Written by:
Laurie K. Schenden
Photographer:
Brie Childers
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this Issue of Curve:
Vol. 16#7
Alexandra Hedison sidles up behind a shapely female figure, wrapping her arms around the sweep of the waist and running her hands over the breasts. It might sound like another seduction scene from her recent stint on The L Word, but on this hot summer afternoon, Hedison is playfully promising her undying love to a headless mannequin that she finds during her CURVE photo shoot at a Los Angeles studio.
“This is the closest I’ve gotten to a girl in a long time,” she jokes, with one arm around her new squeeze.
After working behind the camera for the last five years as a professional photographer, Hedison is now out in front, hosting the new reality design show Designing Blind on A&E. Although she is considerate and accommodating during the photo shoot, she admits she’s used to being behind the scenes. She apologizes for her wardrobe, which is a simple assemblage of jeans, T-shirts and sentimental jewelry, including a beaded bracelet from India and a lovely old woven belt she picked up in Peru.
The photographer looks skeptically at Hedison’s baggy jeans with its ripped-out knees, so Hedison pulls out two more pairs of pants from the pile of clothes she brought from home. “I have these Levi’s, or I have these older Levi’s,” she says, eager to help. Though her duds may not be geared to glamour, once she slips into the faded T-shirt and jeans they transform into something utterly chic. The clothes may make the man, but in this case the woman makes the clothes.
A lanky 5-foot-ten-inches, with striking, beautiful features, Hedison may look like a model but she takes a simple approach to fashion, even cutting her own hair. When the stylist hired for the shoot pulls out a handled blade, Hedison grabs the “new toy” and, moments before her photo shoot, begins snipping her own locks. “This is like a crack pipe for an addict,” she says gleefully.
Since she took on the role of co-hosting Designing Blind, Hedison has been able to combine her sense of humor, her acting skills and her love of architecture, composition and line — all the things that inspire her photography. The new reality show, which at press time was set to premiere on Aug. 6 and run for 13 weeks, teams Hedison with designer Eric B., who creates amazing spaces even though he’s blind.
While the show might strike reality TV skeptics as a peculiar gimmick, it’s captivating to see Mr. B at work. A gay man, B lost his sight due to complications from HIV. He takes a room and creates something beautiful and functional, assisted by an astute intuition and some nifty tools, such as a talking tape measure and a tool that reads blueprints with the help of bar codes.
“It’s not a typical show, and they weren’t looking for a typical host,” Hedison says, explaining what drew her to the project. “Really, everything I’ve been doing, especially in the last couple of years — it’s just like I’m following my instincts on everything. … And I just really liked him; I immediately felt a connection to him and I like what he’s doing. The show is ultimately about following your instincts.”
Her instincts for keeping things simple inform many aspects of Hedison’s life. You can see it in her clothes, her environment and her attitudes about people. “Don’t get me wrong,” she interjects. “Luxury is a lovely thing. But when your entire life is about all these things that you’ve accumulated, it’s really depressing. I’ve certainly been around people like that. They are constantly consuming because they are desperately searching for what’s going to make them feel better.”
Although Hedison willingly left a successful acting career several years ago because she wasn’t happy in it, she decided to return to acting last year when Showtime’s The L Word offered her a chance to audition. She knew several people connected to the show, but another reason for pursuing the role was to get a little relief from the publicity over her split with Ellen DeGeneres.
The set of The L Word was “a healthy environment,” and the cast members, especially Rachel Shelley (Helena), were an inspiring and supportive group. “I wasn’t in great shape emotionally when I started working on that show,” Hedison says. But not only was she embraced by the tight-knit cast, her popularity in the role of hot documentary filmmaker Dylan Moreland, who spins Helena’s head and rocks her bed, put Hedison back on an acting track.
Near the end of her time on the show, she had a big decision to make. A producer friend who was aware of Hedison’s eye for design, as well as her keen comic timing, asked her to audition for the hosting job of Designing Blind. Hedison had been a regular on the series LA Firefighters in 1996, had a recurring role in Prey with Debra Messing, and had roles on numerous other TV shows, but it was photography that inspired her. However, after hearing her producer friend describe Designing Blind, Hedison was intrigued and decided to audition. She got the part, and her ad-libbed humor and sexy side-kick persona is a great complement to B’s designing talents.
“It’s James Bond,” Hedison says of the oddly authoritative voice that comes from Eric B’s tape measure, adding: “It also comes in Beyoncé.” In another segment of Designing Blind, Hedison talks about the importance of trust with one woman who, like all the homeowners, remains blindfolded throughout the selection of materials and other design choices, forcing them to use their non-visual senses. “I trust you,” the woman says sweetly — and rather naively — as Hedison waves a sculpture at the woman’s head. “As you should,” Hedison deadpans.
