Leisha Hailey and Kate Moennig—actors known for their iconic roles as Shane and Alice on The L Word, the reboot The L Word: Generation Q and co-hosts of the beloved podcast PANTS—join to discuss queer representation, their creative collaborations, and navigating the business of show business.
Kate Moennig:
It was like watching like a moving yearbook of high school and all of your awkward moments on television. Maybe we got through two episodes, and we’re like, “Turn it off, turn it off. I can’t do it anymore. Stop. Stop.”
Curtis Fox:
From the TED Audio Collective, this is Design Matters with Debbie Millman. On Design Matters, Debbie talks with some of the most creative people in the world about what they do, how they got to be who they are, and what they’re thinking about and working on. On this episode, Kate Moennig and Leisha Hailey of The L Word talk about their long friendship and how they’ve persevered in the business of show business.
Leisha Hailey:
I mean, that’s the crux of how you survive in this business or not. I mean, we still battle it today.
Kate Moennig:
Yeah.
Debbie Millman:
Shane and Alice, Alice and Shane. If you watched The L Word back in the day, you know which characters I’m talking about. Shane McCutcheon and Alice Pieszecki. Best friends, edgy haircuts, both funny and even funnier when together. They became legendary lesbian icons, and their chemistry was on display again in the recent reboot, The L Word: Generation Q. In real life, Kate Moennig, Shane, and Leisha Hailey, Alice, are real-life best friends. They met at an audition for the same role on The L Word more than 20 years ago, and their friendship has flourished through their careers in music, television, and films. During the pandemic, they started a podcast, which survived the pandemic and is still going strong. Now they’ve co-written a book, So Gay For You: Friendship, Found Family, and The Show That Started It All. Kate Moennig and Leisha Hailey, welcome to Design Matters.
Kate Moennig:
Oh goodness. Thank you so much for having us today.
Leisha Hailey:
Debbie, we are so excited to be here.
Debbie Millman:
I am beyond thrilled. I’m beaming. Leisha, I want to start with you. In junior high school, you won best-
Leisha Hailey:
You went right for the throat.
Debbie Millman:
You know me well.
Leisha Hailey:
My best years.
Debbie Millman:
Aren’t they everyone’s?
Leisha Hailey:
Right.
Debbie Millman:
In junior high school, you won best design in an all-American soap box derby competition. And you won not because you were the fastest, but because you cared about the paint job. What made you so focused on how this soap box actually looked?
Leisha Hailey:
I am so excited you asked me this question. I’ve been waiting for someone to ask me this question. So I was in soap box derby for four years. I raced in both the junior division and senior division, which have very different cars and different layouts, and you race them different… You sit in them very differently. I built them every summer with my dad and had this obsession with what it looked like. And when I looked around to all, I was the only girl racing. And all the boys sort of slapped their local sponsors on the side very haphazardly, but their cars were fast. And I just really thought I needed to make an impact on the racetrack and on the hill, really, because you just rolled down the hill.
I found like a local car painting place and designed it with my father, and we went and got the fiberglass professionally painted to my design. I was obsessed with Ms. Pac-Man. And then later the car was shaped like, to me, it looked like a high top sneaker, so I decided to paint it as a Nike high top and ended up getting a letter all the way to the president of Nike, ’cause I thought I could be sponsored by a major corporation, I guess, at 12 years old. Yeah, I don’t know. I was aesthetically drawn to the way the car looked. I just thought that was very important.
Debbie Millman:
My favorite part of the story is actually that you wrote to the president of Nike, and he responded, I believe, right?
Leisha Hailey:
Yes. Yes.
Debbie Millman:
And they let you use the Nike logo on your soap box?
Leisha Hailey:
Yes. So I made a little model, about a 10-inch model of the design I was thinking about. And I guess it made it all the way to him, and he put it in his office, and wrote me a very sweet letter back, and sent me a bunch of Nike swag. I got no money from them, but that was fine because it was the biggest moment of my life at the time, ’cause they said I could paint it like the sneaker.
Kate Moennig:
This is so on brand for you.
Leisha Hailey:
Yeah, I know.
Debbie Millman:
Yes. Yes. There’s a certain fearlessness to it that I just love. Kate, you’ve been immortalized in fan tattoos. I’ve seen some really interesting ones online.
Kate Moennig:
Yeah, they’re creative, aren’t they?
Debbie Millman:
Oh my god, they’re good. Halloween costumes, you’ve inspired characters in fan fiction, you’ve been named-dropped in songs, and you even had a bar in Berlin named for you.
Kate Moennig:
No.
Leisha Hailey:
Wow, Kate.
Debbie Millman:
There’s a bar in Berlin called Shane’s.
Kate Moennig:
No.
Debbie Millman:
Do you happen to remember the sort of moment you realized that The L Word had transcended television?
Kate Moennig:
That’s a hard one to answer because so much was happening in my life when that show is taking hold of pop culture. I suppose one thing I noticed, a friend of mine used to work at Showtime, and she was in charge of all of the behind-the-scenes content that networks used to do for promotions of new seasons. She was really creative. She would always find creative ways of doing interviews. And I guess the network had asked her to compile some sort of mini-documentary about how the show has impacted the community.
And so she had gone around and done a bunch of on-the-street interviews with people, and then they made that into a five-minute thing on maybe a DVD thing or something. And she showed it to me, and one of the questions was, “What characters are you gravitating towards?” And you had your bets and your team is, and they named all of them. And then I thought, “Oh, okay, well, maybe Shane hit a little pocket of people,” but it turned out that Shane had her own category, and that’s where she refocused to haircuts and ties and the studded belts or whatever odd thing I wore back then. And I think it was from that moment I thought, “Oh, maybe she’s making a bit of a difference.”
Debbie Millman:
I’m having a moment where I’m forgetting, “She’s very Shane today.” I believe that was the phrase or one of the phrases.
Leisha Hailey:
“You’re looking very Shane today.”
Debbie Millman:
That’s what it was, “You’re looking very Shane today.”
Kate Moennig:
Yes, that was, I think, from an underwear ad.
Debbie Millman:
I don’t think that there could be a bigger compliment.
Kate Moennig:
Yeah, it was just, and to think that little storyline turned into some sort of iconic phrase. I know. And you’re still saying it in 2025.
Debbie Millman:
Absolutely. 20 years later. More than 20 years later. So I want to go back in time a little bit. Leisha, you wrote in your new book that, on the outside, the Haileys, your family who hailed from Bellevue, Nebraska, looked like your typical seventies Midwest family. Your dad, Robert, was a navigator at the neighboring Air Force base. Your mom, Jane, was a nurse. And you state that both you and your older sister, Kaydra, looked like poster children for the 4-H Club. How were you not a typical seventies Midwestern family?
Leisha Hailey:
Well, my parents were massive liberals. My dad was an or is an atheist. They were the house that everybody stopped over to feel better. It was an open-door policy. My mom, because she was a nurse, and at one point in her career was a school nurse, had a sort of an outreach to students that were maybe looking for guidance, or maybe they were troubled. My dad was a guitar-playing chess player. He was very quiet and sweet. And what ended up happening that I didn’t really realize at the time, but they were sort of a home to most of the gay people in Bellevue, ’cause it was a small town. So my mother’s best friend, Maureen, who’s basically my aunt, and my parents’ best friends, Jay and Tim, Jay was the local drama teacher who I ended up doing a lot of musicals with. Those two are like my uncles.
