Is The Real L Word Showtime’s way of pushing into that space?Ĭhaiken: Showtime didn’t push us for it and if they ever felt like we had crossed the line they would have pushed us back. THR: The Playboy Channel seems to be stepping away from the porn space since the web pushes the limits so far.
If you’re going to do a show like this on Showtime when you’re bound by the strictures of broadcast television, it’s an opportunity to be more real and go in greater depths to tell the story of these people’s lives. I don’t think sex is dirty, I think it’s intriguing and illuminating. In pursing this as a premise you’re always walking a line but I love telling stories about sex. There’s a story line about drugs and alcohol.Ĭhaiken: To me it’s not because they’re lesbians that we’re watching them have sex it’s because it’s part of the story. That encompasses a lot of freedom for us: The cast can talk more openly about their sexuality, they can swear, they can have sex.
The marching orders were really to make a docusoap, make a series that can’t appear anywhere else that’s unique to Showtime. Lipsitz: No, not necessarily to sex up the series. Were you given any specific marching orders from Showtime’s new chief David Nevins to sex up the series? Cory and Kacy are a great example: we wanted to tell a parenting story, and they are incredibly open and emotional. We were really looking for people who would let us share their roller coaster ride of life and that really is the cast we tried to find and put together this season. Jane Lipsitz: We wanted to reveal a more emotionally exposed cast and Whitney from last season was very open and honest and let us in on her emotional journey. We wanted people who represented a beginning, who had something they wanted from life and weren’t sure how they were going to get it and they were going to let us watch them try. We realized that we stood a better chance of getting raw, honest storytelling with a cast that’s younger. But one of the challenges is that Bette Porter in real life is probably not going to do a reality show she is not going to put her life forward in that way and it doesn’t lend itself necessarily to the genre. THR: What lessons did you learn from Season 1?Ĭhaiken: I love the cast from Season 1 and I’m proud of what we did. It was confection, it was fiction, it was all made up but people constantly said to me, “That’s not real, those lesbians don’t exist.” In my experience those lesbians do exist and we wanted to capture the breath and scope of the community but make understood but that really is real and does exist. We wanted to capture some sense that that world really existed because that had been my premise doing The L Word. We didn’t say, ‘We have to find a Shane or Bette,’ though people looked for that. We weren’t trying to re-create The L Word we weren’t for looking for people who matched the characters of The L Word. Ilene Chaiken: When we set out to do Season 1, we had an overall mission: We wanted to make real the premises that The L Word put forward. THR: When you sat down to cast Season 2, what did you look for that was different from the first season? Now, as Chaiken’s reality series enters its second season, she and Elves co-founder Jane Lipsitz tell The Hollywood Reporter how a sexed-up second season walks the line between telling emotional stories and porn as well as why only one cast member from Season 1 returned. She turned to the Magical Elves, best known for unscripted hits Top Chef and Project Runway, to co-produce, and The Real L Word was born. While it was a natural time to wrap up the scripted drama starring Jennifer Beals, she approached then-Showtime Entertainment president Robert Greenblatt with the idea of doing a reality show. When The L Word ended its six-season run two years ago, series creator Ilene Chaiken felt that there was more life left in the franchise.