“Someone’s gotta make jokes about the fact that a blind man is doing the interior design, my God!” Hedison exclaims. “I mean, if he wasn’t so damn good at it, I probably couldn’t.” Hedison doesn’t show as much skin on Designing Blind as she did on The L Word (unless the producers come up with some sort of hot tub edition of Designing Blind), but viewers will get to see her being herself: funny, a bit goofy, conscientious, inquisitive, stylish and beautiful. “It’s about as me as I’ve ever been on camera,” she says.
The “real” Hedison might seem to be a series of contradictions. Raised in the shadow of Hollywood, her father, David Hedison, is an actor from the popular 1960s television series Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, and more recently a soap star on Another World and The Young and the Restless. But her upbringing wasn’t all about spotlights and glamour.
Her youth in the 1970s was spent in a tiny, one-bedroom beach house in Malibu. “This was when Malibu was — this is the only time you’ll hear me say this word — magical!” Hedison says. “It wasn’t overly developed. We had a pull-out couch where my parents slept at night. My sister and I had the bedroom. And there was a round dining room table. At night they would have the most raucous, fun dinner parties.” She remembers Roger Moore, Joan Collins and Ursula Andres among the guests. Later they moved to a modest home in Beverly Hills, where her parents still live. Her mother instilled in her the notion that “you don’t bring a lot of attention to yourself,” says Hedison. “And the quality of your life comes down to your friends and your family. Not that job or how many famous people you know.”
A chance meeting with Lauren Hutton on a plane to New York solidified this attitude in Hedison. Hutton was dressed simply in jeans and a white T-shirt. “She was so beautiful,” Hedison recalls. “She was also beautiful because she’s traveled all over the world and she’s interesting and she’s interested. She’s thinking about a whole lot of things other than just the jeans and white T-shirt that were on her body that morning.”
While Hedison emphasizes that she does like nice things, she tries to make an effort to focus on what’s real and what’s important in life. That’s how she chose the home she bought over a year ago. “At the time I was looking it was only like two months after my breakup with Ellen and I was living in a hotel, so I didn’t have anywhere to live. I was needing to put myself somewhere. I made the decision to look for a place. It was the right decision.”
What she found was a little house in the hills that was built in 1955 by an artist who lived there until he died about four years ago. “It’s almost like an artist’s studio. If nothing else it’s authentic,” she says. “When my parents came to see the house, my dad looks around and sees the cracks in the walls and he says, ’Well, these cracks are authentic.’ He was horrified that I was buying it.”
But the house is a good fit for Hedison. “There’s nothing sleek or modern or flashy about it at all,” she says. “It’s very practical.”
And she doesn’t plan to share that home anytime soon. In fact, throughout our day together, every time she mentions a friend with whom she did this or that — any friend — she clarifies, “Not a ’special friend.’”
After I bring this to her attention, she says, “See how resistant I am?”
“I’m not kidding,” she insists. “I am literally not dating. … I don’t think I’m ready. I feel like I really am kind of working on the relationship with myself.”
Later, when we chat over tofu vegetarian burgers she recommends at a nearby restaurant (“I’m really not that healthy,” she claims), she’s comfortable talking about what qualities she will be looking for when she does date. “I seem to be attracted to blondes. I’m not sure what that’s about, but when I look back that does seem to be the case,” she says with a laugh. “Maybe all the work I’m doing will somehow change that … like, after all this internal examination all of a sudden I won’t be attracted to blondes.”
Though she isn’t attracted to a particular physical type, “I really, really love someone who knows how to communicate.” She also likes people who can get things done. “Someone who is helpless — that’s an unbelievably unattractive quality for me. Whether it’s where to park or making a reservation somewhere, making a decision — a lot of people, especially women sometimes, they just don’t know how to take initiative or just make things happen. I find that I do that a lot, so it’s nice when someone can do that for me.”
And, she adds, “It never hurts when someone is really sexy.”
Hedison, while still cautious, appears to be in a good place. She has her own space, a TV show, close friends and family who love her, and another photography show in the planning stages. She’s even open to a return to The L Word — if she’s asked and her time permits. There were definitely some loose ends between her character Dylan and Rachel Shelley’s Helena. Hedison notes that since Dylan turned Helena’s life upside down, Helena has been a much more likable character.
“My character sort of redeemed her,” Hedison says, laughing. “My character made her look nice!”
When I ask her if she and Ellen DeGeneres will ever be friends, she answers thoughtfully, “I hope so. If I ran into her right now, I’d be like, ’Oh my gosh, hi!’ You know, I’m sure she’d make me laugh. … Truly, if we saw each other right now, we would make each other laugh, I’m sure. A big part of our relationship was friendship. … I don’t know, we’ll see.”
Other than the projects already in the works, I wonder if she has a “plan for life.” She answers readily, with her typically dry sense of humor.“Yes! It’s to come up with a really good plan.”
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