we slept so well last night, I couldn't believe it. It was really nice. But we've had our moments in the trenches. But you get through it, and it's fine.

I was delighted that in one scene, Pam Grier was kneeling down and playing with Angelica and calling her "Little Baby Foxy Brown."

I know.

I wonder what it's been like for you--the Yalie--and Pam--the original Foxy Brown--to work together.

Pam just dives into anything, without any kind of judgment and with a lot of joy. She's lived such an extraordinary life already that her very existence is an inspiration, and the fact that she's such a joyous, intelligent, accomplished human being is just icing on the cake.

What's it been like to play sisters?

I really have a kinship with Pam, and I don't know why, because we didn't know each other before. But even from the first scene that we really did together, it was clear we had a really deep connection. Because originally we weren't supposed to be siblings. She was [a character called] the Captain--she was just a friend of mine. And that character wasn't working so well in the pilot. She and I had a scene together--Bette and the Captain had a scene together--and we played it like we were sisters, and so they ended up changing her part to be my half sister. And that's where it felt really well. It's not something that I have to take a lot of effort to manufacture.

You've often spoken about being biracial, and it plays so well that you and Pam represent different parts of the racial experience, for lack of a better term.

I'm really pleased that that's part of the show. One of the themes is otherness, period, in its many forms. And I think that Ilene is trying to address that in different ways.

In November 2004, when you were honored by the entertainment networking organization POWER UP, you delivered an amazing speech about why it's important to you to be on The L Word. I had the sense that you had written every word yourself and that you meant them all.

Oh, my God, yeah, I was so nervous, but that was fun. I said to myself, What am I gonna say? What do you say? And then you just have to say what you think or what you feel and hope that gets across.

You read a quote in that speech: "It has been said that history is written by the victors." Then you added, "I take this to mean that we can make ourselves victorious by writing and then rewriting our own stories." Is the show living up to your expectations?

In that regard, I think so. I just think it's so important for everyone to tell their story, especially any group that has been marginalized in any way, so that hopefully one day in the future there will be no center of the circle--that the center will be everywhere in the circle. No one will have to sit on the circumference in any way.

You also talked about having your mother tell you stories when you were little and about not realizing yet that you were supposed to be the "insane, oversexed, tragic mulatto gal."

I didn't know about this whole mythology.

Certainly in American movies the biracial part has often been the tragic part--the gay part too for that matter. Maybe that's something we're finally getting away from.

Well, the point is that there's tragedy in every group. I feel like I did my ode to the tragic mulatto gal with Devil in a Blue Dress. But I really didn't even learn about that mythology until I was deep into college. So I was already set as to who I identified with and who I was. And truly, I identified much more with Greek mythology than anything.

When you were little and you were hearing those stories, did you see yourself as one of the gods or the goddesses in particular?

Oh, yeah, there were gods that I identified with. I would pray to gods for tests!

I'm glad you mentioned Devil in a Blue Dress. You so got the '40s feel, even that sort of plummy middle-America diction.

I feel very comfortable in the '40s, actually. I had done Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle prior to Devil in a Blue Dress, and I had recorded several people who had lived through the '40s. And I spent quite a bit of time in New Orleans, which is where that character was supposed to be from.

You've said that you cherish being able to ride the subway and not having people come up to you. Can you still, or has The L Word taken that away from you?

Well, frankly, I haven't been to New York that often lately. But I don't go out very much. I don't go to parties very much or at all, unless it's for work. I really like being by myself or with my family or with my dogs. I don't go out very much.

I know you like to protect your privacy, but here's a nonoffensive pop question I could ask you: What kind of dogs do you have?

Two big dogs, two mutts.

What're their names?

You know, I'm such a weirdo, I never give out the names of my dogs.

Seriously?

Seriously. I know, it's insane. I'm just very protective of my family, and the dogs are definitely part of the family.

[Laughs] I don't know a lesbian who's gonna argue with you there! I was at the L Word premiere last year in Los Angeles, and some of the other members of the cast were out boogying with the crowd. You were a little more reticent. Is that because you've been around the fame block a little more? Flashdance seems like the sort of role that would have inspired stalkers even.

I don't know. When I go to those parties or to a premiere, to me, yes, it is a celebration of a film or the work, but it's also ... work. I'm going to work. I don't normally hang out in a gown and makeup. And there's part of me that's very shy, and I don't like to be in large crowds of people that I don't know. I just don't feel very comfortable. Again, I'm not much of a party person. But I like smaller things, like a small dinner party or a smaller group.

I see.

But I go and do the premieres and meet people, and it's exciting to see how much the show means to people. That I really, really love. The appreciation is on a whole different level. It gives me and the cast and the crew a sense of agency we wouldn't necessarily have on another project.

Do you remember one encounter that hit home for you?

