AE: I used to watch 90210 when I was a teenager. Not so much in its later years, but...
JB: No one watched it in its later years, but I played the nanny to Ian Ziering and Lindsay Price in the last season--the nympho nanny that had sex with everyone but pretended to be this virginal, virtuous girl. That was a lot of fun, and my first big primetime TV gig. It wasn't a fun set to work on, because it was the last season and everyone just wanted out, but it was a fun experience.
Then I did an episode of a 1999 sitcom called Zoe with Selma Blair, and that was a lot of fun. Sitcoms are the ideal television gig. I love comedy, that is what I really love to do. It's in front of an audience, and the rehearsal process is a lot like theater: four days you’re rehearsing, and then on Friday you get up in front of an audience do it for the camera. It's a perfect marriage of theater and television.
Comedy is also just more fun to do, and it pays well, which enables you to do your own projects on the side or do theater in the summer, something that you really love to do.
AE: How did you get into television?
JB: This is going to sound incredibly artsy and pompous but the truth is, I believe that film and television are the best way to reach a mass audience. I loved doing The Vagina Monologues, but I was doing it for weeks on end to sold-out audiences of four hundred people per night, and I'm thinking "this is not reaching the kind of audience that ideally you'd want it to reach." I don't expect early in my career to be able to do the kind of projects that I believe are politically valuable or important to the world, but I am hoping, like most actresses, to be able to make the sort of films that I want to make. Acting is something I love to do. I love to perform and I love the art, the craft of it.
AE: In a perfect world, that's what you would do?
JB: In a perfect world, I would love to have a sitcom, do film or television in the summer, save my money, start a production company and do the kind of films that I want to see done.
AE: What kind of films?
JB: I do have a soft spot for queer film. I want to make really well-done lesbian films.
AE (laughing): I don't think those are allowed.
JB: I think you're right. I think we don't often have the money to do it, and the lesbians that do have the money, many of them don't want to see their money go to that. There are a few women working their asses off to get it done, but in general, we just don't have the means. I might want to get into directing someday, but I still love acting, and for now I would love to be involved with really good queer film makers and make quality lesbian films.
AE: If someone gave you a million dollars right now to make a film, what kind of film would you make?
JB: A romantic comedy, a lesbian romantic comedy because we take ourselves too seriously. Now that we're starting to get more visibility, we need to lighten up. The angry lesbian stereotype is true--I'm one of them--but underneath that there is fun and frolic and we need to show that a little bit more now. I hear "angry lesbian" a lot and that is something that we need to change, which might be what some of the mainstream lesbian stuff is trying to do, but I think we could go a little farther with it. We are in desperate need of a well-done romantic lesbian comedy.
