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Great LezBritain: Interview with Laura Fraser of “Lip Service”

“Great LezBritian” is a fortnightly stroll through the very best of British lesbo-centric entertainment and culture. Plus there will be some jolly good interviews with the top ladies who are waving the flag for gay UK.

Laura Fraser is perhaps the Lip Servant that you will be most familiar with, she has appeared in such films as A Knight’s Tale and Vanilla Sky, plus she’s the only cast member that you may have seen previously locking lips with a lady onscreen. Her previous gay-for-pay outings were in the wonderful ITV drama The Investigator alongside Helen Baxendale, Nina’s Heavenly Delights – you’ve got to love a film about lesbians and curry – and a short film that she couldn’t remember the name of when we met.

In Lip Service, her character Cat is really the central figure of the show. Although it is an ensemble cast, everything pretty much revolves around Cat; the love-triangle with Frankie and Sam, Tess is her flatmate, Ed is her brother and Jay is her work colleague.

The neurotic, uptight side of Cat has the potential to grate – in girlfriend terms, Cat would definitely be filed under high-maintenance – but Fraser brings the audience back by playing the role with a lovely comedic and vulnerable edge. Plus, she is of course, extremely beautiful and if you are going to be high-maintenance then it definitely helps to also be as fine looking as she.

We met her in a Glasgow bar to get the low-down on Cat, why she thinks casting directors see her as a good lesbian and who she would choose between Frankie and Sam.

AfterEllen.com: Tell me a bit about the character of Cat.

Laura Fraser:She’s a very uptight, rigid person and at the beginning of the series she is just about to let go of her first big love, Frankie and then she comes back into her life. Cat desperately tries to keep a sense of herself but she is tied up in knots over the love triangle that emerges.

AE: Do you identify with her at all?

LF:When I was younger, like Cat, I was definitely easily led by what other people wanted for me or from me and I often found myself in situations where I hadn’t considered the consequences for myself. I can also relate to her control freak issues but the difference is I think Cat believes that this control is real; she doesn’t understand that it’s an illusion. Trying to control her nerves, her status at work, the dynamic of her friendships and her love life is futile, and although I can get myself into the same kind of state that she does, I definitely have more of a handle on myself.

AE: This is the fourth time you have played gay so obviously casting directors think you make a convincing lesbian, why do you think this is?

LF: I don’t know – I like it though and I’d happily play a lesbian for the rest of my life. Harriet [Braun] told me that when they were casting they had to believe that the actresses all had a bit of lesbian in them. So maybe that’s it? I don’t know I don’t like to question it; I just want to keep it going. [laughs]

AE: Tell me a bit about the casting process?

LF:It was a very easy casting process for me as usually I go to London a couple of times a year to get a job, but they were casting up here (in Glasgow) and so I just had to go into town and read a couple of pages. The second time they asked us to come down to London and I had to read with Ruta, who I’d never met before but who had already been cast as Frankie. When I got there, there was this stunning young woman with gorgeous long blonde hair who was quite serious and quite shy but we read together and it obviously went well because I got the part the next day and then we started shooting about a week after that.

Then they called me and said, “We want to cut your hair” and I was a bit reticent until they told me Ruta was cutting hers because hers was sooo long. But I just thought, is it a bit cheesy to cut all my hair off, to imagine all lesbians have short hair? But in the end I decided to let them cut it fairly short just for a change rather than stereotypically because Cat is a lesbian.

AE: What did you think of the script when you read it?

LF:I thought it was really amusing, and I liked that it was all women talking about how they felt and thought and lived. I liked that it was set in Glasgow and hoped it would show Glasgow for the beautiful city that it is instead of the shabby parts that normally are shown. I liked that Cat is an architect cos there is so much beautiful architecture here; this is becoming a tourist ad for Glasgow now!

