She Magazine L Word S2

Here’s an excerpt of the interview in She Magazine (Jan 05 issue) with Sarah & Rachel:

In the first season of The L Word, the show’s audience was introduced to a group of beautiful women whose lives and loves they followed throughout the year. With friendships and relationships having evolved, the second season will pick up with Tina (Laurel Holloman) rebuffing all attempts by Bette (Jennifer Beals) at reconciliation and Tina finds out she is five months pregnant. Marina (Karina Lombard) is gone, Alice (Leisha Hailey) and Dana (Erin Daniels) cannot seem to resist each other, Jenny (Mia Kirshner) prepares for an emotional farewell with Tim (Eric Mabius), Kit (Pam Grier) catches Ivan (Kelly Lynch) in an awkward position, and Shane (Kate Moennig) meets an attractive new lover, Carmen (Dallas native Sarah Shahi), a Latina production assistant who spends her evenings as a DJ-all this in the scandalous season opener. Causing a bit of turmoil in Bette’s life will be Helena Peabody (London native Rachel Shelley), the new administrator of a foundation that provides financial support to the Art Center. When Helena announces that she’s taking the group’s grant money in a different direction, Bette becomes distraught, consoling herself with alcohol and a one-night stand.

With new additions to the cast that will certainly heighten the level of drama, season two of The L Word is sure to be just as addictive as last year and will keep audiences tuning in and wanting more. She Magazine brings an exclusive interview with these two beautiful women on their characters, sex scenes, their relationship with the cast, being admired by gay women and much more.

Christina Radish: Why do you think you were chosen to join the cast?
Sarah Shahi: I paid them money. Lots of money. How can they refuse $12 million? [Laughs.] No. Why do I think I was chosen? I honestly don’t know. Maybe they just needed some new blood. I know the network has been making a lot of changes since last year, and maybe they just wanted to do something different with their shows. I will say that it was probably one of the easiest things that has ever happened to me. I read for the casting director and they put me on tape, and the next thing I knew, they were calling me saying, “They want to offer this to you.” So, it just dropped out of the sky, in terms of how it happened. I couldn’t have asked for an easier hiring situation.

Rachel Shelley: I know that they’d been looking for the actress to play the role of Helena for quite awhile, and I know that they were toying with the idea of making her English. By the time I got on the set, they were two episodes behind. Casting is all about tiny nuances of personality, which, for the most part, people are unaware of. I think, to some degree, we all have elements of our character that are innately in us. So, I guess they saw something in me that was innately Helena, which is a little disturbing because Helena is quite harsh. What’s funny is that, in my acting career previous to this, I’ve always played the sort of “butter would melt” kind of character. I’ve never been cast this way before, as the one who sort of ruffles peoples’ feathers. Also, I think there’s an element in American television to often cast British actors, male and female. Americans love to think that the English accent is kind of hard and slightly cruel and a bit superior, and quite often we’re cast as the baddies or the villains of the piece, and I think that’s partly true here. My English accent probably really helped me get cast just because it does, for American audiences, seem to lend that edge of arrogance or superiority.

Had you seen the first season of the show before you were cast?
Shahi: I’d only seen a few episodes here and there, when I was home on Sunday nights. I’d be like, “Oh, let’s see what’s on. Oh, okay, I’ll just watch this.” I was familiar with it, but not as much as I am now, obviously.

Shelley: Not prior to auditioning, no. I was in England and the show only came to England, I think, in the autumn of this year, and I was cast in the summer. But, I had heard quite a lot about it and I’d actually read and heard interviews with Ilene Chaiken. I’d read stuff with her talking about her script and what she was trying to do, so I was quite intrigued by the show and I knew the level it was at. I knew the kind of issues that it dealt with, but I had not seen anything.

What about your particular character attracted you most and made you want to do the show?
Shahi: Well, as an actor, you just want to try things that constantly challenge not only your skills as an actor, but as a person, too. It was just one of those things that you’d have to be dumb to pass up on. It’s so enriching, in my personal life, and as an actor. I feel like I get to play a dream role, in a sense that not many actresses have the opportunity to play the role that I’m playing. In the second season, you really don’t get to know that much of Carmen’s story—her own personal background. My storyline is intermixed with those I’m in relationship to. It’s not until the next season that we’re actually going to go into Carmen’s life and explore what it’s like being a gay Latina, and get to see her own family.