They’re still my family, and I grew up watching them have these relationships inside my home, and very comfortably. Maureen would have rotating girlfriends, and they would always be around. I’d go stay at their house, they’d take me to baseball games or soccer games, and it was just a loving, warm environment and safe, really. I look at it like my parents had this safety for our community, and I didn’t know it at the time because it just was normal. And so when I was growing up later and I started to understand, I watched these people hide in the community, and that’s when the mixed messaging started to happen for me personally, and I was confused.
Debbie Millman:
There was a part in the book that really broke my heart about how Aunt Maureen had an extra bedroom in her house.
Leisha Hailey:
Yes.
Debbie Millman:
So people would think that there was some separation.
Leisha Hailey:
Yes, some separation.
Debbie Millman:
Yes. Remind me of If These Walls Could Talk, the first episode, which is also just incredibly heartbreaking. You mentioned musicals. I believe that one of your first lead roles was in a high school production of Oliver, and you played Oliver.
Leisha Hailey:
I did. It was, I think to this day probably the best part I’ve ever played. I really locked into that role. They were looking for a kid that was young enough to play Oliver, and I had already been in a high school musical playing Gretel. So this was also, this was Jay, the man I was just speaking about, and I ended up getting that part, so I was able to be around all these high school kids.
Debbie Millman:
And was it Oliver the play or Oliver the musical?
Leisha Hailey:
The musical. Definitely.
Debbie Millman:
So you got do all the songs?
Leisha Hailey:
Oh yeah. This was my breakout. This is where it all started.
Debbie Millman:
Aside from Cinderella, Oliver on television was the first musical I’d ever seen, so it’s very dear to me.
Leisha Hailey:
Yes, it’s a good musical.
Debbie Millman:
You described yourself in the book as a tomboy who felt you could do anything. How long did that feeling last?
Leisha Hailey:
Until I was about 13, just when my body started changing and peer pressure started to kick in, and I lost that side of me, or I didn’t think I could have it anymore, and I had to sort of mold into what all the other girls were doing. Also a very confusing time in my life. I’m sure a lot of people can identify with this moment. But yeah, I felt like I couldn’t play anymore or be creative or really be myself. I had to conform.
Debbie Millman:
When did you stop feeling like you had to conform?
Leisha Hailey:
Debbie’s going deep today. When I moved out of Nebraska and I moved to New York City, that’s where I really started to find myself and all the things I loved about myself, ’cause I’d lost them. And I was embraced by the drag queen community, and I found music, and I started a band, and I went to acting school. I was able to be an artist and a freak and play around with my image and my sexuality, and it was just so freeing to move there. It was a perfect place to move in 1989.
Debbie Millman:
Kate, you write that you always looked at your childhood as an inconvenience. I want to know so much about that.
Kate Moennig:
I just wanted to be independent. I’ve always had an independent streak, and I just wanted to make my own rules and control my destiny, and I had an issue with authority, and just being a kid didn’t fit with me. I wanted to grow up fast.
Debbie Millman:
How did your parents respond to the speed in which you wanted to be independent?
Kate Moennig:
Well, I don’t think they had much of a choice. I grew up in Philly, right in the heart of the city, and so you kind of go off and do your own thing. It’s not that I need my parents to drive me to a friend’s house, I just would take the bus or I’d walk. And so I kind of went by the beat of my own drum just naturally because I could get around to wherever I wanted to go on my own.
Debbie Millman:
And they were all cool with that? That was still of the time where it was okay to be by yourself outside?
Kate Moennig:
Yeah. I mean, I did get mugged a few times. I won’t lie.
Debbie Millman:
You did?
Kate Moennig:
Of course. Yeah. Yeah.
Debbie Millman:
Oh, Kate. I’m a native New Yorker. I’ve lived in New York my entire life, six decades plus, and I’ve never been mugged.
Kate Moennig:
Really?
Debbie Millman:
Oh yeah. I’ve been burgled, burgled once.
Kate Moennig:
Burgled once?
Debbie Millman:
Right.
Kate Moennig:
Oh, yeah. I’ve been mugged with a friend of mine, we got mugged twice on separate occasions.
Debbie Millman:
In Manhattan?
Kate Moennig:
No, in Philly when I was a kid.
Debbie Millman:
Wow.
Kate Moennig:
You grow up in a city in the eighties or nineties, what are you going to do? It happens, and then you brush it off, and you just keep walking down the street. So my parents, I suppose they were okay with it. I think they liked that I was independent. I think my father kind of got a kick out of it.
Debbie Millman:
Your father was a legendary violin maker. Isaac Stern and Itzhak Perlman were loyal customers. As you were growing up, did you understand the artistic significance of what he did for a living?
Kate Moennig:
No, it was just what my dad did. Friends would say, “What does your dad do?” And I’d say, “He’s a violin maker,” and they wouldn’t really understand what that meant. And I don’t think I understood the significance. It was just my family did. I grew up around it, and I don’t think when you are a kid and you’re around something, you appreciate it until it’s gone. And now that it’s gone, I can certainly look back and think that’s certainly a unique profession. And also, the technique involved is just mind-blowing, and people spend years and years and years traveling all over the world to perfect it, and it was just another day in the life for me.
Debbie Millman:
Yeah, it’s a real craft, and there are so few people that are masters at it.
Kate Moennig:
It’s a dying art form, is what it is. Yeah.
Debbie Millman:
I understand you took ballet and had a leotard with a Superman logo on the front.
Kate Moennig:
Sure did. If your mother’s a dancer, she wants to put you in dance class.
Debbie Millman:
How’d you get the Superman logo on it?
Kate Moennig:
Just being a huge Superman fan as a kid. I think Superman was my first big, big hero, and so anything I had, it had to have the Superman logo, and I believe that was probably a compromise. So ballet class for a Superman leotard. I don’t know where it came about. I don’t know how she found it, but I had it and I wore it proudly for the minimal classes I could survive in ballet school.
Debbie Millman:
Would you also have considered yourself a tomboy at that point?
Kate Moennig:
Oh, I was a tomboy from jump.
Debbie Millman:
You both were drawn to the performing arts when you were kids. When did you each think you wanted to pursue acting professionally more seriously?
Leisha Hailey:
I dreamt about it in high school and knew that not only did I want to leave Nebraska, but I wanted to move somewhere where I could make that happen. And I just started to look, I knew I wouldn’t get into university, my grades weren’t good enough, so I started looking at specific acting schools. And that’s when I found the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and basically set my life on a course that was going to get me there no matter what.
Kate Moennig:
It kind of dawned on me at a young age. I just watched movies my entire childhood, and my dad would show me things. Like, I think I said in the book, the first film I saw when I was five was Alien, because that just seemed to make sense in his brain, and he was like, “It’s a great film. It’s a piece of art. We should watch it.” It always fascinated me, and I thought that looks like fun to do. I believe at one point my father’s like, “Oh, that’s what your aunt does.” I said, “Oh, okay.” I didn’t think of it. And then, like Leisha, I also didn’t have the grades to get into a university, and I didn’t want to go to one because my school was a college prep school, and I was flailing there. So when it was time to figure out where to go after high school, my mom was like, “Why don’t you try conservatory and do something you want to do?” You’ve done your time with what was required, and that’s how Leisha and I wound up at the same school, but different, maybe five years apart.
