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TCA Liveblog: “The Real L Word, “The Big C,” “Dexter,” “Episodes,” “Nikita,” “Hellcats”

4 p.m. Hellcats

If you’re discounting the new CW series Hellcats because it’s all about cheerleaders, I think you should reconsider. Executive producer Kevin Murphy gave me a strong sense of where he got the idea for the lesbian character of Patty “The Wedge” Wedgerman from and she sounds pretty awesome. Murphy said:

It came from the fact that we wanted everyone to be included and one of the things that I was looking at was we ended up with such a diverse cast ethnically and I was like “OK, what are we missing? OK, we don’t have that.” I sort of looked through where I was going with the characters and I said “OK, I can’t do it with Savannah because that would just be more of a statement than I want to make with her upbringing and it just kind of came down to the character of Wedge, which was just kind of an interesting girl that was really comfortable in her own skin. And I thought, “Well what if I just sort of normalized it to make the character who is a lesbian isn’t all caught up about what she is and she’s really comfortable about what she is?”

Murphy said the idea spawned from his prior work on Caprica, where one of the male characters was gay.

One of the characters played by Sasha Roiz is the equivalent of of James Caan’s character in Godfather. He’s like Sine Corleon. And he was gay. And he was also this brutal hitman who had badass knives and cool tattoos and would kick ass but he’d also go home at night to his husband that played in the symphony orchestra and they would make dinner together. There’s just something about the wonderful normalization of that. It just seems to really connect when you want something to be immersive and it made a real statement on Caprica because it was this other culture where it didn’t occur to them to have the bigotry we have in this culture. In terms of Hellcats, because there’s such this Caprica-esque sense of optimism, there’s a world where you can be a family where everyone’s part of the family.

They cast the character last, eventually picking Elena Esovolova for the role.

We found this amazing Canadian girl who just had this spirit, one produced credit and we were like “Wow, we really love her!”

And will she have a romantic relationship on the show?

Everyone does. It’s the CW.

Sold!

3:00 Nikita

On the panel for the new version of Nikita, star Maggie Q and the men who work on the show were quick to say it would be much different than the original film and the USA series from the 1990s. When also asked about “knock-offs” like Alias and, as one critic said “the disaster that was Dollhouse,” executive producer Craig Silverstein said he sees Nikita very differently.

Dollhouse, to me, is sci-fi. This is set in real world. We’re not really political, but we’re much more of a kind of Jason Bourne-type of town – that type of world. We didn’t see overlap besides female action lead. Nikita is Nikita – she’s not like the character in Dollhouse that doesn’t know who she is. Nikita knows exactly who she is and what she wants.

Producer McG says he thinks they all share a strong bond.

We’re all excited about the notion of empowered female characters. Powerful female players that don’t apologize for being beautiful.

Maggie Q’s female co-star is Lyndsy Fonseca who plays Alex, the new Nikita trainee. Says Silverstein:

Alex is a character who has an epic backstory I don’t think anyone will see coming. The back story start unfolding directly after pilot over the course of the season. We’ll have the story of how Alex and Nikita got together. We want to let it roll out.”

Fonseca played a lesbian in Remember the Daze, so she’s no stranger to kissing girls on screen. You might also remember she was originally cast to play the lesbian cheerleader on Heroes, which wasn’t developed past one episode.

So what did Silverstein say about the possibility of gay characters on the show?

In the first batch of stories that I have planned out there’s not one, but I think we’re absolutely open to it.

I reminded him that the original USA series had Nikita in some bisexual dalliances and wondered if he saw the character like that in anyway.

I love it. Love it. Love to have it.

I don’t really think we’re on the same page with this one, but I’m glad to have his support, I suppose.

11:45 p.m. Episodes

OK, you’re going to have to stay with me on this one. A new series called Episodes is about a UK couple that brings their successful BBC show, Pucks, to the US for an adaptation They get Matt LeBlanc as the star, so on Episodes, LeBlanc plays himself. It’s a show about a show within a show.

Actress Mircea Monroe plays an 40-year-old actress that looks like she’s in her 20s because she uses baby serum to keep herself looking young. Her character on Pucks is a lesbian headmaster of a school in which a hockey coach has an unrequited love for her that will never be because, as the producers note, “she doesn’t play for that team.”

So Mircea is playing an actress who plays a lesbian. This spawns some funny dialogue we were able to preview in which Matt LeBlanc asks the show’s creators/writers if she has to be gay. He obviously wants his character to engage in some on-screen romance with her, but it will never be. “What about Ross and Rachel, if Rachel was a lesbian?” LeBlanc asks. “Or Frasier and – I don’t know, I didn’t watch that show.”

Unfortunately, Mircea said that they eventually make her character drop the lesbianism to make fictional Matt LeBlanc happy.

“She is initially but then we get notes and it changes,” Mircea said. So do we see any lesbianism?

“No, but in some of my other work, yes! [Laughs] There’s a whole bit around this so I don’t want to give too much away but it’s to help his character out.”

She spoke highly of her role as Justine in Itty Bitty Titty Committee, saying it was about promoting “homosexual awareness.” She was saying this as I walked up to her, telling another journalist that she doesn’t always play sleazy sexy girl parts. (In the promo for Episodes, her character was shown in a compromising position on a sex tape.)

And in the film The 41 Year Old Virgin Who Knocked Up Sarah Marshall and Felt Superbad About It , she shares a smooch with Noureen DeWulf.

