In a recent interview, Jennifer Beals
discussed how the upcoming return of The L Word is a response
to the election of President Donald Trump.
The L Word ran for six seasons
(2004-2009) on Showtime. The premium cable channel will debut the
show's sequel, The L Word: Generation Q, on Sunday, December
8.
(Related: First
look: Showtime releases trailer for lesbian drama The
L Word: Generation Q.)
Returning for the new series are Beals,
Katherine Moennig, and Leisha Hailey, who will appear as their
original characters.
New cast members include Arienne Mandi,
who plays a public relations representative; Leo Sheng, who plays a
transgender man and social worker; and Jacqueline Toboni, who plays a
religious woman struggling with her sexuality.
Speaking with Michigan LGBT alternative
PrideSource, Beals said that the new show was a response to Trump's
election.
“In 2004, Bush was president and
there were no comprehensive legal protections covering gender or
sexual orientation, and there aren’t now either,” Beals said.
“But then there was The L Word that challenged this
heterocentrist view of the world, which was exciting.”
“And now here we are in 2019 with an
administration that, from the moment they took office, was attacking
the LGBTQ community. It was an assault. And as the returns were
coming in in 2015, [The L Word co-creator] Ilene [Chaiken] and
I were texting one another, trying to figure out what we can do. And
on November 18, we got together and dedicated ourselves to bringing
The L Word back, because we knew at that point visibility
would be even more important. Because when you’re under attack,
visibility, while it’s not everything, brings a certain amount of
agency and a certain amount of community and can also help shift
paradigms in terms of the parasocial interaction, so we knew it would
be important.”
“I think somebody called it 'the
discrimination administration,'” she
added.
Beals also said that she had no
reservations about playing a lesbian and was grateful for being part
of “a great love story.”