by Gretchen Lee (source)

The cliffhanger at the end of The L Word’s first season left us with a lot of tantalizing questions and several long months to chew on them. Can Tina ever forgive Bette for fooling around? Can Marina go it alone at the café? Will the ever-nimble Shane recover from that dangerous-older-woman thing? Why can’t Jenny ever figure out what’s going on? And, most exciting of all, will Alice really find true love in the last place she ever thought she’d find it — with her best friend, Dana?

After the bickering that characterized their relationship throughout the first season, it appears that Alice and Dana are destined to get even closer in the second. And that comes as no surprise to the women behind the roles: Leisha Hailey, an out lesbian who plays bisexual journalist Alice Pieszecki, and Erin Daniels, a straight woman who plays newly out tennis pro Dana Fairbanks.

“Obviously, there’s chemistry between Alice and Dana,” says Daniels. “I mean, they’re constantly fighting and they’re best friends. Of course they want to jump each other’s bones! But, was it going to happen? Were they going to take a chance? That’s the real question. Because, if it doesn’t work out, you’re going to lose your best friend.”

Hailed as the first lesbian drama on television, The L Word appears to have achieved crossover status by focusing less on “lesbian issues” per se.

“People have this perception of a gay lifestyle — that it’s so different, when really it’s exactly the same,” Hailey says. “Problems at work. Problems at home. Jealousy. It runs the gamut. But I think maybe that’s why this show is a hit: People identify with it regardless.”

“Everyone goes through their 20s trying to figure out who they are,” Daniels adds. “Sexuality included. Whether you’re gay or straight or wherever you fall on the Kinsey scale.”

Identity Theory

In a way, The L Word is a Go Fish for the current era. The iconic indie film made co-writers Rose Troche and Guinevere Turner famous in the mid-1990s because it portrayed lesbians living the whole of their lives — not just what it meant to be queer, but what it meant to be a person looking for love.

“It was just amazing to finally see yourself represented,” Hailey says. “That’s why I carry so much pride about being on this show. I’m excited to be a part of it because I know how big it was for me.”

“I had a huge crush on Guinevere [Turner],” Hailey recalls, laughing about the first time she saw Go Fish at home on video in her New York apartment. Coming full circle, Turner, who played the romantic lead in Go Fish, is now a writer for The L Word and was cast opposite Hailey in several L Word episodes as Alice’s cheating, manipulative, on-again, off-again lover Gabby Deveaux. Troche, of course, directed Go Fish and has directed episodes of The L Word.

But the first lesbian movie Hailey ever saw was the sultry Desert Hearts, based on the classic Jane Rule novel. “I rented it with my best friend, in New York, and it was a big event for an evening,” she recalls. “We went out and got ice cream and we were, like, We’re going to watch this show! The movie had a huge impact on me. It was the first time that I ever saw two women together. It just opened my world.”

It was inevitable that The L Word would highlight the issues that surround coming out, and that’s certainly been a major theme for Daniels’ uptight, Waspy character, Dana. A lot was at stake for Dana, including her relationship with her family and her viability as a commercial spokesperson. Daniels got some mighty praise for her portrayal from none other than Martina Navratilova, a professional tennis player who struggled in real life with coming out in the public eye.

“She was very complimentary,” says Daniels, who met the tennis great at a fund-raiser for the Rainbow Foundation, which Navratilova endorses. “She gave me a tennis racket that she had played with. She wanted me to go play with it! I asked her to sign it instead. We actually tried to get her on the show during the second season, but she wasn’t available. She wants to do it, so we’re hoping maybe for the third season.”

Hailey, the only out lesbian in the cast, has her own coming-out story, albeit a fairly tame one. Though she had boyfriends in high school, she also developed a crush on her best friend, a girl.

“Our relationship just got really, really close, to the point where I started having feelings for her that I didn’t understand,” she says. At the time, her crush wasn’t something she identified as gay.

“Which is odd, because my mom’s best friend is a lesbian,” Hailey says. “Growing up, she was my ‘aunt,’ and she always had her girlfriends around. I was around gay people and my drama teacher was, and still is, a really good friend of my parents.

“But when I moved to New York right after high school, I started understanding what it meant, because the feelings never really went away,” she says. “Then I started going to gay bars, but I’d go in secret. I’d go by myself after school. And I was sort of discovering this life by myself.”

Finally, she told her parents. “I was scared, even though they’re probably the most open, loving people on the planet,” she says, laughing now. “It was still scary to think that I might be disappointing someone or hurting them.”

Hailey’s folks were fine with it, and they remain close. Her parents still live in Nebraska, where Hailey usually spends Christmas, and even invite friends over to watch The L Word with them.

“They have, like, a night,” Hailey says. “The sex scenes are a little embarrassing for me. But I never had anxiety about what they’d think about the show.”

Social Insecurity

Plenty of characters on The L Word deal with insecurity, but Daniels says long before she was even hired, she was “completely intimidated” by Hailey at auditions for the show.

“She looked so tough and edgy, but kind of pretty and cute, and she was dressed immaculately. I thought, Oh my god, this woman — I’m so not even remotely cool enough to talk with her.”

Hailey had her own set of insecurities to deal with that day. She’d been talking with director Rose Troche in a private meeting before going in to audition for the network brass. “Rose intimidated me, like oh, man,” she says. “At the end of our meeting, she said, ‘I just have to tell you one thing.’ And I was like, ‘What?’ She said, ‘I think you should go home and change.’ Because I had on, like, the craziest outfit. I had on this bright red corduroy jacket and these jeans with embroidery all over them. It was, you know, how I normally dress. And she thought maybe I should play it down.”