Debbie Millman:
You mentioned your aunt. I’m wondering if you can share this story about thinking that someone you were watching in a movie looked like your aunt?
Kate Moennig:
Yeah. Freshman year, I was in guidance class, and Ms. Gallagher wheels in the TV cart to watch something, and you’re like, “Yes, this is a good day.” And she said, “All right, we’re going to watch this movie.” She says the name, it doesn’t ring a bell, and she puts it on, turns off the lights. And I’m sitting there and I’m watching this film, and I’m looking at the woman who’s playing the wife of the lead actor, who was played by Robert Duvall. And the whole time I’m like, “She looks familiar.” I was like, “Why do I know that face?” And then at certain angles, I think to myself, she kind of looks like my dad, but I don’t know why that is. And I just sat there sort of flummoxed for the hour, just not getting it. And then later that night at the dinner table, my dad said, “How was your day?”
And I said, “It was great. We watched this movie, but this woman looks so familiar to me, and I just sort of took me out of it. And I don’t know why, but I feel like I’ve seen the movie before. I don’t know, something familiar about it.” And he said, “What was it called?” And I remember trying to think of the name because the name wasn’t sticking to me, and it finally landed, and I said, “It’s a movie called The Great Santini.” And that’s when my dad just looked at me and he goes, “That’s your Aunt Blythe.” He just was like, “What is your problem?”
Debbie Millman:
But there’s so many angles to that story that I love. I love the fact that you didn’t know that it was her, but I also love the fact that, apparently or clearly, she wasn’t walking around all highfalutin despite the fact that she was one of the great, great actresses of her generation, and that you didn’t know. I think that’s such a wonderful sort of appraisal of her in a lot of ways.
Kate Moennig:
Yeah. To me, she was just my Auntie B, who held my head when I was little from getting carsick and going on car rides, and would bring me backstage on her plays and just be always so warm and loving. She was just my aunt. I never looked at her as an actor. She was my dad’s sister, who he adored, by the way.
Debbie Millman:
She seems like she should be.
Kate Moennig:
Yes.
Debbie Millman:
I saw her once in a restaurant from afar, and I caught her glance. And I don’t know if it was the lighting, I have no idea because I’ve never seen her since, but she had the most spectacular blue eyes I had ever seen, and this was from across a restaurant.
Kate Moennig:
Yeah, they’re striking. Her blue eyes are absolutely striking. Yes, yes.
Debbie Millman:
Oh good. I’m glad that memory is an accurate one. So you both attended the Academy of Dramatic Arts, as you mentioned, in different years. And Leisha, you described your transformation at school as one right out of a movie montage. You cut your hair off, you put on oversized Levi’s, you were feeling yourself. You also discovered, as you mentioned, the drag scene in New York City and found the original cubby hole. Ugh, the cubby hole. How did these discoveries begin to reshape your sense of self?
Leisha Hailey:
I talked to friend Heather a lot about this moment because I met her, my-
Debbie Millman:
First bandmate.
Leisha Hailey:
First bandmate, best friend for a million years. And she talks about the day I came in with my short haircut and how everybody in school was like, “Ah,” because I literally cut it into a short pixie, and I had very long hair when I got to school.
Debbie Millman:
Was it an alternative haircut or just a pixie cut?
Leisha Hailey:
Yes, I found a Gap ad. She had just a short, it wasn’t edgy, it was just more like a pixie, like get rid of it kind of thing.
Kate Moennig:
I remember that ad.
Leisha Hailey:
You do?
Kate Moennig:
Yeah, I do.
Leisha Hailey:
She had short brown hair.
Kate Moennig:
I was going to say she had short, brown, dark hair.
Debbie Millman:
Oh, like Jenny, Jenny in season one.
Kate Moennig:
Hers was more spiky, I think.
Leisha Hailey:
No, no. No, it was more like Jenny. Yes. This was the moment I locked into who I thought I wanted to be, and it was a very private feeling. Although I was doing everything on the outside with the hair and the big jeans and the combat boots and trying to be edgy and sort of wink to my community, like, I’m here. I’m with you,” like, “I’m one of you.” On the inside, I didn’t tell anybody about this. I’d say goodbye to my friends at school, and I’d grab my backpack and go walk down to the cubby hole, and sneak in with my sister’s ID, and sit at the bar, and just take it all in, and have an Amstel Light or whatever.
It was Rolling Rock or whatever I was drinking at the time, and sit there for hours and just observe. I guess it was just my own moment. It’s kind of like what Kate talks about coming out, how she took her time, and it was a personal journey. I guess I would call that my personal journey because once I came out, it felt very a part of everybody. I belonged to the community. I was involved in it, and it’s like I was off to the races, but this moment this year, probably that I had where I’d just go by myself and didn’t tell anybody, was just a sort of private discovery.
Debbie Millman:
Kate, you had a very different experience at school. You wrote that your childhood was a bit of an inconvenience. I got the sense that so was school.
Kate Moennig:
A little bit, a little bit.
Debbie Millman:
In what way? Give us some details.
Kate Moennig:
For the first time, when I got to the academy, once I got the initial, I just moved to New York, and I got all of that excitement out of my system, and the proper school year started. I was really excited to finally be enrolled in a program that I was curious about. So I loved that, and I loved being a theater nerd. I loved reading the plays, and I loved sitting in Samuel French, just finding random plays by playwrights I had never heard of and just reading their work. I loved all of that, but the school itself sometimes drove me nuts because I didn’t understand the casting choices.
Debbie Millman:
In what way?
Kate Moennig:
Well, I was cast as Anna Karenina, and I read the book. To prep it, I actually read the entire book, which is a big mother of a book, and it was a great book. And I thought, “I’m not right for this part,” but I can’t exactly go to the dean of students and say that. And I understand it’s there to stretch your muscle and do your thing. But even then, I was playing casting director. I was like, “I would never be cast as this.”
Debbie Millman:
I don’t know, when you wrote about that, I was thinking, “Well, maybe the casting director was trying to break out of some sort of existing trope about who or how Anna Karenina should be played.”
Kate Moennig:
Possibly, but no, because it was a very by-the-book classical approach to the work. There was nothing out of the box about that production.
Debbie Millman:
What did you each envision as actors for your future? What were you aspiring to be or hoping to achieve?
Leisha Hailey:
I honestly never had a goal in mind, minus Broadway. That just seemed like the big win for me to get on stage, but once I was in school, I lost that a little bit because there’s sort of a commercial push, like, “Oh, when you leave, you got to go get your headshots and you got to go find an agent.” This was just like a foreign language to me. I really was interested in learning how to act and to sort of get rid of all the things I had learned growing up. And I really liked the craft part of it, which is similar to what I like today. I hate trying to get the job, but I love having it, and I love going to work and playing.