11:00 a.m. Dexter

During the Dexter panel, I got a little more info about Kate Moennig’s bit part as a tattoo artist. “We just shot that yesterday,” Jennifer Carpenter told us. “She’s Masuka’s friend,” Michael C. Hall (Dexter) added.

C.S. Lee plays Masuka, a forensic scientist who is one of the more comical and crass characters on the show. Masuka and Deb go visit Kate’s character. Lee joked “Kate, Jennifer and I — there’s a threesome going on.”

“He’s lying,” Carpenter said.

Executive producer Sara Colleton said that their visit to the tattoo artist will happen because a tattoo plays a role in the new season’s murder mystery.

So no threesome?

It appears that Moennig’s character will only appear in a single episode, at least for now.

10:30 a.m. The Real L Word

Showtime introduces the room to the reality show by calling it “a raw and unscripted series about high profile lesbians.” They also call them “attention-getting and unpredictable.” Cue clips of an upcoming episode filmed at Dinah Shore where Sara and Romy are making out in the pool, much to Whitney’s surprise, and Natalie is running away from Rose screaming, “Rose, leave me the f–k alone!”

What happens at the Dinah obviously does not stay at the Dinah.

Showtime says that The Real L Word brings in the highest number of web hits for any Showtime series and has the most video views on Sho.com. With a season finale coming up in three weeks, it does seem odd that they have a panel on the docket today. So one of the first questions for creator Ilene Chaiken was if she is hoping to have a new season picked up since it is still undecided.

“I’m never confident. Nothing is done until it’s done,” she said. “I’m very hopeful. There’ve been changes at Showtime so we’ll have to talk and see what everybody’s thinking.”

The reporter noted that she didn’t seem very confident.

Ilene was also asked about the ending of The L Word and how it caused mixed reactions.

“The finale of The L Word never had to do with spin-off,” Ilene said, referencing The Farm. “We chose that story before prison show. It just truly coincidental that that story was able to lead into the prison show. It gave us way to spin Alice, the character, into it. We told the best story we could. That said, that’s what we wanted to say about the end of that particular phase of The L Word journey.”

When asked to weigh in on why Ellen DeGeneres has her own show and there is a reality TV series about lesbians and not for gay men, Whitney said she thinks that it’s because gay culture “flips around” the patriarchal society.

“Men take a more acceptable role for getting away with things,” she said. “Gay men face more scrutiny in coming out.”

Ilene expanded. “They still have the advantages of being men and not having to put forward their gayness.”

Regarding visibility as a whole, Rose said she thinks the community is happy with any visibility, citing progress ever since Ellen came out and Will & Grace aired.

“We’re still relatively invisible in popular media,” Ilene said. “There are moments of more representation and then we backslide a little bit. It’s still not easy to get our stories told in television and film. That said, it’s actually progressing.”

The whole cast – minus Mikey, who was noticeably mute – said that episode 7 will be full of nudity and provocative sexual scenes. They seemed very excited about it, as did the men in the room.

“Episode 7 will make up for 1 through 6 not having shock value,” Rose said. “There’s one word for it: Epic.”

It seems as if they were out to promote this specific episode, which is likely the one focused at the Dinah Shore.

Said Whitney: “Episode 7 is pioneering on many levels.” Yes, this is the strap-on episode.

Post-panel, there was a slow trickle of reporters up to the stage, but not like the mob scene it usually is. It’s probably typical of a reality series, as is the fact that many journalists didn’t know the names of the women and had to call on them by referencing their wardrobe.

9 a.m. The Big C

One of Showtime’s new series is The Big C, which follows Lara Linney as Kathy, a middle-aged woman diagnosed with terminal cancer. Instead of crying over time left on earth, she cashes out her 401(k) and gets to living life.

I’ve seen the first three episodes and I have to say the show boasts stellar writing and Linney is great as an uptight woman who suddenly decides to behave as eccentrically as possible while not telling anyone her diagnosis.

We found out early on that out actress Cynthia Nixon would appear in the first season, and that Gabourey Sidibe plays one of Kathy’s high school students, Andrea. The exchanges between Linney and Sidibe are always comical, and one scenario involves a paint gun.

Executive producer Jenny Bicks gave us the scoop on a lesbian character coming to the show.

Marlene (Phyllis Somerville) is Kathy’s older and cranky neighbor, a widower whose only friend is her dog. Marlene is estranged from her daughters, one of whom is a lesbian. The other, “as Marlene says, lives with her white witch of a husband.”

Bicks told us:

They will be showing up and interacting with Kathy and Marlene has had a distant relationship with her daughters.

The 40-something lesbian daughter is named Gina, and is played by an actress whose first name is Debra. Her last name slipped the minds of both executive producers. Omen?

Executive producer Vivian Cannon said of Gina:

[The daughters] come in the next to the last episode of the show. They are a major part of that episode. It’s a big deal when Marlene’s daughters come to town. Kathy really becomes very close to Marlene throughout the course of the season and when Marlene daughters come to town, she wasn’t even aware Marlene had daughters. It’s something Marlene has sort of kept to herself so when her daughters come to town, let’s just say there’s a little bit of conflict between them.

It also seems that Cynthia Nixon’s character is going to be a lot of fun to watch. She plays Kathy’s best friend from college, Rebecca, and she’s the anti-Miranda Hobbes.

They had a falling out and they come back together and she’s like this wild girl who never grew up who pulls Kathy out of her shell. So Cynthia will be playing sort of the wild sexy character.

With this show (and network) having such strong female characters, I have good faith that the lesbian character will be likable.

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