It's not so much even one person. There are certain letters that you get where people have decided to come out because of the show, and [they write] that there were no dire consequences for them coming out. That's really, really exciting, to know that you're part of a project that advocated such change in someone's life. And where there's that one person, there are other people the show has helped in some way. Even if everybody's hair is perfect, even if the story lines are not what everyone would like them to be, still there is some kind of energy toward change inherent in the show.

For that matter, it's important for you to hear that many lesbians are thrilled to see a little glamour in connection with our lives. I hope you hear from that constituency also.

Yeah, I do, and frankly, it doesn't bother me if people criticize the show in terms of what people look like or what people wear. I mean, I think it's exciting. It's much more interesting than to have everybody be mute and just accept things across the board that they don't like. That's what part of being a democracy is about.

Or used to be.

Or used to be, anyway. In fact, it was really weird when the show came out and there was no upheaval at all. The show was just completely accepted--there were no church groups complaining, there was no Bill O'Reilly advocating [against] the show.

Too entertaining. [Laughs]

Yeah, I know--it was really interesting. So finally in Australia there was some kind of boycott of the show by some group, and we were all thrilled. [Anne laughs] "Finally! My God! We upset somebody--it's so exciting!"

As somebody who's biracial and feels that that's important to have that part of your identity recognized, you've had ...

Well, it's funny--it's not so important to me to have that part of me recognized, because I am who I am and I fully accept and enjoy who I am, but it was important to me to have that represented for a young girl who perhaps hadn't seen herself represented before.

As with many lesbians, not everybody understands who you are at first glance. And so you've probably had something like a coming-out experience. Is it important for people to be "out"?

Early on in my life I accepted who I was and was excited by who I was, and my relationship to myself was of paramount importance. So I wasn't that interested in proclaiming to the world, "This is who I am," because it's like this Rashomon experience--you can't really tell somebody who you are.

They can only know who they think you are.

Exactly. And it wasn't that important to me. I think that might also be part of being an actor because I'm playing different people all the time. As long as I know who I am, what other people think of me is totally irrelevant.

Under those criteria that you're just outlining, is it important for people who are gay or bisexual to come out?

I think it's just important to live your life as honestly as you possibly can. And if that, for someone, means that they want to proclaim who they are from every mountaintop, then that's what they should do. And I think the danger is when you hide who you are, when you feel that you need to hide it--that, I think, is terrifying and utterly self-destructive. For anyone.

I saw your photographs for the first time in The Anniversary Party. And I've seen you quoted as saying that had you not been an actor, you might've been a photojournalist. Are you still able to take photographs? Do you have time to do that?

[Laughs] Not right now--with a newborn, I don't. But yeah, I have been. I take pictures at work. Or when we go to a photo shoot or something, sometimes I'll take pictures of the other women in the show.

You are probably the best actor in sex scenes that I've ever seen.

Thank you so much!

I don't even know if there's a point in asking you how you do it.

I try to approach the scenes as just scenes--"OK, what part of the story are we telling, and how do I continue telling that story through this scene and not just take it as a sex scene?" And everything is choreographed completely. It's like a dance number, and the art of it is making it all seem like it's seamless and one thing.

Any scenes stand out in particular?

Well, besides the one in the pilot, I like the scene with the twink in [director] Lisa Cholodenko's episode from the second season. I didn't know what a twink was: I was going, "Ilene, what's a twink? Is that like a part of a Twinkie?" I think what made me happy about that scene was trying to figure out what really is Bette's relationship to this woman she's just picked up and realizing that she doesn't want to look the woman in the eye.

When your daughter grows up, what are you going to tell her about what her mommy did on TV?

Well, Laurel and I were joking--our daughters are gonna grow up and one of 'em's gonna say, "Hey, I saw my mommy kissing your mommy! What's up with that?" [Anne laughs] What am I gonna say about the show? Gosh, I don't know--that I was really fortunate to take part in this project that meant a lot to a lot of people and that I got to play a really wonderful, complex character and how lucky was she to be able to grow up with this group of women who are all her aunties in absentia.

Absolutely.

I have one thing to say before I get off the phone. I am so pleased that people really respond to the show, and I realize that it sort of has this cult aspect where people will go to each other's houses to watch the show. But in order for Showtime to realize truly how popular this show is, people need to get Showtime. Because our numbers are smaller than the reality, I think, I would propose that people get Showtime and rotate the houses where they go to watch. I think it would be enormously helpful for the longevity of the show.

Anything else you want to say, Jennifer?

I'm just incredibly grateful to our fans. I can't even begin to tell you--I'm incredibly grateful to our fans for their support and for their criticism. I'm very grateful.

RELATED ARTICLE: Burning questions.

What's up with that theme song? Why Jenny's breakdown? Who decided Marina had to go? Series creator Ilene Chaiken takes a few of our toughest L Word questions.

Across the country, L Word fans are gathering to watch 12 new episodes in the lives of our favorite Left Coast lesbians. But everybody's got questions. On a sunny day in West Hollywood, creator and executive producer Ilene Chaiken took some frank questions.

