The Real L Word Creator Ilene Chaiken on Showtime's Gentrification and Filming Real Love Scenes

Ilene Chaiken broke new ground when she created The L Word, but since that show's six-season run, most of TV's gay representation has come from the reality TV genre. It's only fitting, then, that Chaiken's latest project is The Real L Word, a reality spin on her original series that's currently winding down its first season on Showtime. Chaiken talked to Movieline about how surprised she was that Showtime wanted the show, how they shoot those sex scenes, and how LA lesbians might need a breather soon.

So tell me a little bit about what happened in between The L Word and The Real L Word. I know you had intended to get The Farm up and running with Leisha Hailey as sort of a spinoff, but Showtime passed. Clearly, though, you still have a good relationship with the network. How did that go down?

Yeah, I have a really good relationship with them. The so-called spinoff we did was only nominally a spinoff of The L Word, but it was very much a show I wanted to do. We did migrate one of our L Word characters, but it wasn't The L Word in any sense -- it was a completely different and stylishly independent show. This show is much more a recapitulation of the L Word franchise. The brand and the themes still have value, there still is an appetite for these stories, and I said to Showtime, "Let's do something with this. Let's not set it on the shelf and retire it."

I proposed to them that a reality show would really work, and I was actually proposing that they license the brand to me and let me sell it to another network that does this kind of programming. And [Showtime head] Bob Greenblatt sat and listened to me and he shook his head and said, "This is a really good idea, give me a day or two to think about it." The next day, my agent called me and said, "Well, Bob isn't going to license the show to you." And then he waited that critical minute and said, "He wants to do it on Showtime."

Were you surprised by it?

I was delighted by it. I was a little surprised by it, but nothing really surprises me. [Laughs] I didn't think it was necessarily in Showtime's purview to do a reality show.

What about your own purview? After coming from the narrative world, where you have such control over where the plot goes, you were at the mercy of these women when it came to their own storylines. Did that scare you at all?

You're always at the mercy of something. It doesn't scare me, but it was disconcerting, definitely. Exactly as you suggested, I'm used to being able to say, "OK, now here's what happens." In our story meeting, I partnered with the [production company] Magical Elves on this show, and I would sit there and say, "God, if I were writing this, I would make her do this and her do this." In the end, you have to surrender a little bit, but you do it with the confidence that what they might possible end up doing is more interesting than anything you might have made up.

Do you think they're themselves on camera, or at this point as a society, are we just so used to how reality TV works, did they try to play to the cameras any?

I can't speak for them, but my observation is that some took to it more easily than others. It's easy to guess the moments where somebody knows there's a camera around, and no matter how much someone thought she might be game for this, there are moments when she might want her privacy -- although we tried to be as unobtrusive as possible. Also, there are moments where she realizes this moment is not going to be something she's proud of and she's not sure she wants it captured, and it's like, "Oh my God, did I really sign up for this?"

Then how do you capture something like a steamy sex scene in the shower? How do you shoot a love scene in reality TV?

I'm sure there's a whole big psychological and sociological analysis that could go into it, because there's something that definitely is altered by the presence of the camera -- particularly sex, I would say. When there's a camera present, that becomes an element of the sexual encounter. My approach to it was simply never to ask for it or push for it. It wasn't contractual, it wasn't contractual between me and Showtime -- instead, we just allowed it to happen and let everyone set her own boundaries. I cast people and I was pretty sure some would never want to go there, and that other members of our cast would be comfortable with it. To me, that's part of our storytelling.

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