Tammy Lynn Michaels Committed to love: NetworkTV's only out lesbian actor--on NBC's Committed--talks frankly about being mistaken for straight, the teacher who saved her life, and what she's learned about herself through Melissa's difficult triumph over cancer.

Were standing in the bedroom of Tammy Lynn Michaels and Melissa Etheridge. "This is where it all happened," Michaels is saying. She gestures to one side of the comfy king-size bed in the master suite of their new house in a serene, ranch-like west Los Angeles neighborhood. "We had a microphone stand right there with the chemo chipping from it."

It's impossible to imagine what Etheridge went through in this room just weeks earlier. But it's equally impossible to imagine how Michaels held her family together through such an overwhelming crisis at the same time she was costarring on what became one of the few network success stories of 2005, the NBC sitcom Committed. It's been a year of the highest highs and lowest lows for Michaels, of private tears and studio audience laughter, sometimes on the same day.

Only now, just days before Etheridge's triumphant return to performing on the Grammy Awards, is the family--which also includes two young children from Etheridge's previous relationship--settling back into a sense of normality. Normal, that is, except for the fact that Melissa's head is shaved and she'll soon head off for a radiation appointment while Tammy--dressed in a blue cardigan with cannabis leaves on the buttons, a recent gift from Melissa--shares a blooper reel from Committed.

The outtakes prove that Michaels is in her element in this nervy comedy built around the offbeat romance between slightly damaged New Yorkers Marni and Nate. Michaels plays Marni's best friend, Tess, the salty live-in nanny from across the hall. As in the WB's Popular (1999-2001), Michaels's classically feminine beauty acts as foil to her character's biting personality. "Early on, I saw how quickly a girl can get pigeonholed into the 'blond-haired, blue-eyed girlfriend' or 'ingenue sweetheart,'" Michaels says. "I don't find much interest in [that kind of role]--unless she's really, really funny."

Committed is really funny, although some critics have been put off by the show's matter-of-fact outlandishness: the retired clown (Tom Poston) who lives in Marni's closet; her creepy black paraplegic pal; the gags about Nate's obsessive-compulsive personality. Thirteen episodes have been taped so far, and the ratings bode well for a second season. By the time the show wrapped, in mid November, Michaels had a new full-time commitment: Helping Etheridge through two hellish months of chemotherapy, following her early October lumpectomy for breast cancer. But today Etheridge is back on her feet, bald and ballsy, asking me to rub her shaved head and settling in to work on a jigsaw puzzle just a doorway away from where Michaels sits down for her first solo Advocate interview.

When you spoke to The Advocate in 2003, you said you'd "rather make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches" than hit your mark as an actress. Would you still?

Hmm. Well, now I look at it as, I just do both. I finally have a job that I enjoy enough to squeeze in amongst the peanut butter and jelly. I wouldn't want to choose one or the other

Tell me how you came to commit to Committed.

I had gone to my agent and said, "I'm not really interested in leaving my house right now for parts I'm not interested in or things I don't think are funny. Just let me go for a year. I'm gonna do the housewife thing." Melissa had a big tour coming up, and so I just wanted to be available at home. And about a month later, she sent me the [script for Committed], and I laughed out loud.

So did the show's creators, Eileen Heisler and DeAnn Heline, have to sell you on the show?

No, not at all. They didn't have to convince me. We all clicked instantly, we all fell in love instantly, and I felt supported by them immediately. I made a dyke joke in my first couple of auditions just to be like, "Are you guys sure you know what you're signing up for?" And they love every part of what I bring to the table. That's amazing.

What did you like about the script?

I liked the really dark, crunchy humor. I liked that the wacky people were suddenly in the center, and it was the normal people [who were sidekicks], as opposed to other sitcoms, which are usually vice versa. I liked everything about it--and the clown in the closet? Are you kidding me? Come on! Somebody's in the closet, I gotta go!

Your character, Tess, is like the younger, hipper Ethel to Marni's Lucy--she's a little doubtful, but still ready for an adventure with her crazy best friend.

Yeah. I like that description. The formula of sitcoms, according to Tammy Lynn Michaels, is, you've gotta have a balance. You've gotta have things smack up against each other. But I gotta tell you, I don't function as though Tess is normal and Marni's weird. I'm still trying to figure Tess out.

Do you think about what it means to other gay people for you to be out and on a network sitcom?