Kate Moennig:
Because film was so important to me growing up, I thought I want to play roles I grew up watching. I thought Sigourney Weaver was one of my people that I just idolized, and so when I thought about it as a kid, I thought, “Oh, I would love to play someone like Ripley. I’d love to play someone like Cool Hand Luke.” Like, “Why can’t there be a female version of that?” I was always drawn to the strong female characters and also to the male characters, someone like Lucas Jackson from Cool Hand Luke, because I would watch the female roles and I’d be like, “Oh, you’re just in a kitchen.” I wouldn’t want to do that. I want to be active.
Debbie Millman:
Yeah, you want to be in a film that passes the Bechdel test, right?
Kate Moennig:
Right.
Debbie Millman:
You have said that you learned more from a summer apprenticeship at the Williamstown Theatre Festival than anywhere else. What does one do during a theater apprenticeship?
Kate Moennig:
Everything and anything. That’s what’s great about it. You just enter the lion’s den of the theater, and they’re like, “Okay, you’re an apprentice. You’re available at any time to do absolutely anything.” And you would work in different departments. So, to think about how does a play take shape? What are all the departments? Whether it’s lighting, or costumes, or set design, box office. I mean, all of the little departments being an apprentice would be basically assisting each and every one of those departments at any given time for what they need help with.
Debbie Millman:
That job led to you being considered for the lead in the film Boys Don’t Cry, and that’s huge. I mean, to go from an apprenticeship to a potential starring role, the foundation of a film. And what was that experience like for you?
Kate Moennig:
It was certainly a jump, but yeah, the experience was really quick, and I was very naive, and I didn’t understand how anything worked, any sort of politics or process. I feel like I was just going along for the ride. I was very flattered that my friend Matt even said my name to the people running that film. And I was just all about, “Yes. Sure, I’ll be there. What time? Yes, absolutely. I’m interested.” And I kind of faked it, ’cause all I knew how to do ’cause I hadn’t had any experience.
Debbie Millman:
As I was reading your book and envisioning the various ways in which you navigated to your success, I couldn’t help but wonder what sustains you through the process. And you both became very successful at a fairly young age, but you also had numerous obstacles and rejections and so forth. How do you have the resilience to manage through those obstacles and those rejections? How do you hold onto hope?
Kate Moennig:
Great question.
Leisha Hailey:
I mean, that’s the crux of how you survive in this business or not. I mean, we still battle it today.
Kate Moennig:
Yeah.
Leisha Hailey:
I mean, we obviously have each other to call and say-
Kate Moennig:
Commiserate. Right.
Leisha Hailey:
… “Oh, this happened.” I mean, I just lost a role two weeks ago, and I had to talk to Kate about it. It was for a gay role. I got very close. I was in the mix, as they say, and I lost it to a straight Trump-loving married woman, which I was like, I wasn’t even gay enough to play gay. There are just times you’re like, you don’t understand why things happen.
Kate Moennig:
It’s hard, though. It’s like that’s the million-dollar question. How do you sustain hope in something that’s so inconsistent? And sometimes it rolls off your back easier, and then there’s other times where there’s something that you think you’re just so close to touching, and then it gets out of your grasp, and it’s soul-crushing. Leisha had that recently, I had it earlier this year. The way I see it is that I have to have some level of blind faith, even if there’s no basis to have that, I need it, ’cause what sustained me up until now, which is everything not only happens for a reason, but it’s happened before, it’ll happen again. And I just can’t predict when that is, so I just have to sort of relax into it and trust that it’s going to take care of me in some way or another.
Leisha Hailey:
I’m opposite. I’m opposite. Well, no, I rely on myself and go into what can I control and what do I love to do? What can I create on my own? How can I have ownership in something and not rely on someone else telling me whether I can do something or not? Those are the times I’ve been the happiest in my life because you’re not waiting. It’s a thing that can really depress you if you just wait around for someone else to say, “You’re good enough for this,” or, “We like you for these reasons.” It’s like, I go into my creativity basically, and that’s where I can just get through the day in a much happier and fulfilling way. I mean, it’s very much like why Kate and I have been doing so many things together over the last five years is because we did need ownership finally over things we love to do, and we basically created a lot of businesses together because of that.
Debbie Millman:
Yeah. That was one of the main reasons I started the podcast when I did 20 years ago. I was just so sick of being rejected or not being good enough, and felt like my creative spirit was just being extinguished day by day. And it was a bit of a Hail Mary to my creativity at the time.
Leisha Hailey:
Yeah, so you understand.
Debbie Millman:
Yeah.
Kate Moennig:
Yeah. After getting beaten down enough and realizing what you don’t want to do, I think Leisha and I were just like, “Let’s take some ownership of something for once instead of being told what to do.” And it led into the podcast, it’s led into other things, and it certainly led into this book, and there’s a level of autonomy that feels very satisfying.
Leisha Hailey:
And peaceful.
Kate Moennig:
And peaceful.
Leisha Hailey:
Yeah.
Kate Moennig:
We’re just around the people that we want to be around, and that’s so incredibly important to create and to conjure up ideas and [inaudible 00:32:01].
Leisha Hailey:
It helps those moments, like casting moments, where we’re still in the same muckety-muck that we’re like.
Kate Moennig:
Yeah, because we’ll still get calls like, “Hey, we’re going to send you some sides. Did you put yourself on tape?” And you’re like…
Leisha Hailey:
But it makes the hits hurt less.
Kate Moennig:
It makes the hits hurt less. Yeah.
Debbie Millman:
Leisha, I want to talk a little bit about your music as well.
Leisha Hailey:
Sure.
Debbie Millman:
Rather than pursuing acting full-time after school, you actually started a band with Heather Grody, who you mentioned earlier, the band the Murmurs. And after a bidding war, you signed with MCA. I love this, mostly because they’d signed Madonna a decade before.
Leisha Hailey:
Yes.
Debbie Millman:
Going back and forth between music and acting has been one of the through lines in your career. What made you decide to pursue music before acting at that time?
Leisha Hailey:
Again, I think I just, I’m a girl who follows her heart, and I don’t know if it’s necessarily landed me in the best places, or I guess career, I don’t know, improving places. I love being in a band. I love writing music. I used to love touring. I don’t know if I love it so much anymore, but there was-
Kate Moennig:
Let’s find out.
Debbie Millman:
I was going to say, you’re going on a pretty big book tour.
Leisha Hailey:
I know. I keep telling Kate, I’m like, “Get ready.” No, I just love, again, I love the freedom, and I’ve never really been a career goal girl. I kind of just go with what I’m feeling in the moment, and music was one of those things that took me on a completely different course.
Debbie Millman:
After several world tours for acclaimed albums, you found yourself at a barbecue being told about a television pilot titled Earthlings. Kate, while Leisha was touring with her band, you were modeling, you were building your acting career, you were cast in the WB show, Young Americans, you were in several notable episodes in the Law and Order franchise, and then you were sent the same script for Earthlings. So you were both sent the same script for the same part on the same show.
Leisha Hailey:
Yes.
Kate Moennig:
That’s right.
Leisha Hailey:
And actually, we weren’t sent the script, just the sides.
Kate Moennig:
I was sent the script.
Leisha Hailey:
Oh, I wasn’t. I wasn’t that important.
Kate Moennig:
Oh, I was. I got the script.
