A Personal View From Laurel

I spoke to Laurel a little bit about her role as Tina in The L Word, but also about growing up, her love of movies and the arts and what she might do in the future.  This is part one of my chat with her:

Angela: You’ve lived with Tina for a long time, do you like her?

Laurel: Yeah.  I don’t think you could play a character for a long time without liking them, even when they are bad you have to like them.  I do like Tina, but I am so different from her in so many ways.  I like that ultimately there is a real goodness in her and I like that she is strong on loyalty.  She’s more careful, she’s not that promiscuous.  I was much wilder than her - you never see Tina getting drunk and dancing on the table.  She’s probably the most gracious character I have ever played. I like to play those things; I like how in love she was with Bette.  Jennifer and me had a really great chemistry, we had an ease in front of the camera with each other, we have a trust and it shows.  At the end of Season 3 Jennifer was pregnant and I was still nursing my daughter and we were both really tired and I remember saying to Ilene at one point “is there any way we can stop fighting because it’s really hard”.  But sometimes when things are hard that’s when you should dig in deeper and really work to try to explore what’s so different about that person’s life.  My life is nothing like that, those fights are crazy.  Not that I don’t have my fair share of fights, but we’re ready for these two women to treat each other better.  Ilene again has certain stories that she wants to tell and I respect her decisions and she has a very strong vision about what this journey is.  In a lot of ways it’s really great to do that, because once you do that, it’s really great to just let go and not worry about the result.  You can go and live your life then show up and do your work, that’s the way I like to work.  For me when I do a feature I’m much more meticulous, I’m much more controlling and I’m much more worried about arc, much more worried about the result.  I spend my time going over the script, back and forth, because you know the ending and the beginning, but I don’t know the ending of The L Word.  I have no idea how this part will end so you just do character development and you try to play the truth in every situation, that’s all you can do on TV.  You never know how it’s going to end.

Angela: Do you think Ilene does?

Laurel: I truly think she doesn’t know how it’s going to end; no I don’t think she knows.  It might float around in her head somewhere, but I think she toys around with things and, of course, she doesn’t know when it’s going to end. 

Angela: You brought your daughter into the first episode of season 3, how did that happen?

Laurel: It was a fluke.  Rose Troche was directing that episode and my daughter happened to be on set with my husband, and there were all these little babies around and she had a great little t-shirt on that said “Bush makes me cry”, which Rose had given her, and we thought it would be great if she was in the scene.  I thought “wow that’s fantastic because I’ll be able to show her that one day”, and my husband had a good time so it was fun.  It’s sweet - my husband was a production designer and I’m an actress so she’s just going to grow up on a set, that’s just how it is.

Angela: So, what if one day she comes to you and says “mom I want to be an actress”, what’s mom going to say?

Laurel: I’m probably going to handle it the way my mom handled it.  If there is something she wants to explore, I’ll take her to that place.  If she wants to take acting lessons or she wants to be in a play or anything like that I’ll just let her explore that, but not for business or in a financial way.  My parents let me be in plays, but I also rode horses and I was a ballerina.  If there was something I was really interested in I got to try it out.  I was always told I could be anything I wanted and I want the same for her.  I would like for her not to have a real audition until she’s at least 18.  If it comes up before that I’ll just have to do a play-by-play type of decision with it.  I don’t want to hold her back, but I think it’s nice just to be a kid and explore things that are artistic without having money attached to it. 

Angela: What would you have done if you hadn’t gone into acting?

Laurel: I think that maybe I would have had an Art degree.  I’m painting right now and I did paint a lot when I was in college and I did a lot of sculpture.  It was more personal, more of an outlet for myself.  I think it’s a hard road to be an artist.  I would like to think I would do something like that, but I could also see myself as a vet.  I always wanted to be a vet, I loved animals, I grew up around horses, I rode ponies all through Junior High and I was very comfortable around animals, but I would probably not have done so well in organic chemistry!  Chemistry was very difficult for me.  Or maybe I would do something with children.  It’s hard because I am so immersed in this career and I have been doing it so long, it feels like it is the only thing I’ve done so it’s hard to imagine doing something else.  But I do think of that all the time, because I do think that as I get older there are other things I would like to do, be it whether that’s a hobby or career I think that I don’t want to do just this.  You tend to think like that when you’re on a TV show and you spend 16 hours a day on a set in a trailer and as I get older, as much as I love acting, I don’t like spending that much time waiting around. 

Even though I feel blessed and lucky to be working in this profession there are moments, especially since I have been a mother, that I think “oh gosh I want to be home with my kid right now, I don’t want to be sitting in this trailer”.  I miss putting her to bed, because it’s midnight and I’m still here.  At the end of it all I am still really, really lucky to do it.  My parents were good examples, they both have careers that they love, and they both have enjoyed what they do.  I never heard either parent really complain about their job.  My dad never really had a 9 to 5 job, he travelled, he was in an apparel business now he’s in real estate, as sort of entrepreneur.  My mom became a psychologist; she was a nurse and she loved being a nurse and loved helping people.  We’re here for such a short time, why waste it, why get up every day and do something you hate.  I think it’s important to do something you like.

Angela: Clearly you were raised in an environment, which encouraged you to achieve your potential

Laurel: They were very encouraging parents to me and my brothers.  I was encouraged to travel, to explore artistic things even though they weren’t artists.  My parents got divorced when I was 10 and they didn’t date for a while so I became their “movie dates” and I would see R-rated movies with my mother [LAUGHING]. At a very young age I remember seeing Jill Clayburgh in “An Unmarried Woman” and it went right over my head, but knowing that there was something special about that movie and that there was something special about her performance and now I know who Jill Clayburgh is I realise she is very special.  I remember the actresses my mother watched – Ellen Burstyn, Jane Fonda.  I remember watching “Klute” at a very early age.  My father took me to mature movies too.  I think when you’re exposed to a certain amount of film at an age when I was thinking I wanted to be an actor, I didn’t dare admit that to anybody.

Look out for part two coming soon