Oh, yeah. It's funny--I thought of The Advocate and Out [when I was auditioning for the show]. I thought of our whole community. I was able to walk up and down the halls of NBC the days of my screen tests and I looked at the pictures of Will & Grace on the walls and I was like, OK, is NBC gonna put their money where their mouth is? Are you gonna hire a gay actress? Let's see. And now if you go to NBC.com, they've got that I'm married to Melissa Etheridge--that I reside with my "singer-songwriter wife."

The last few months must have been very difficult. What strength do you fall back on inside yourself to get through that?

[Pause] God--I didn't fall back. I loved Melissa so much, it pulled me through. Do you know what I mean? I didn't think about it--I went on automatic pilot. When you see this soul that is such a huge piece of you go down, it's almost like hosing a part of your arm. It's survival. You do anything you can to get it back on and back to where it needs to go.

How quickly did everything change?

The world found out two hours after we did. Yeah. God bless her, Melissa found the lump and came right home off the tour and told me, and I said, "You're not finishing that tour, because if it's cancer, you have to get that taken care of." But neither of us really believed it. And so we spent five days going to doctors, to the mammogram, to the sonogram, to the biopsy--we spent four days, and then we got the call from the doctor [with the cancer diagnosis]. She was supposed to go get on a plane two hours later, and she said, "Well, I have to cancel my concerts, and if I cancel all my concerts, I have to give a reason why." So we called our moms and then we did that [public statement]. So we didn't have any time. The statement went out one day, and 36 hours later she was in surgery. It was fast. It was fast. It's been like whiplash for months.

It is difficult for your emotions just catch up to where you are?

Mmm-hmm. It was months of emotions finally lapping up to the shore, you know what I mean? The diagnosis went into the pond and the ripples started going. But by the time the ripples are going, you're already on your way to the hospital and you're getting the nurses set up for the home care and you're setting up the microphone stand as an IV stand--and you don't think about it.

Because there's so much to do.

There's so much to do. And so sometimes, when you're in step 5 or 6, the emotions of step 1 are just catching up to you. That was interesting.

Was there a point at which everything just caught up to you?

Yeah, I think when I shaved her head. That was probably the one. [That was] after the first [chemo] treatment-maybe a month, six weeks after the diagnosis. We'd gone through all these steps and we'd talked about it and all that, but then when you're sitting there and her head's in your lap ... It's like, you're shaving your legs one minute and then shaving your soul mate's head the next. That was wacky.

When you start talking about the realities of relationships and the commitments they take, it's so not about sex. Whatever people may say, being in a committed gay couple is not about the sex.

Let me tell you: You walk your soul mate through chemo, sex is not there. [Laughs] It's not about sex. That's what I was thinking about the other day--as we're going through all this stuff, and you've got someone so close to death. Chemotherapy is a poison that drips into your body. When all this shit came down, interestingly enough, I didn't care who recognized [our marriage] or not. I went, "All that really matters is this--she and I. Take your taxes, take your recognition, take your Bible, take your churches, take whatever you want, because in the long run, it's she and I, and you can't stop it. Call it what you want."

That's marriage.

That is a marriage. Yeah. [When your partner is on chemo,] you've gotta get them their medicine, you've gotta get them their food. If they're vomiting, either you gotta get them to the toilet or you gotta get them a bucket. If they're hot, if they're cold--it is the most vulnerable, fragile state of the soul, to just be in existence in a body that's a mess. And Melissa, I feel, handed me her body throughout chemotherapy, and I just took care of it. Because you know what? I know that if I ever go through anything, if I ever need Melissa, she would do that for me. No hesitation, no question.

We all know that the crucial part of recovery and regaining health isn't just chemical, it's emotional. You have to show her the light at the end of that tunnel.

You gotta remind 'em. And we took turns. Sometimes she reminded me, sometimes I reminded her. Sometimes we just hugged each other and waited.

I was listening to Lucky on my way here, and "This Moment"--

Oh, my God! Isn't that crazy?

"You and I can stay here in this moment / Let the world fade away / I just want to stay with you.... / Tell the angels they'll just have to wait."

I listened to that one time on my way to work, and she was so sick and I really missed her. There were days that she just couldn't talk all day.

So even when she's there, you still miss her.

Exactly. And when I was listening to "This Moment," I was like, Look what my sweetheart did for me. She wrote this song just in time for me to have it. Isn't that weird?

There's another song on Lucky I wanted to ask you about: "Secret Agent." Because you don't fulfill a lesbian stereotype, do you feel like a secret agent?