Debbie Millman:
You actually came face-to-face. You were face-to-face during the audition process as you were competing for the same role.
Kate Moennig:
Yeah.
Debbie Millman:
What was your first impression of each other?
Kate Moennig:
I said, “That’s the yogurt girl.”
Debbie Millman:
Right. Alice was in a commercial.
Leisha Hailey:
Yes. Yeah, yeah.
Debbie Millman:
Leisha, really.
Kate Moennig:
There she is, the Queen of Probiotics. That’s her. And I was like, “Oh, that’s what she looks like in person,” ’cause the commercial was on all the time, Leisha. I mean, every show, it’s like you couldn’t get away from it. It was always there. So you must have done pretty well financially for a minute. So that was my-
Debbie Millman:
And she also had a prop, right?
Kate Moennig:
And she had a prop, and I thought, “Oh, so that’s the only other person testing,” because I’d been told there’s only one other girl going to be testing for this part.
Debbie Millman:
Tell us the prop, Leisha.
Leisha Hailey:
Well, I watched Happy Days growing up, and the Fonz was the thing that I thought had that swagger that maybe I could bring to a female, and I was like, “I’m going to have a comb just like the Fonz had.” And I thought, “Oh, she’s a hairdresser.” And I used it in the two auditions before this moment, where we were both testing, which is the last phase of getting a part. And so I had had this thing with me the whole time, but when Kate sat down next to me and I saw this incredibly beautiful woman with these big red lips and rocker hair all in black, and I was like, well, it’s never going to happen, but my prop it was a good idea, and maybe if I don’t get it, I could tell her she can have it.
Debbie Millman:
Kate, you won the role of Shane McCutcheon.
Kate Moennig:
I did, but I didn’t think so. I didn’t think I got it. I actually thought I lost it. I really didn’t believe that I had a chance. I simplified it too much when I saw the prop that she had in her back pocket.
Debbie Millman:
Yeah, that psyched you out.
Kate Moennig:
Yeah, a little bit.
Debbie Millman:
But Leisha, Ilene Chaiken, the creator of The L Word, which thankfully the name from Earthlings was changed to The L Word, created the role of Alice Pieszecki for you because she wanted you in the show so badly.
Leisha Hailey:
That’s what we heard later, she told us that story, which kind of blew both of our minds, but I thought it must have been in the script. And again, I didn’t have the script. So I guess once they gave Kate the role, they were still interested in me in some sort of capacity. And I don’t know if they rewrote one or wrote one. I don’t know how this part came about, but all of a sudden, a week something later I was getting faxed these new sides for this new character, Alice. And that actually, when I read them, I was like, “Oh, this is it. This feels right.”
Debbie Millman:
Yeah. The two roles couldn’t be more different. Kate, Shane was initially described as a womanizing, serial monogamist.
Kate Moennig:
That’s right. Yes, she was.
Debbie Millman:
I don’t even know what that means.
Kate Moennig:
Thank you. Neither do I. You’re the only other person who’s agreed with me so far outwardly about that.
Debbie Millman:
Yeah, Roxane didn’t either. I’m like, “What’s a womanizing serial monogamist?
Kate Moennig:
It’s confounding, isn’t it? It’s confounding, right?
Debbie Millman:
Absolutely bewildering.
Kate Moennig:
Yes.
Debbie Millman:
So, how did you know how to first inhabit that character?
Kate Moennig:
Well, after I overanalyzed just that one little description to death, I just thought, I don’t even know how on earth I would play that, so I’ll just play the scene. I think my biggest concern was that she would be really corny, because you see-
Debbie Millman:
Really?
Kate Moennig:
Yeah, because you see that the way she was described, and maybe it was the, because I had gotten the script, so maybe it’s what I had read in the script, or maybe it was in the dummy sides we were given, because the sides we were given were never part of the actual show. There was something about her because she’s this womanizing, very confident, and I thought that could kind of veer on cheesy. And I think maybe my brain was going towards eighties movies, stereotypes of the smarmy cool guy. And I thought, “Okay, well I need to steer away from that, ’cause I don’t know how to do it, and I’ll gross myself out if I try.” So I’ll just underplay everything and make them come to me and have them lean in as opposed to me leaning forward. And that’s how I approached it, and I guess it worked.
Debbie Millman:
And you made the girls cry.
Kate Moennig:
I guess I made some girls cry, apparently. Off camera, but yeah, I made the girls cry.
Debbie Millman:
Leisha, you were the only outcast member when The L Word first aired, and I found that somewhat ironic given that you were playing somebody bisexual. But I believe you were initially outed when you were in the Murmurs by a journalist. Am I getting that right?
Leisha Hailey:
Yeah, Ricky Rachman on, oh God, what channel was he? It was something in L.A.
Kate Moennig:
Radio show?
Leisha Hailey:
It was a radio show, and Heather and I were on it. And it was a quick moment. We just didn’t expect it. And he’s like, “You like guys or girls?” And we’re like, “Uh…” And he’s like, “You like girls, right? You guys both like girls. You like girls.” It was very sexist and strange. I don’t even remember how we reacted, but I know that the record company lost their minds and freaked out because all of a sudden it was back then, which would’ve been mid-nineties, maybe 90 or early, maybe like ’94, ’93, it was unheard of. It was like ruining for people. And I got to tell you, it automatically right away, we got boxed in, and all of a sudden we were like, “The gay band. The gay band.” And it was just where we were opening for big bands like Bush, or we were very alternative radio at the time. That started to change. You could feel like the guys that used to be into us were all of a sudden turning on us. I don’t know. It was pretty wild.
Debbie Millman:
Kate, you’ve said that you only realized you were queer while filming The L Word. What did it feel like to discover that the character you were portraying was also helping you become yourself?
Kate Moennig:
Well, I wouldn’t say I necessarily discovered it when I was doing the show. I think it solidified it, more importantly, and it felt like a wild twist of fate. And it felt incredibly safe because I had a support system, and I wasn’t just trying to figure it out on my own in New York City. It was a very fortunate environment to have that, solidifying that discovery in yourself.
Debbie Millman:
I understand you both had to take a four-hour lesbian sex class on set to prepare for the show. What was that like, and what kinds of things were you taught?
Kate Moennig:
Leisha remembers it better than I do. I know that it was held at our hotel in a conference room, and they had a sex expert. And we all sat on the other side of this very, very long table, and she had brought all of her props in some very large briefcase. And I think she had a dry board up and she was pointing to things, and then I think-
Leisha Hailey:
There were sex toys splayed all across the table.
Kate Moennig:
Displayed across the table that we could… It was like the Please Touch Museum. You could touch things and be like, “Oh, okay, what’s this do?”
Leisha Hailey:
Hold things. Yeah.
Kate Moennig:
And then I believe Rose Troche had compiled a montage of all of the best-
Leisha Hailey:
Lesbian sex scenes.
Kate Moennig:
Lesbian sex scenes from cinema history, and used that as like, “Hey, I just want you guys to put this in your brain just to understand, in case you don’t, because the show really wasn’t the first of its kind and the majority of the cast was straight.” I don’t remember specifics outside of that entire day intensive seminar.
Leisha Hailey:
Well, it was a lot of, like you said, holding props and sex toys, and how does this work? And where do you put this? And how does this attach to that? And how many fingers go in this? And what’s the proper way to point your finger? And what does a girl look like when she does this? And who sits on what?