So yes I thought it was a funny, light show but then as I got into it more, I realised it is quite emotionally traumatic. I was f–ked by the end of it, with the love triangle. Plus at the beginning my agent said to me, “You know there is a nudity clause in this and a lot of sex scenes?” and I thought, “Oh there are only a few.” Then one day I filmed three sex scenes in a row and I think in total I had eight or nine which is rough going in terms of just being naked in front of everyone all the time. I’ve had a baby and my body is a bit f–ked so it was a lot more emotionally draining than I thought it would be.

AE: How do you prepare for that?

LF: I didn’t. I couldn’t really because we only had two scripts in the first place and then we would only get the rest of the scripts about two days before shooting them so the most I could really prepare was to learn lines. I suppose my own life experience just informed quite a lot of the choices in terms of the life that Cat is leading. I mean, I don’t have experience in terms of being a gay woman and coming out to your parents, etc., so for that part of her life I talked to my gay friends but that was about as much prep I had time for.

AE: In the show Cat starts going out with Sam who treats her really well but she still has one eye on Frankie despite the fact she broke her heart – who do you think you would choose?

LF:I think Frankie is destructive and could do with a little bit of therapy whereas Heather’s character Sam is a little bit older and more grounded. She knows what she wants and is able to offer a lot more to Cat but she can’t help being so drawn to Frankie. I would be the same, I would be drawn to my first love, it’s like a bond that never breaks, but in the end I would probably go with Sam.

AE: There will obviously be comparisons made between The L Word and Lip Service. Did you watch The L Word?

LF: I’m almost finished the second series of The L Word and I absolutely love it – I’ve started ordering it in advance. When I started watching it halfway through filming I got a bit of a fright thinking that they were quite similar, but the more I watched it, the more I thought the two couldn’t be further apart.

AE: What is it you liked so much about The L World?

LF: The acting, the dynamics between the women and I love shows that are of a predominately female cast. I love knowing that I have series and series of The L Word ahead of me! I find it much more interesting watching women. I mean, I like watching men who are really great actors but I just love female shows like Sex and the City.

AE: Did you and the rest of the cast have time to hang out or go out together?

LF: Yes we had a dinner at my house and Heather cooked. We were like a couple because she cooked and I was making sure everyone was okay. It was an X Factor dinner actually, it was the final and everyone wanted to see it so Heather made an amazing Thai meal and we all watched it. Lila my daughter, who is three, got to stay up late with us and played with all the girls and now she thinks that whenever I work it’s with Ruta, Fiona and Heather.

AE: Do you have any girl crushes?

LF: Penelope Cruz. She’s so hot. I just saw Nine yesterday and she is mind-blowingly brilliant in it. She just makes me laugh too.

AE: What would you like to happen on the back of Lip Service?

LF: I hope it’s good! I just hope it all works and the chemistry is good and people believe in the characters, perhaps relate to something in them. When I first read it, I thought, “I bet I’d like this and watch it.” So I hope I still feel like that and I hope everyone else feels like that.

AE: Will you watch it when it airs?

LF: There are a few things I have done that I still haven’t seen. I don’t go out of my way but if they send it to me then I have to because my curiosity gets the better of me. Sometimes it can be damaging to watch if you already thought you were s–t and it just confirms you were! I will watch Lip Service but I will ban my family from watching it because there is so much sex. I am really not too keen on them seeing me give h–d. If they watch it, then I will just have to say I warned them and they have done it to themselves!

Lip Service premieres tomorrow at 10:30 pm on BBC Three. If you are outside of the UK then fear not, Great LezBritain will be recapping the whole series here on AfterEllen.com.

“Great LezBritain” authors Sarah, a Londoner, and Lee, a Glaswegian, met in a gay discotheque one bleak mid winter, eight years ago and have been shacked up together ever since. When not watching Tipping The Velvet, they find time to write, run a PR company, DJ at their own club nights and love a bit of jam on toast. Follow them on Twitter at greatlezbritain.

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