With less than an hour to spare, Hailey rushed home and came back in a black button-up top and black slacks. “Completely conservative,” she says. “Which is funny, because it’s so not Alice.”

Both Hailey and Daniels had to audition multiple times before landing their respective parts. Daniels read first for the parts of Alice and powerhouse Bette before reading (twice) for the part of Dana. Hailey tested originally for the part of lothario Shane.

“But it came down to me and Kate [Moennig],” explains Hailey. “And of course Kate got it, because she really is Shane!”

The second time Hailey and Daniels met, the scene was considerably more relaxed.

“We were headed up to Vancouver for the pilot,” Daniels says. “We hit it off instantly, and we sat next to each other on the plane and just talked the whole way.”

Their friendship developed throughout the first season over the course of many late-night dinners with cast mates. And it continued through the second season, with Hailey and Daniels frequently joining each other for dinner during the week.

“We’d work a lot together, so we’d be finishing up at the same time, or else we’d be off work when everybody else was working,” Daniels explains. “It would always be, ‘OK, Leish, where are we going for dinner?’ Like an old married couple.” On the weekends, the two became spa buddies, teaming up for the couples’ manicure-pedicure package at a local day spa.

Rocker-girl Hailey, who sported pink hair through much of the 1990s as frontwoman for the Murmurs, says that of late she has “learned a lot about dressing really girlie” — a hazard, perhaps, of spending so much time with her designer-clothing-clad co-stars.

“Everyone is very high-fashion here,” she says. “Now my closet is full of high heels. We shop all the time. That’s all we ever do. In Vancouver and L.A. Kate and I go to thrift shops a lot — that’s our special thing.” Even Mia Kirshner (who plays ingénue Jenny) has embarked on excursions for expensive designer duds with Hailey.

No doubt Hailey also gets wardrobe advice from current girlfriend Nina Garduno, a fashion designer, L Word stylist and executive at the hip clothier Fred Segal in Hollywood. Perhaps it’s because of the intensity of her very public previous relationship with singer-songwriter k.d. lang that she will now say only, “I’m very committed and in love,” when asked about Garduno. “I’m definitely more of a private person,” she says.

Daniels, at the moment, is single, straight and an incorrigible flirt. (“But I think pretty much every girl who has gone to college has kissed another girl,” she says coquettishly, when asked whether she’d had occasion before The L Word to kiss a girl.) She says that she used to worry about admitting to reporters that she’s straight, but now feels more comfortable talking about it.

“When I first was faced with doing press for the show, the girls and I were like, ‘What are we going to say? Are we going to alienate people if we say we’re straight?’” Daniels says. “And I don’t want to alienate anyone. I don’t want anyone to dislike me because I’m not gay. But I think that would be selling the audience very short, underestimating their intelligence. So, you know, this is who I am, and I love my job, and I’m proud of my character and I love this show. Regardless of who I sleep with.”

What’s Next

Now on break from taping The L Word, Hailey says she hopes to spend some time songwriting. “I’m getting the itch,” she explains. But this time, it will be Hailey belting out the tunes alone, without college friend and former Murmurs bandmate Heather Grody.

“We’re still best friends,” Hailey says. “I’m sure we’ll perform again someday. But I’m actually excited to see what maybe I can do on my own.”

Hailey will also be working with Logo, MTV’s new gay network, on developing a documentary on teens with gay parents for the new series Logo Lens (e-mail teenswithgayfamilies@hotmail.com if you’d like your family to be on the show).

Daniels, who hopes to produce and direct her own work, has applied to the directing program at the prestigious American Film Institute. She wants to produce projects that are “provocative, very intelligent and probably funny,” she says. “I think life is far too funny to be ignored.”

In the meantime, she can hone her sense of humor by getting accustomed to being recognized in public — something that’s happening more often these days.

“The first time I got recognized for the show, I was at the grocery store,” she says. (For the record, Daniels, who calls herself a “macaroni-and-cheese kind of girl,” shops at a no-frills Ralph’s near her home.)

“I think it’s the same grocery store where Eric McCormack shops. It’s where all the straight people who play gay on TV shop,” she quips. “The checkout clerk, a young girl, recognized me, and she went nuts. She called her friends over the aisle, and it was so unnerving. I turned beet red. It was so embarrassing, and I was getting progressively more embarrassed, because the more I blushed, the more embarrassed I got.

“But she was very sweet,” Daniels says of the clerk, whom she now waves to when she shops. “She said, ‘Finally, there’s a show for us!’”

Little Treats

While they’re waiting to be discovered, many actors fantasize about what they’ll buy once they really make it big. Some dream of living large, imagining they’ll buy a private island, like Brando had, or handfuls of sparkling diamonds, like Elizabeth Taylor.

Of course, Leisha Hailey and Erin Daniels have splurged, too, since landing lead roles on Showtime’s hit series The L Word. But they’ve chosen more simple pleasures for themselves — nothing splashy for these two down-to-earth Midwestern girls. (Hailey hails from Bellevue, Nebraska; Daniels, from St. Louis.)

When she got her first fat check, Daniels says, she shelled out for a brand new stereo.

“It’s the first nice stereo that I’ve ever had,” she says. “I used to buy those mini stereos that always break about two years after you get them. I decided it was time to have a real stereo. I’m old enough. I have a house. So I bought a stereo, a surround sound.”

Hailey, ever the practical lesbian, took her hard-won cash and bought — you guessed it — a pickup truck.

“I drove old cars for so long,” she laments. “And then I got a car that actually worked when I got in it. It’s the first thing I bought on my own. You know, an adult thing to do. It just felt great — liberating.”

Hear her roar.