Kate Moennig:
Yeah, what’s the best position? Is there a good position? Is there a better position? What’s this? And then maybe Rose would chime in and say, “Well, for camera, maybe it’s best if we do this.” It was-
Leisha Hailey:
And then a lot of people would look my way and I’d be like, “Sure.”
Kate Moennig:
Here’s a comb.
Leisha Hailey:
Here’s a comb. Let me show you what you can do with a comb.
Kate Moennig:
Yeah.
Debbie Millman:
The L Word launched on January 18th, 2004, to critical acclaim, instant popularity, and Allison Glock wrote this about the show in the New York Times. “Before The L Word, female gay characters barely existed on television. Interested viewers had a search and second-guess playing parlor games to suss out a character’s sexuality.” Jackne in Lazy, Joe on Facts of Life, Xena in Gabrielle. Showtime’s decision in January 2004 to air The L Word, which follows the lives of a group of fashionable Los Angeles gays, was akin to ending a drought with a monsoon. Women who had rarely seen themselves on this small screen were suddenly able to watch gay characters not only living complex, exciting lives, but also making love in restaurant bathrooms and in swimming pools. There was no tentative audience courtship. Instead, there was sex, raw and unbridled in that “my goodness” way that only cable allows.”
Kate Moennig:
Wow.
Leisha Hailey:
That’s perfect.
Debbie Millman:
How’s that for a time capsule?
Leisha Hailey:
Ugh, I love it.
Kate Moennig:
Wow. Wow.
Leisha Hailey:
It felt good.
Kate Moennig:
I remember that.
Debbie Millman:
I just couldn’t wait for that show to be on every Sunday. Were you surprised by the public response to the show when it first aired?
Leisha Hailey:
Surprised is an understatement. I always thought this show was going to be this seedy underground indie show that no one saw, but a few people would know about. I even thought when I went up to shoot the show, it would feel that way, like a janky little production. So the whole experience from front to back was just jaw-dropping.
Kate Moennig:
I think. I felt like this could actually be pretty good because during that first season, we had Kelly Lynch and Rosanna Arquette agreeing to come on and maybe a few other people that I’m missing at the moment, but… Lolita Davidovich was another one. I thought this could be really good. There’s something outside of the box that this show is doing that no one’s seen yet, but it’s so hard to predict exactly what’s going to happen. I do remember people were getting kind of nervous about the reviews coming out.
Debbie Millman:
Well, and it was more than just the sex. It was the fashion. It was the representation, the normalization, and the sexiness as much as the sex.
Kate Moennig:
Yes. Yes.
Leisha Hailey:
Yes. Exactly.
Debbie Millman:
And Kate, Shane, we talked about this a little bit, but Shane really became an iconic archetype, parts swagger, parts sensitivity. She’s now one of the most revered characters in television history, and it wasn’t just gay women loved you. Straight women talked about Shane, fell in love with her. She became referred to, I love this, as a gateway lesbian.
Kate Moennig:
Yep. She’s like bacon.
Debbie Millman:
Yes.
Kate Moennig:
Gay bacon. Yeah.
Leisha Hailey:
Gay bacon is my favorite, Kate. You’ve never said that.
Debbie Millman:
And Leisha, you stated that the writers started writing you, Leisha, into Alice, the character, and this is a question for both of you. What qualities of your real selves do you think shaped your characters on television? I know I’m quite a bubbly person, very optimistic. I’m pretty experimental in life. I can speak for myself. A lot of me went into Alice, and Alice started coming into me as well. I was learning from her as much as maybe she was learning from me. I think it was probably a pretty even combo deal in the end.
Kate Moennig:
We all sort of morphed into our characters at a certain point. Well, like I had said, I never wanted to approach Shane as some smarmy pickup artist, so maybe I probably put my own shyness on display and use that to my advantage instead of trying to be this otherworldly thing that I don’t think I could have done ’cause it would’ve read so incorrectly. And false, and then eventually they start to bleed in together.
Debbie Millman:
Yeah, I mean, there was no question even from the pilot that Shane had soul.
Kate Moennig:
Right, right. But I say shyness. I’ll take soul, it sounds better. But yeah, I’ll take it.
Debbie Millman:
Little peace on it.
Kate Moennig:
Yeah, exactly. Those things I think just came from me naturally, just making sense of it, especially during the pilot and during the first season, because you’re like, “Am I doing this right? Is this okay? We’re still trying to figure this out.” Leisha and I, our roles, they were not really developed that first season. I think towards the end there, we started to get some storylines, but for at least the first half of that season, we were sort of the Greek chorus comic relief bit.
Debbie Millman:
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Leisha Hailey:
It’s odd. It’s a strange experience to play a character for that many years. I found myself missing Alice in those 10 years between and thinking about what she’d be doing or how she ended up. And I wanted the show to come back. I never thought in my wildest dreams it would, but it was sort of part of why we started talking about how to get it back on the air. You miss these people you play. They become a part of you.
Kate Moennig:
Yeah.
Debbie Millman:
Yeah. The L Word ended its run in 2009, sadly. Kate, you went on to star in the Showtime hit Ray Donovan for six years. Leisha, you continued performing in a new band, Uh Huh Her.
Leisha Hailey:
Yep.
Debbie Millman:
In 2019, Showtime rebooted The L Word in the form of L Word: Generation Q. You both reprised your roles and signed on as executive producers. But in the book, you state that in rewatching parts of the original series, as you were preparing to reboot the show, you said it gave you the flu.
Kate Moennig:
Yeah.
Debbie Millman:
Why is that?
Kate Moennig:
Well, maybe it was partially the hairstyles, the outfits, obviously we’re trying to figure out how to play these characters, that I think towards the end felt more natural. But back then, the very beginning, it’s trying to squeeze your foot into a shoe to see if it fits right. And it was just like watching a moving yearbook of high school and all of your awkward moments on television, and maybe we got through two episodes and we’re like, “Turn it off, turn it off. I can’t do it anymore. Stop. Stop.”
Debbie Millman:
Did you feel a responsibility in Generation Q to correct or expand some of the original tropes in the show around representation?
Leisha Hailey:
Yeah, we had a lot of very high hopes when this show got picked up. I wouldn’t say we were going to right the wrongs. I mean, it’s just like we wanted to have a voice in the room this time. It felt like we could maybe do some things differently.
Kate Moennig:
Yeah.
Debbie Millman:
Are you disappointed with the way the reboot turned out?
Kate Moennig:
Yeah.
Leisha Hailey:
Yeah.
Debbie Millman:
I got that sense in the book, and I was really sad about it, although-
Kate Moennig:
So are we.
Debbie Millman:
Yeah. It’s interesting because I read that the X-Files might be rebooted and Gillian Anderson might come back to reprise her role of Dana Scully. And I was thinking these iconic television shows that really represented a very specific moment in culture, I love when they can come back and then remake what is possible as culture evolves. And I was thinking because it was, I think, not quite the show we would’ve wanted to have as both the performers and the audience speaking for both here. It would be nice to see where Alice, Bette, Tina, and Shane ended up in another 10 years.
