When “The L Word” debuted on Showtime in January 2004, gays and lesbians couldn’t serve openly in the military, employees could be fired for being gay in most of the country and no state had yet begun issuing same-sex marriage licenses. To say a series about glamorous and successful Los Angeles lesbians was groundbreaking at the time would be, inarguably, an understatement.
The show’s revolutionary nature is, in part, why it has remained so culturally relevant and iconic more than two decades after its premiere. And this, in turn, is why two of its biggest stars — Leisha Hailey and Kate Moennig — decided to undertake a joint memoir, “So Gay for You,” released Tuesday.
“We wanted to give some ‘L Word’ real-life experiences that we had on the show, because we’ve been asked for the last 20-plus years, so we were like, ‘Let’s just tell everyone what that show was like for us,’” Hailey told NBC News in an interview with Moennig ahead of the book’s release.
Hailey, 53, and Moennig, 47, both had some level of success prior to “The L Word,” but neither was where they wanted to be in their career before getting asked to audition for a show then titled “Earthlings” back in the early aughts. In fact, Hailey was working at a sunglasses store in Los Angeles at the time, while Moennig had a bartending job lined up in New York.
The two first met in 2002 on the 14th floor of a corporate office in L.A. to audition for the role of Shane McCutcheon, described as a “womanizing serial monogamist.” Less than two weeks later, Moennig was offered the part.
“I’ll never forget answering the phone and hearing my manager and agent on the line. Relief washed over me: I not only had a job, but one I actually wanted. I always feel like working is the vacation and trying to find the job is the job. For the first time in I couldn’t remember how long, it felt like I could take a deep breath,” Moennig wrote in “So Gay For You.”
This wasn’t the end of the line for Hailey, though. A week after her Shane audition, she was asked to return to read for another part: Alice Pieszecki, described as “bubbly” and a “comic relief character.”
“I really wanted this role—being Alice felt right. It’s the closest to Cinderella I’ll probably ever feel; the shoe just fit,” she recalled in the memoir.
Hailey did, however, reveal that she initially turned down the role because it would have meant putting her band, The Murmurs, on the backburner. But she quickly came to her senses and accepted.
‘Not Your Mother’s Lesbians’
“The L Word” debuted four weeks before the “Sex and the City” series finale, leading to the clever marketing slogan: “Same sex, different city.” The press also had fun with its coverage of the “vampy” new show, with headlines like “Not Your Mother’s Lesbians” and “Tizzy Over Lezzies.”
The series centered on a group of eight friends, mostly lesbians, who were living, loving and working in Los Angeles. Jennifer Beals, who played power lesbian Bette Porter, was the sole household name among the main cast members, and Hailey was the only out lesbian. According to Showtime, 1 million viewers tuned in for the series premiere.
“Nothing like this has been done, which is a full group of full-on lesbians that are friends that you watch every day live their lives,” Hailey said, adding that “nothing’s taken its place” since.
Moennig added that the show provided its audience with a more nuanced understanding of the lesbian experience, one that went beyond the butch-femme binary.
“It restructured what the lesbian community was perceived to be, and it gave a full portrait of these characters’ lives, instead of just their sexuality being their sole identity marker or their coming out stories,” she said.
Even as an out lesbian, Hailey said, she, too, was being educated about the community at the time.
“I had never met a group of lesbians like the ones we were playing … I was simultaneously learning that we could be more than what I thought we could be. It kind of broke me wide open,” Hailey said. “The audience and we on the show were having the same experience, just from different sides.”
During its six-season run, “The L Word” touched on topics and storylines that were unfamiliar to many, if not most, viewers. These included same-sex parenting, gender transitions and closeted service members and athletes.
Viewers were also introduced to the interconnectedness of the lesbian dating scene in Los Angeles through “the chart.” The chart became such a phenomenon that the show’s creator decided to spin it off into its own advertiser-supported lesbian social network, The New York Times reported in 2006.
In “So Gay for You,” Hailey revealed that the chart stemmed from a “real diagram drawn in the writers room to illustrate the trope that all lesbians in a certain geographical area have — or probably will — sleep together.”
In addition to the show’s highlights, Hailey and Moennig also addressed some of the criticisms the series faced over the years.
“It was a sign of the times that we were in. The show was never out originally to hurt anyone’s feelings or disparage anyone. It was just what one knew at the time, so it’s a time capsule in that way,” Moennig said.
In the memoir, Hailey looks back at “Lisa the Lesbian Man,” a character Alice dated in the first season. Lisa, who was assigned male at birth and identified as a lesbian, was based on a real person, Hailey revealed. But looking back, Hailey said, some of those scenes with Lisa “fill me with shame.”
“Lisa wasn’t confused about her identity, but this tight — and otherwise progressive — friend group was. Lisa was misunderstood and repeatedly thrown under the bus in service of ‘comedy,’” she wrote. “I loved that my character had a relationship with her, but I wish I could go back in time and do Lisa justice.”
Moennig and Hailey said filming “The L Word” was both enjoyable and intense and, at times, downright unhinged. A member of the crew, they said, even referred to the set as “gay camp,” which was particularly fitting since Moennig, Hailey and co-star Mia Kirschner, who played Jenny, all lived together at one point while working on the show.
“We would have the time of our lives one night and the next find ourselves in the throes of an emotionally charged, melodramatic argument that would put a sixteenth-century opera to shame,” Hailey wrote.
It was around this time, she added, that Kirschner gave Hailey and Moennig their long-time nickname: Pants.
“You’re like a pair of pants — you can’t have one leg without the other,” Hailey recalled Kirschner telling them.
End of an era
After six seasons, “The L Word” series finale aired in March 2009. It was the end of an era for the show’s dedicated fans and for its stars.
Moennig compared it to “diving into an ice bath.”
“We just lived in this utopic gay bubble of creativity, and we come out of it thinking that the world has progressed along with us simultaneously to realize, ‘Oh, it actually hasn’t,’” she said.
However, their friendship and their queer “found family” continued to sustain them as they acclimated to their post-“The L Word” lives. The duo said they found community in their L.A. softball team, The Buzzsox, and formed a bit of a lesbian clubhouse at Hailey’s home in the San Fernando Valley, where they had an open-door policy for their friends.
“My friends are my lifeline, and I also think when you’re queer, you just relate to each other in a different way, because you understand the ups and downs of what we all go through all the time,” Hailey said. “I would call Kate in the worst of times and the best of times.”
Moennig said she and Hailey share a “common spoken language.”
“I just get to be,” she said of their two-decade friendship. “We get to move through life without having to explain ourselves all the time, and there’s something really comforting about that.”
Since the series wrapped 16 years ago, Hailey and Moennig have also kept busy with professional projects. The duo reprised their roles in “The L Word: Generation Q,” which ran from 2019 to 2023, and they started their own podcast, “PANTS With Kate and Leisha,” in 2020. Hailey also toured with her indie-pop band, Uh Huh Her, while Moennig starred in the police procedural “Ray Donovan.”
Now, with “So Gay for You,” the longtime friends can add “author” to their lengthy resumes.
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