PHOTO: INSTAGRAM COVER PHOTO: KATE ROMERO
Now is the perfect time to celebrate the enduring legacy of The L Word. For six seasons plus a three-season reboot (titled The L Word: Generation Q), queer women had a television show all our own. It was truly iconic. Not only for its fearless look at a glamorous group of friends talking, laughing, loving, breathing (you know the rest) in Los Angeles, but for the fact that it remains to this day the only show that centered the narrative around queer women and our experiences. From dating dramas and career ambitions to the complexity of starting a family as a same-sex couple, The L Word was trailblazing television that inspired an enthusiastic fanbase.
Everyone had their favorite character, their biggest crush, or the person they identified with most. You couldn’t go into a gay bar in the mid-aughts without overhearing someone say, “OMG, she is such a Shane!” about the mysterious heartthrob or, “You would love her, she’s totally an Alice,” about the friendly social butterfly. These characters became a second language, a common experience for a community that was, and is, often overlooked in mainstream pop culture. While it wasn’t perfect, it was ours, and that is why the show and its stars remain beloved figures.
Actors Leisha Hailey and Kate Moennig, who played best friends Alice Pieszecki and Shane McCutcheon on the show, are also real-life BFFs and recently released a dual memoir titled So Gay for You (St. Martin’s Press). The book chronicles their respective upbringings with Hailey, a soap box derby enthusiast from Bellevue, Nebraska, and Moennig, a private school kid from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. They also share never-before-heard stories from their time on The L Word, the origins of their friendship at a final audition for the role of Shane, and the pressure of exploring their identities under the glare of the limelight.
There is something very familiar about Hailey and Moennig as we sit down to chat, and it’s not just because my wife Melany Joy Beck and I have interviewed Hailey several times with her band Uh Huh Her. They are megastars in the lesbian community, especially for us millennials who came of age alongside our television counterparts.
Their dynamic has the lived-in warmth of a decades-long friendship, with Moennig quick to follow a thought with “Right, Leish?” or Hailey offering an encouraging “Go ahead, Kate.” Their charming rapport is captured on the hit podcast PANTS, which is described as “two real-life BFFs catching up with each other, hilarious oversharing, unqualified advice, and heated debates.” Writing a book together was a natural next step as they were able to dive further into their personal and shared histories alike.
“We had a discussion about how writing a book would be very different than making a TV show or a film,” says Moennig of their approach to the collaboration. “It’s all on us, these are our stories, and we had to make peace with and be comfortable with the fact that we would be exposing ourselves in a way that we never dreamed we would.”
Hailey and Moennig write alternating chapters, sharing stories about their childhoods and family dynamics, college years at The American Academy of Dramatic Arts (which they both attended at different times), important friendships, and more.
COURTESY OF MACMILLAN PUBLISHING
“We didn’t know if we could actually write a book, but if we did, we wanted it to mean something,” Hailey says, about the journey to becoming authors.
Moennig adds, about the writing process, “I found it cathartic. I also found myself laughing hysterically over things I genuinely hadn’t thought about in a very, very long time. The beauty is in the detail, and the details painted a full picture of these moments we shared that not only made me laugh but allowed a level of forgiveness in myself for not always having the answers. Just giving myself the grace of being young and figuring it out, like every human is trying to figure it out. It really was a full circle moment.”
What stood out to me most while reading So Gay for You was the many moments of serendipity in their lives long before they met. Despite growing up thousands of miles apart, their origin stories had some striking similarities, and it felt inevitable that their paths would cross.
“In passing, we knew that we both went to the same school and that we both lived in New York for a time but when you see it, you’re like ‘Oh that’s so weird, you went to that club, I went to that club.’ It was like we knew it, but we didn’t really know it,” Hailey says.
“It really stuck out to us too, because we didn’t sit down next to each other and write this, so reading about Leisha’s childhood—and Leish, I’m sure you feel similarly when you read something about my childhood—the similarities are at times very glaring. I wasn’t the only one having this experience. It’s the whole point of the book. It will help people feel less alone, and oddly enough, when Leisha and I read each other’s stories, we realized we weren’t actually alone at all. We just didn’t know each other yet,” Moennig says.
That sentiment summarizes the overall feeling the reader has while reading So Gay for You; a feeling of connection and commonality in a world that often makes those of us in the queer community feel so alone.
As they explain in the book, Hailey became aware of her sexuality early in life, with crushes on girls in school, and was warmly accepted by her family upon coming out. Moennig, who despite having a Broadway dancer as a mother who had been surrounded by the LGBTQIA+ community, received a less than enthusiastic response when she initially came out, despite many hints over the years that she may be gay.
It might be surprising to fans of the show to know that the actor playing Shane, the notorious lesbian heartthrob who inspired many sexual awakenings, was more private about her own sexuality. Though she was out in her personal life, she felt pressure from the media, especially queer media, to come out publicly as the show grew in popularity. In the book, Hailey talks about how she felt protective of her friend’s privacy and wanted to help create the space she needed to explore her identity without the pressure of the public’s expectations.
“When you lay things out in chronological order and you see how things evolved, it really does paint a full picture, like ‘Oh, that’s why I am who I am today and where I am today, mistakes and all’,” Moennig says of the experience she had writing So Gay for You.
PHOTO CREDIT: KATE ROMERO
As for the actual process of creating a dual memoir, the pair worked separately, writing about their own experiences and partnered with editor Hannah O’Grady to bring it all together. They did, however, opt to intentionally divvy up The L Word years for the sake of clarity. Moennig tackled stories from the set (including the surprisingly transactional nature of filming those sizzling sex scenes) while Hailey divulged details from their summer-camp-like time in Canada during production.
“I thought there was purity in that, almost, to keep our voices distinct,” Moennig says of their process.
“Yeah,” Hailey interjects, “I think they would have started to bleed into each other if we had read each other’s stuff.”
As friends so close they were nicknamed “pants” (the namesake of their podcast) by their L Word costar Mia Kirschner because “you couldn’t have one leg without the other,” the individual nature of the writing process made the moments of coincidence even more meaningful, as though they were destined to be friends from the start.
When asked if So Gay for You was the capstone of their decades of creative collaboration, the two erupt into conspiratorial laughter as Hailey exclaims, “Janelle, you have no idea!”
Moennig continues, “Why stop now? I would be depressed if I stopped now. It would feel wildly unnatural, and I’m speaking for myself here, maybe Leisha you’re ready to wrap this up, like it would feel incredibly unnatural for it to end here, because honestly the show was certainly a large part of our dynamic, our family, our friendship, our relationship, but it was also the beginning—it is not the end.”
Hailey adds, “I was going to say this feels like the beginning, in a weird way. Like a whole new beginning for us.”
Whatever comes next for this beloved duo, we can’t wait to come along for the ride. So Gay for You (St. Martin’s Press), which is an instant bestseller, is available now.
PHOTO CREDIT: KATE ROMERO