Leisha Hailey:
It would’ve been great. Oh, or you mean from now?
Debbie Millman:
From now. Yeah.
Kate Moennig:
Oh goodness.
Leisha Hailey:
Okay. So like L Word: Hospice.
Kate Moennig:
L Word: Hospice.
Debbie Millman:
Yeah, no, The Golden L Girls.
Kate Moennig:
Or the L Word: Meadow Creek Assisted Living.
Debbie Millman:
I mean, they’re doing it with Sex in the City and Just Like That.
Kate Moennig:
It’s true.
Debbie Millman:
But I think that the show suffers from some of the things that L Word: Generation Q suffered from, which was sort of force-fitting some of the-
Leisha Hailey:
Yes, box checking. I do think that the network missed something. And when it comes to IP, people think you can lean on that and just use the words and cast it how you want, or recreate it in such a way that… The audience is smarter than that, and the audience has a stake in this, right? And we assumed when we got-
Kate Moennig:
We had big dreams.
Leisha Hailey:
… that everyone that we all love, including ourselves, was coming back.
Kate Moennig:
Yeah. We thought even Ilene at one point said, “Season six can be a fever dream. It never existed. Get Jenny back. Get everyone back.”
Leisha Hailey:
Everybody.
Kate Moennig:
We thought we even thought-
Debbie Millman:
Marina.
Leisha Hailey:
Sure.
Kate Moennig:
Anyone and everyone, it’s like, let’s get them back, if they want to, in some form. And so we had really, really, really high hopes. And unfortunately, the powers that be thought, oh no, what’s most important is the name, not the substance underneath it, and that’s actually the wrong way to approach it. And maybe just maybe Gen Q would’ve had found a life of its own, but the moment you put that L Word title on it, there is an expectation. And that expectation, if it’s not met, everyone’s going to know it really quick.
Debbie Millman:
Yeah. Generation Q should have been a spinoff.
Kate Moennig:
It should have just been its own thing without the L Word attached, and that was a mistake.
Debbie Millman:
Do you think it might come back again with just the four of you or more of the original cast? Or would you even want it to?
Leisha Hailey:
I say in the book, I’m always happy to slap on my suit, my Alice suit, and get going. I think this time, let me answer it this way, we would have to have a lot more say and feel a lot safer in the situation, as far as what we’re getting ourselves into.
Kate Moennig:
Yeah, you can never say never, but I completely agree. It would have to be a very specific and very thought-out situation to even entertain it.
Leisha Hailey:
But to play the characters again?
Kate Moennig:
But to play the characters again? The characters are an absolute blast to play. And they’re actually a part of us at this point.
Debbie Millman:
They’re a part of all of us. I don’t think that there’s a gay woman living in this world that doesn’t feel like they’re family with Shane and Alice and Tina and Bette.
Kate Moennig:
And that’s a beautiful compliment to hear. Yeah.
Leisha Hailey:
Yes, it is.
Debbie Millman:
Yeah. We’re podcasting. So let’s talk about your podcast.
Kate Moennig:
Let’s go.
Debbie Millman:
Your podcast Pants began as a phone call between the two of you during COVID. And the name Pants actually comes from the original storyline of Pants as a nickname came from, I believe it was-
Leisha Hailey:
Mia.
Debbie Millman:
Mia, Jenny, because of how close you were. So, talk a little bit about the metaphor of Pants.
Leisha Hailey:
I mean, Mia nailed it back then before we even realized that we were always together. She was like, I never see one of you without the other. That’s where it came from. But it is so true, and now here we are, 20-something years later, those two legs walking through the world together.
Kate Moennig:
Yeah. We had to think of a name, and we were tossing out some ideas, and then Leisha remembered what Mia called us, and she goes, “Pants.” And now I think it’s, honestly, the word makes me laugh. If anytime I hear it, it just makes me laugh. And it was sort of the answer was right in front of us the whole time.
Debbie Millman:
Are either one of you particularly territorial about which leg you are?
Leisha Hailey:
No, we’ve never even been asked.
Kate Moennig:
I mean, I’ve never had that conversation. I think we’re both right-handed, so we have to figure out.
Leisha Hailey:
I’ll take either side, Kate, whatever you-
Kate Moennig:
You’re ambidextrous? Okay.
Leisha Hailey:
Yeah.
Kate Moennig:
Cool. I’m right-dominated, so okay.
Debbie Millman:
Part of the charm of the podcast is a lot of the charm that you first shared with the world on The L Word, there’s a very deep, soulful, witty, cheeky relationship that you are extremely generous and revealing and sharing with us. How has the show impacted how you think about your friendship?
Kate Moennig:
You mean the show as in The L Word?
Leisha Hailey:
No, Pants.
Debbie Millman:
No, the show as in Pants. We’re talking about Pants now.
Kate Moennig:
Sorry. Sorry.
Debbie Millman:
L Word is in our rearview.
Kate Moennig:
By L Word, sorry, forgive me. Impacted, well, our friendship turned into a business, and then other ideas started to spawn. And now we’re working on a few things. And a lot of our conversations are around work. And so sometimes it takes a minute to say, “Oh, I also want to talk to my friend.” So it can be a challenge at times. Even just find like a sliver of the day where both of us are free, just to have a friendly chitchat without going through a to-do list or an email that involves seven other people.
Leisha Hailey:
We also had to stop talking a lot because it was a weekly episode. We’d say, “Save it for the pod.”
Kate Moennig:
Save it for the pod.
Leisha Hailey:
And then that became kind of sad because I was like, “But I want to tell you. I don’t want to wait. And then distance happens.”
Kate Moennig:
And then also it was the sort of thing where, okay, I have to save this for the next four days until we record again. But by the time you sit down to record, you lost the gumption to even talk about it, and you forgot. And so then you didn’t get to share that point. And so oddly, if you’re not careful, it actually can create a difference. And so it’s a matter of being mindful to bridge that distance. And I believe it can happen. It just takes a level of always being conscious of it, not taking the friendship for granted and not always driving in the fast lane of business. And it takes compromise [inaudible 00:57:12].
Leisha Hailey:
We had to talk about that a lot through the last five years. Things would come up around that.
Kate Moennig:
We had to talk a lot about it this year, I think. I feel like this year a lot of it came to a head, and I think we’re on the other side of it now.
Leisha Hailey:
Yeah.
Debbie Millman:
Is it because of the extension into the book?
Kate Moennig:
Well, the book was coming out,and there’s just a number of things that were happening, and everything felt like it was moving at 50 miles an hour, and everything involved people outside of the two of us, as well as the two of us.
Leisha Hailey:
And It’s also very important. All these things are very important to us that we’re building together, so you don’t want to let it go and slip it off. So it was like a priority game. I want to just go hang out with Kate and go, I don’t know, to a batting cage. Not that we did that, but just something stupid with my friend, but I also need to make sure we get this list done and return these emails or these things aren’t going to happen. It was a lot to juggle.
Debbie Millman:
Your brand-new book, So Gay For You, is a continuation of your friendship in the form of a dual memoir. And I was looking this up, I don’t know if I’ve ever read a dual memoir before. What was it like writing something together?
