PHOTOS HILARY BRONWYN GAYLE SHOWTIME
Jennifer Beals is talking to me about lesbian sex. If my younger self knew this day would come, she would have lost her tiny homosexual mind. But this, it appears, is my life now. I’m chatting to the gifted actor who plays Bette Porter – the Bette Porter – art aficionado, power lez in a power suit, and one of tellyland’s most legendary tops. Forgive the fangirling, but I binge-watched The L Word before binge-watching was a thing. I devoured it covertly in my teenage bedroom, still closeted, still all at sea about my own sexuality, but overjoyed to discover this intoxicating new world of possibility – an alternate reality where ladies fell in love with each other, watched women-only Turkish oil wrestling and just couldn’t get enough of “those sweet little figs”. The scenario in which I now find myself is gloriously close to being in an actual episode of the show that changed everything. I almost feel like I’m hanging out at The Planet, sipping espresso with the gang, gossiping about the latest hub on The Chart and musing on the merits of “bush confidence”, talking, laughing, loving, breathing ad infinitum. But I digress. You want to know what Jennifer has to say about lesbian sex, don’t you?
She’s fresh from the set of The L Word: Generation Q, where OGs Jennifer, Leisha Hailey and Kate Moennig have been reminiscing about when they made the original series over 15 years ago. In an effort to ensure the love scenes were as effective as possible, the cast had a visit from a “sex educator lady”. “There was a book and there were pictures. It was kind of like being in high school in your sex ed class and your mind’s blown. And then some of it just made total sense. I went, ‘Oh yeah, I totally get that’. I learned what a dental dam was and things like that, things I didn’t know about. Strap-ons. I was like, ‘Wow, a whole new world’.” Despite her willingness to talk about the intricacies and accoutrements of queer rumpy-pumpy, Jennifer is a notoriously private person. When the wonderful Rachel Shelley, aka The L Word’s Helena Peabody, interviewed her for the cover of our August 2010 issue, the piece was titled, “The elusive Ms Beals”.