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Behind the Lesbian Story Line on “Grey’s Anatomy”

This spring, ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy introduced a lesbian story line with a romance between the confident and sexually voracious Dr. Callie Torres (Sara Ramirez) and the professionally ambitious yet personally restrained Dr. Erica Hahn (Brooke Smith).

The story line offered both the drama Grey’s is known for and – despite some marginally exploitative threesome talk – a truthfulness network television has rarely achieved when it comes to lesbian relationships. For Callie and Erica, the season ended with a kiss, and what could be the beginning of a passionate romance.

Photo credit: Randy Holmes/ABC

With that kiss, Callie and Erica became the only regular lesbian/bisexual female characters currently on network television. This is also the first time that two regular characters on a network show have begun a lesbian romance, as opposed to one becoming involved with a new lesbian character introduced expressly for that relationship.

To prepare for the story line, which will continue next season, Grey’s consulted with GLAAD, which worked with the series’ writers on a previous story line about a transgender character with breast cancer. GLAAD invited Nikki Weiss, an out producer and manager also known for her appearance on Oprah, and Trish Doolan, an out writer, director and actor best known for her film April’s Shower, to participate in workshop sessions with the writers and actors. Weiss and Doolan spoke to AfterEllen.com about what it was like to work on Grey’s and what they thought of the story line on-screen.

Nikki Weiss (left) and Trish Doolan

AfterEllen.com: When did the people from Grey’s approach you about doing this story line? Nikki Weiss: GLAAD actually contacted me in March and said, “The Grey’s writers really want to write this story line and ensure that they understand the emotional journey of discovering that you’re a lesbian – or at least in love with another woman – when you’re an adult.” So I said, “Fantastic! I’d be happy to help.”

AE: Is this something that either of you have done before, consulting on another writer’s stories and characters? Trish Doolan: Well, I’m a writer; I actually write. So a lot of times people will just call me to read their scripts. But not to the extent that this was – coming in for a formal meeting and sitting around with all of the writers. It was really very well-done … I just thought their need to know and want to be truthful, and everything like that – it was just really professional.

NW: We actually sat first with the actresses in a room with GLAAD as well – they were present at all of the meetings … to make sure it was accurate and fair and inclusive. And first we met with the actresses and executive producer … and that was like an hour and a half meeting. And then we were into the writers’ room with the entire writing staff and a stenographer [laughs], just to make sure they got everything. And they were really intense on understanding and telling the story line from a source of truth.

AE: What was it like to work with the writers and the actresses? NW: I was just really impressed that they wanted to tell this story so honestly. And they really wanted to understand the relationship and the dynamic – falling in love with somebody of the same gender. And their questions were really thought out. And the writers were just really invested in that, and so were the actresses, actually. They had a lot of great questions.

Brooke Smith (left) and Sara Ramirez Photo credit: Randy Holmes/ABC

AE: What kinds of questions were they asking you? NW: They asked us how do we identify ourselves: Are we lesbians or did we just fall in love with another woman? They specifically asked things like, “When was the first time you were conscious of an attraction to another woman?” “Did you ever sleep with a man to prove to yourself that you weren’t gay?”

So they really just wanted to understand the spectrum. “When was the first moment you knew you were a lesbian, or identified with that? Does it matter?” Specific fears about coming out. How your friends reacted to it.

TD: And how everyone is now. Did you lose any people in your life, like friends, family, things like that. And then about our relationship now, and relationships that we’ve been in, and whether they ended because of someone couldn’t handle being gay, or was it a normal breakup as other relationships break up. …

They were really wanting to be truthful to the two characters they’re focusing on in the woman-woman relationship … because I think what they were going for is one of the characters on their show, maybe it’s not that she’s necessarily gay, but she falls in love with this person. … And that’s actually what was one of my stories in the past. A woman I was with never was with another woman again. She just said she fell in love with me. And for her it wasn’t a gender thing; it was just about a person. And that’s something that they were really interested in for their story line.

NW: And I think that they didn’t want to stereotype anything, either, and write from a place where they didn’t understand it. I think that sexuality is so fluid that they wanted to understand that point of view as well, of being attracted to a person and telling that honestly, because there would be a fear in that too, if you own up to, wow, I’m attracted to that person, regardless of their gender.

Photo credit: Randy Holmes/ABC

AE: Did they have this story line in the works before the strike? NW: I don’t know, but I don’t think they did it as a stunt to get people back to watching after the strike. I really think that they wanted to develop these two characters, and that you could see a closeness with them way before they ever decided any kind of – I think they just have a chemistry together, as actresses, too. And you could tell that in the room. They definitely have a chemistry.

TD: And one thing we were talking about too is in our real world – I’ve come across this, and I know Nikki has too, but you know, the character, the heart surgeon –

AE: Erica. TD: Erica. She’s very strong, very good at what she does, and actually a lot of men are threatened by that. … She’s very confident with what she does and who she is, and obviously another confident woman would make perfect sense.

AE: It was interesting that the story line didn’t tell you very much about what Erica was thinking and feeling at all. It was much more from the perspective of Callie. Do you know why they decided to do that? TD: This is what I think – this is not what they said or anything. … Callie is probably the one who’s more – like I was saying, like my best friend and I fell in love, but she wasn’t gay. And Callie I think was very – it seems like she’s going through this dilemma, like, “Oh my God, why am I attracted to her? I’m not gay.”