Leisha Hailey:
Well, we actually didn’t write it together, but we mapped it together with our editor and came up with thematic chapters and then either allowed ourselves to go off and write separately, or some of the chapters regarding The L Word we had to sort of split up like, “Okay, about the day at work, and I’ll talk about what happened when we got home that night,” because we had the same shared experience. We didn’t want to just read his two perspectives on the same thing. We wanted to actually talk about different circumstances. So it was a lot about that’s what we did together. But the other stuff, we just sat on our respective couches and wrote.
Kate Moennig:
And also themes as well, because we were writing this book also gave us finally an opportunity to maybe reflect or talk about things that had never been discussed. And one of them was pay parity. So it was a question of like, “Okay, who wants to talk about pay parity? Who wants to talk about this? Who wants to talk about that?” And so we pretty much split that to-do list down the middle, and we each got a side and expanded on it.
Debbie Millman:
Yeah. When I told Roxane that you each got $15,000 for the pilot, she gasped.
Kate Moennig:
That was before taxes and commissions.
Leisha Hailey:
Yeah, right.
Debbie Millman:
Basically, you did it for free.
Kate Moennig:
Yeah.
Leisha Hailey:
Well, but not in our souls.
Kate Moennig:
Not in our souls.
Leisha Hailey:
But yeah, our bank accounts, that didn’t make a dent in our bank accounts. It was more money than either one of us had seen, but…
Kate Moennig:
Yeah, yeah.
Leisha Hailey:
But when you think about the financial burden that happens when you’re off a show, I wouldn’t say that it really built us up to, I think people think we’re a lot different than what we are, or we should be living somewhere a lot differently or… There’s an expectation to this career. People project a lot of ideas onto you. And I think that was part of what we wanted to crack open, was we’re actually not what you think. We’re a lot more human, and we’ve had a lot of difficult times that we’ve gone through together, and that was one of them.
Kate Moennig:
Yeah, it was.
Debbie Millman:
You’ve said that writing the memoir made you more vulnerable than you ever expected.
Kate Moennig:
Mm-hmm.
Leisha Hailey:
Yes.
Debbie Millman:
In what way?
Kate Moennig:
There’s no place to hide, I suppose, with writing a memoir. You don’t get to hide behind someone else’s writing like you would on a TV show and say, “I don’t know. I just played the character. I didn’t create it.” It’s yours, everything, flaws and all. And that is probably the most exposing I know that I’ve ever been. I know Leisha as well. It’s cracking a shell open, but hopefully people see themselves in it or can at least relate or see that, “Oh, that happened to me too.”
Debbie Millman:
Well, it’s also a wonderful portrait of who you are as people.
Kate Moennig:
Thank you.
Leisha Hailey:
Thank you.
Debbie Millman:
And it’s beautifully written. What was interesting to me as a reader was that you could tell beyond looking at the titles of each chapter who was writing what, and you both wrote it in a way that becomes complementary. It’s not so stylistically jarring that you feel like you’re in two different worlds. This is your world together. You created this dual world that you both inhabit equally. And I really love that about the book.
Kate Moennig:
Thank you, Debbie, so much for saying that.
Leisha Hailey:
Oh my god. Thank you.
Kate Moennig:
It really means a lot because that was one of our concerns, are people are going to, first of all, are they going to care? And secondly, is it too see-saw-y in terms of perspective and tone?
Debbie Millman:
No.
Kate Moennig:
Thank you so much.
Debbie Millman:
It was wonderful. I love them. And I love the way that you had different perspectives that you shared and memories that were ever so slightly different or similar. I have two last questions for you. Leisha, at the end of So Gay For You, you state, “Through all these conversations, through this book, through these many revolutions around the sun, our friendship grows every day. So does my understanding of just how important friendship is.” And so this is really a question for both of you about that statement. What would you say is the most important component to nurturing a multi-decade long-term friendship?
Kate Moennig:
Great question.
Leisha Hailey:
I think one of the things that I’ve prioritized a lot in my life with Kate in this relationship is communication. Because I think in friendships, it can be a very uncomfortable thing to talk about an intimacy that we share that isn’t sexual or romantic, but we can hurt each other and we can disappoint each other. And what I want most of all in life is to look at Kate at 90-something years old. I mean, maybe I won’t be able to do that because I’ll be way older, but you know what I mean. I want to grow old with Kate, and it’s going to take a lot of work in that I will change as a person. Kate will change as a person. Our hopes and dreams might change. We share a lot right now, but we might not always share the same things down the road. And I just think it’s so important to focus in on that as friends. I don’t think people talk about it enough and how important that is.
Kate Moennig:
I watched my mom being an only child, have really profoundly close intimate relationships with her friends and so much so that they were all my aunts and uncles. And one thing that I always took from her was consistency and how a friendship long form, there’s a level of consistency in that you’re consistently showing up for the other person. That just makes sense to me. Nothing is more of a turnoff than not being able to rely on something that means so much, especially in regards to something that holds my heart and in such a big way. So I think consistency, whatever that means, is invaluable.
Debbie Millman:
My last question is about the future. Tell us about your tour. This is pretty spectacular.
Kate Moennig:
Yeah. Well…
Debbie Millman:
I’m so excited.
Kate Moennig:
I guess Leisha is going to teach me the ropes of how to go on tour.
Leisha Hailey:
Well, listen, I didn’t fly airplanes all around, so this will be new.
Kate Moennig:
We’re going to start off-
Leisha Hailey:
We’re really excited that the tour is starting when the book comes out. So it sort of feels like a giant celebration. And like a freedom to this book, like we’re the only ones who have it right now, minus people like you who have been able to read it. But we get to finally share it with everybody, and it feels like we’ll be face to face when that happens. And that’s exciting. It’s not a week later. It’s like right when it happens, we’re going to be together with people that care.
Kate Moennig:
And not only that, but also this was always planned since we agreed to do this book, that it would be coming out in June of 2025. But June of 2025 feels so much bigger now than it did in 2022 or three, whatever it was, that Leisha and I started this journey. So that holds so much weight. And it’s like, “No, we’re going to stand up. We’re going to use our voice. We’re going to be loud. You’re not going to push us down.” And hopefully, this book will be a stepping stone for that.
Leisha Hailey:
And it’s so much about community, and that we actually get to be together to release it.
Kate Moennig:
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Debbie Millman:
Well, Kate Moennig and Leisha Hailey, thank you, thank you, thank you for making so much work that matters, so much work that is so important. And thank you for joining me today on Design Matters.
Leisha Hailey:
Thank you very much, Debbie. It’s a pleasure. We loved it.
Kate Moennig:
Oh, Debbie. Thank so much. Yes, thank you again.
Debbie Millman:
To know more about Kate and Leisha, listen to their podcast, the Pants Podcast, wherever you love your podcast, and you can read more about their brand new book at sogayforyou.com. This is the 20th year we’ve been podcasting Design Matters, and I’d like to thank you for listening. And remember, we can talk about making a difference, we can make a difference, or we can do both. I’m Debbie Millman, and I look forward to talking with you again soon.
Curtis Fox:
Design Matters is produced for the TED Audio Collective by Curtis Fox Productions. The interviews are usually recorded at the Master’s in Branding Program at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, the first and longest-running branding program in the world. The editor in chief of Design Matters Media is Emily Weiland.