Having been an ’80s pop culture idol and a lesbian icon, Jennifer Beals can now add historian to her résumé with the release of The L Word Book, a collection of photos and memories she says she made for her L Word "family."
For six seasons on the benchmark series The L Word, Jennifer Beals was virtually synonymous with her character — the erudite power lesbian and aesthete Bette Porter. Now the touchstone of ’80s pop culture and international icon for lesbians can add accidental historian to her résumé with The L Word Book, a photographic journal by Beals that takes you behind the scenes of the groundbreaking Showtime series and acts as a vibrant document of the show that forever changed lesbian representation in Hollywood.
A photographer with a knack for capturing actors in private moments between takes, Beals saw her work featured prominently in the 2001 insiders’ glimpse into Hollywood, The Anniversary Party. And while she’s photographically chronicled other film-set experiences, including 1994’s Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle, shooting the actresses on the L Word became a six-year-plus passion project, originally intended for her cast mates but then also for the audience that ardently supported the show throughout its run.
Beyond the by turns jubilant and arresting photos of L Word favorites including Leisha Hailey, Laurel Holloman, Mia Kirshner, and Kate Moennig, Beals’s book includes transcripts of interviews with the actresses conducted as she took each one on a photographic trip down L Word memory lane. The book, destined to become a collectors’ bonanza and an integral piece of L Word ephemera, can be ordered online with the option of personalizing a dedication page, with proceeds going to charities dear to Beals, including the Matthew Shepard Foundation, Kirshner’s I Live Here Projects, and the Pablove Foundation.
The Advocate caught up with Beals to discuss her inspiration for creating the book, her editing process, her predilection for holding on to memorabilia, and exactly just what happened to that Flashdance sweatshirt.
The Advocate: Congratulations on The L Word Book. I can’t wait to get my hands on one. I’ve only been privy to looking online.
Jennifer Beals: Thanks. I'm so thrilled to be done with it. You have no idea. It was really such a long process. You know, you’re sitting around and you think, Oh, yeah, I'll make a little book and make it available to the fans, and you know ... a year later.
Why was the process so arduous?
In retrospect, it wasn't that arduous. I didn’t count all the steps it took to get from A to Z. I didn’t even count the ones in between. And also, it's been an interesting process not doing it working with a traditional publisher and using an online publishing house, which I think is the way of the future, frankly. It’s a new modality. It’s interesting; I don't even know how to think of it because it's so new.
I think that’s a common response to new modes of communication ... What aspects of publishing the book in this manner, as opposed to traditionally, are different?
People can type in a dedication page if they want to give it as a gift to a friend. They don’t have to have it sent to their house and write in the front and then send it out again. They can have it put in the very front of the book, and then in a couple of weeks, hopefully, upload their own images into the book so they can have their own version of it. People can feel that, and rightly so, this is also part of their story in many ways, because the fans were so important to our journey.
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