NW: Right, because she’s still sleeping [with] and has a relationship with the other doctor.

TD: So she’s got to be the one to make the move, because Erica probably seems to me like she is gay.

NW: And not attached as well, right now. And I think that’s where it’s coming from, too, you know, here you have Callie who is dating McSteamy –

AE: She’s not really dating him. [laughs] NW: Whatever she’s doing with him. She’s sleeping with him. So from that angle I think it’s probably confusing to her. Here she is with this guy, they have great sex, I think they do – that’s why they’re together. And now she’s finding herself emotionally drawn to this other woman. And physically.

TD: Well, that’s what happened exactly in my relationship. So it makes sense to me that they’re telling it from her point of view, because she’s the more confused one.

NW: Right, exactly, she’s in a relationship right now.

TD: And she’s going to be the one who has to make the move. Because [Erica] probably wouldn’t cross that boundary, thinking [Callie] was straight.

AE: You know, it’s interesting because that was my initial reading of things as well [in the first few episodes], but it’s problematic because the character of Erica actually stated explicitly that she wasn’t a lesbian. TD: Well maybe she could be lying …

NW: [overlapping] She protests too much!

TD: Yeah, exactly!

NW: I mean, who knows where they’re going to go with that.

AE: In some interviews, Brooke Smith seemed to suggest that Erica was not necessarily aware of her own sexuality. NW: And maybe she’s not. And that’s where they came to us as writers, saying: “We don’t know if we’re going to label these women. And in fact, that’s why you’re here. Explain to us, once you figured that out for yourselves, did you put yourself in that kind of a label, does it really matter? Can you just fall in love with another person?”

TD: And it could be very much that both of them are straight until they discover that they’re not. [laughs]

AE: Did you find that there was anything that was a particular challenge to communicate to them, that they weren’t getting? NW: No, they were great.

TD: They were really very open. They had genuine shock and surprise at some things, like one of Nikki’s stories.

AE: Which story of Nikki’s were they surprised at? TD: Oh, it was fun when she called her best friend to say –

NW: Who I had previously dated in my lifetime, to say: “Listen, I just got divorced, and I really need your help. I don’t know if I’m gay or straight. Could you come in and sleep with me?”

And he was like, “Yeah, OK, yeah I can, I can.” And he came into town, and I took one look at him and started to kiss him, and he’s like: “OK, Nik, stop, please, stop, you are the gayest woman I know. We just can’t do this, you are just so gay.”

I’m like, “I am, aren’t I?” And he’s like, “Yes, let’s just go to dinner.” We were like laying there naked in bed and this is like all wrong.

AE: Well, in a way they brought a moment like that into the show [when Mark tells Callie he knows she’s attracted to Erica]. NW: Exactly! They did, I know that they did.

AE: It was a beautiful moment, I thought. What was your favorite aspect of the story line that they included so far? TD: Right now, I’m loving Callie. She has such a vulnerability about her, especially when in the last show, when she walked out and she’s looking at [Erica] and [Erica] can’t find her keys. …

And then [Erica’s] all flustered and Callie’s just like, “I really need to talk to you.” … I just love how real Callie seems to me, about how –

NW: She’s stumbling.

Photo credit: Randy Holmes/ABC

TD: Yeah, and I also feel like how [Callie] so wants to be with [Erica]. And then I just loved how she kissed her and just went for it. I just like that because it’s that uncomfortable thing of, “Do I do this, do I say this, oh my God, dadada.”

AE: I thought that was a really wonderful moment, and particularly striking from a character who is normally so confident. NW and TD: Right!

Photo credit: Randy Holmes/ABC

AE: Nikki, you talked about having an attempted sexual experience with your ex, and the inclusion of Mark was an interesting part of the story line. Did either of you find it a little problematic that this guy played such a big role in the development of the relationship between these two women? NW: No. I think there was one scene that bothered me, but listen, you can’t love everything. When the girls were in the elevator and they kissed, and it was in front of him. And I just felt like, if they really cared about each other, I don’t think they would do that as a stunt. That seemed a little, I don’t know, forced.

AE: Yeah, I totally agree. That was the moment when I felt like Erica was not a lesbian. NW: Exactly. And was more like a conquest, like he could have her too or something.

AE: The other interesting thing about that scene was that the way it was edited they kept cutting to Mark’s point of view, and in a way they were privileging the male gaze. NW and TD: Right!

AE: They did a similar thing in the last kiss in the final episode, where the camera panned from the two of them kissing to Mark’s reaction. TD: But, see, you know why that didn’t bother me? Because I felt like, the guy, he was hurt. Even though he was happy for her, he wished somebody felt like that about him. You know, the guy does have feelings in the situation too.

And so that one didn’t bother me as much as the elevator. … I mean, hey, I would have wrote it where the girls are in the elevator by themselves and they got so heated –

NW: And they stopped the elevator!

TD: And then the elevator stopped and then he walked on, and they were like, “How ya doin’?” [laughs] And he was like, “I’ll get the next one.” [laughs]

AE: Yeah, that would have been a great scene.

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