You've decided to deal more directly with gender this year. Tell me how you found your androgynous new cast member, Daniela Sea.

Showtime did a casting search for us. But at the very last minute, my colleague Elizabeth Ziff said, "Have you seen Daniela's tape?" Daniela was in New York [and had made] a homemade audition tape. I looked at it; I immediately got on the phone to Daniela and said, "Would you fly yourself out to L.A. to audition for us tomorrow?" And for me, there was no contest between her and anybody else. She's incredibly compelling.

Let's talk about season 2. Your ratings were down a little last year, yes?

I don't know. I don't follow numbers. Our DVD sales are through the roof. I also think--and I'm getting a lot of feedback to support this--that our third season is far and away better than anything we've done.

I know there are questions that the fans would want to ask you. The character of Jenny--what was up with her last year?

You know what? I'm well aware of the responses to Jenny. I love the character, and I love that people are passionate about her. I know that there are a lot of people who just cant stand her. And that's why it's so important to have that character in the mix.

I think people perhaps didn't understand Jenny's dream sequences.

The dream sequences [were] one of the things that we tried in season 2 that wasn't ultimately successful. It was meant to be a portrayal of Jenny's interior landscape both in terms of her coming to grips with the memory of trauma and also writing about it.

Where do we find Jenny this season?

We find Jenny coming together. I predict this--I could be totally wrong--that Jenny will be more likable and accessible to the audience, perhaps, this year than she ever has been. She's recovering.

We still don't know what happened to her, do we?

Well, we know that it was an incident of sexual abuse. I had not wanted to be more explicit about it than that--one, because memory of trauma is very strange. Who knows accurately what happened to Jenny? Jenny doesn't necessarily even know. Secondly, I really am loath to portray rape as a filmmaker. I think that it's really hard to do it without somehow becoming complicit and exploitative. And so as much as it's important to talk about it, I wanted to be vague and not milk it.

The character of Mark, the videographer who was secretly filming in the women's bedrooms--I gather that members of the audience felt that Mark was there so men would watch.

I don't think that that character was necessarily inviting to men. It's not exactly a flattering portrait of the male gaze. That is in part what it was about--the ways men look at women and especially lesbians.

The lesbians let him stick around an awfully long time.

Yeah, they were maybe a little too nice to him.

The first season was so tight. Did you as a writer feel that the plots last season were not as embedded in the lives of the characters?

The third season is tight in the way that the first season was.

What accounts for the difference?

So many things. In some ways it's simply something that you can't control. We always set out to do our best work, and sometimes it's great, and sometimes it's less good. I came away from it saying, you know, I'd like to get back to some of the things that really, really work.

Tell me what you thought you'd like to get back to.

The things that we consciously directed ourselves back to were much more character-oriented storytelling--stuff that's truly about relationships and character. And I also thought that the second season lacked some of the humor. We actually like ourselves when we're funny from time to time.

A big influence last year was the band Betty.

They weren't a big influence. They were in the show a couple of times.

They wrote the new theme. I mean, there are folks who kind of love to hate the theme song--

Definitely, the theme song has its detractors. I think that by the end of season 3, it will simply be the L Word theme song--love it or hate it. I'm loath to talk about all the Betty controversy. Ultimately, they're performers whom I like, and they were on the show. And Elizabeth Ziff [of Betty] actually is an important collaborator for me--

You and Elizabeth Ziff are a couple, are you not?

No, we're not a couple. We're really good friends, but much more importantly we're collaborators. I elevated her to a producer because she's such a good collaborator for me. To the extent that our third season is way better, she contributed a lot.

Everybody wants to know: Is Marina ever coming back?

[Laughs] People still want to know that?

Yeah.

I could say for the record that Marina is not ever coming back. But there will be a new character introduced in the last episode of our third season who's all that and more.

That is hard to imagine.

Imagine it.

Everyone heard that Karina Lombard, who played Marina, was very difficult.

You know, it's not an appropriate thing to talk about. Karina is a lovely girl, a good actor. She was fabulous on the show, she's stunningly beautiful, and for many, many reasons we chose not to go forward together.

You won't give me any tidbit, right? About why this character, who was so sexy to so many people, why she had to go?

It didn't have to do with her performance. I think that she did a wonderful job with her character. Initially, as conceived, that character was in service of Jenny's story, and I had always thought that we would be finished with the character when we finished that story--that, coupled with the fact that our interests did not converge. Karina wanted entirely different things from her character and her story than we did. And unfortunately, in the world of TV series producing, it's not the actor who gets to say what's going to happen to her character.

I think it must be very difficult to find someone who's powerful enough to be a foil for Jenny.

Absolutely. [Jenny and Marina] were a hot, hot couple. And I saw something happen when I was directing our last episode that was evocative of that but truly more interesting. So I'm hopeful that it can reignite everybody's passion. I'm glad that Marina's memory still holds that mojo for a lot of people, and I think we'll top it yet.

--Anne Stockwell