I did for a while. So many people have a hard time believing I'm gay. Even back in my bartending days, I always had the straight guys hitting on me, telling me I just hadn't met the tight guy yet.

You bartended in straight bars?

I did! I bartended in straight and in gay places. Real high-end straight places.

And at what point in a high-end straight place does the bartender tell the customer that she's gay?

When he says, "Can I have your phone number?"

We last talked at the end of 2003, which was such a remarkable year for progress in gay rights. Politics aside, how does all that's happened in the past year impact you and your family?

Oh, you know, all of the politics impact our family. There are so many ridiculous things that are simply hard to take care of and cost extra money because we're not recognized as a couple by the government. But let me tell you, we pay millions in taxes. Millions in taxes. But we are not gonna get recognized.

So what do you think when politicians get up and say, "I don't think American taxpayer money should go to--"

You know what? I would like for myself and for Elton John and for Ellen and Rosie--I want all of us homos to take our Monopoly millions and pull it out. That's a pretty little penny. That's a pretty little penny for us to be giving the United States. But we can't get first-class citizen respect back.

The last time we heard this complaint about "taxpayer money" was with the whole Postcards From Buster controversy.

Etheridge [piping up from the next room]: Oh, yeah. Didn't we get something that said, "Watch Buster, 'cause he's going to go--"

Michaels:--to a same-sex home.

The families on that show reminded me of your family. And I think that's what they found so threatening: It all seemed so normal.

Etheridge: [Buster should] come to our house!

Talking about children and growing up: You had a really difficult time as a teenager, not fitting in. You had a lot of bad feelings about yourself. BUt at some point you figured you needed to get your act together and get out of there. What do you think made the difference for you?

I had a remarkable woman in my life--she was a teacher. She loved me. I met her in eighth grade, and she is what I call an enlightened witness. She was able to befriend me; she saw the pain that I was in; she saw the environment I was coming from. She witnessed it--she didn't judge it; she didn't shame me for it. She invited me into her home; she took me to auditions; she taught me that happiness is a choice. She kept saying, "You're so talented, Tammy, you're so talented." She was the one voice that was there every fucking day. Her name is Marcie, and she changed my life. I just talked to her a couple of days ago.

That's always the question that I ask myself--

Why did you and I get out and end up with what we have? I don't know--I think, to be honest, sometimes people just need to quit whining and bitching, and make a change in their life. And If you really want a difference in the gay and lesbian community, get up and make one. Do something.

That could also be applied to where we are now in our political battle--that mix of reaching out to help someone and also deciding you have to make the change yourself.

Yeah. I think kindness is lacking in the world right now. I used to think that part of politics or a wing of politics was a little bit of kindness that we extended, and to whom we extend the kindness. And I just don't see much kindness happening in politics anymore. It's more just a battle of money and oil and land and whose stake is where.

What can we do to help change that?

I think education is important. Education beyond high school. I can't tell you how much I learned in the first year, the first 365 days that I lived outside Lafayette, Ind. That was education--the education when you go to a big town and you see different people making different choices and leading vein successful lives, not at all looking anything like yours. But they're still good people.

What do you hear from your family in Indiana about the past year?

Well, you know, honestly--in one breath, they want free tickets [to Melissa's concerts], and in the other breath, they're bitching that they've gotta look at all the faggots and lezzies make out. I'm still baffled, when I go back to the "flyover" states, at the amount of judgment and criticism that homosexuals receive. And every time I go back home and visit, I send out prayers for all the homosexuals who live there on a daily basis. And it's just part of their life. I don't know how they do it. I feel like you and I, we get spoiled--we live here in L.A. and New York, we can walk around and hold hands with our lovers. But how do you bring New York to [Indiana]?

That's where you come in. You're on television.

0h! Really? Yeah, maybe. Maybe.

Are you optimistic?

How long did it take them to apologize to Galileo? [Laughs] I just keep going, Rosa Parks didn't give up her seat, and Galileo got the apology. We're going to be fine.

And on the personal level, with you and Melissa--

Melissa and I are still counting all the blessings that have actually come through this [experience]. It was the wackiest, most thorough cleaning of our lives we've ever had, but such a blessing. Such a blessing, I'm telling you. If anybody you ever love gets diagnosed with cancer, (a) they're going to be fine, and (b) there's a wonderful lesson in there for that person and maybe for you too. I'm telling you right now. It's amazing.