by SP

In The L Word Lynch plays Joyce Wischnia, a gay-rights attorney who first represents Tina Kennard against Bette Porter in season 2 and then loses her as a client as she tries to put the moves on her. In season 3 she became Bette’s attorney against Tina in the custodial fight for their daughter Angelica.

Jane Lynch was very excited about her role on The L Word. As she described her character in the PlanetOut interview, “This woman is what is called ‘old-school butch’ … She wears the men’s suits, men’s ties, and she smokes a pipe. And (this part is my take on it) she sees herself in a male role, as the great savior to the women … We kind of figured she was the kind of person who’s been in a series of relationships that are in that pattern where she picks up some poor little thing, gets her on her feet, and then she becomes her assistant! She likes her little wifeys!”

Lynch also mentioned her role as Joyce Wischnia in the second season of The L Word in her AfterEllen Interview with Jane Lynch. “I’m playing a civil rights lawyer who takes on the really hard cases that don’t have precedents, but that I think I can win. I’m representing Tina, who is trying to get some money from Bette after the demise of their relationship, since they were kind of in a common-law marriage.”

In the same interview Lynch also explained how she became involved with the show. She said, “I went to a POWER UP panel on The L Word with Ilene Chaiken on it—I had just watched the first six episodes of the series and loved it. I thought it was such good writing, and it reminded me of my life. I’m a big coffee drinker with my friends—both straight and gay friends--and the conversations the [L Word] characters had, I thought ‘these are my people!’ So I went up to Ilene after the panel and she said ‘Would you do our show?’ and I said ‘Oh my God, in a New York minute!’ I actually attended the panel with the intention of asking her, but she asked me first, which was very nice. So my manager sent her some stuff, and about six months later she came up with a storyline for me, and I filmed three episodes. It was great.”

Lynch also talked about gay films and roles in general in the AfterEllen interview when she said, “You know, there’s not much going on there. That’s why The L Word is so good. It isn’t in the popular culture just yet—it’s still on a channel you have to pay for—but we’re at such a really important time in our culture … It’s almost like you’re going back to the time when we had to decide whether to abolish slavery. ‘Do we get rid of the gays, or do we accept them and weave them into the fabric of society?’ Our history tells us we ultimately weave everyone in the fabric of society, though, so I think it’s just a matter of time.”

Both of her roles in Best in Show and The L Word were lesbians and Jane Lynch herself is openly gay, which she mentioned in the PlanetOut interview when the actress was asked if she was out. “Well, I guess. I mean I just spoke at an HRC party … But I’ve never held a press conference for fear no one would show up! But of course I want to be an actor more than I want to be a ‘gay actor,’ and I’ve been very lucky -- I don’t just play gay people. There are lots and lots of different people in this world, and I’m interested in all of ‘em.”

And Jane Lynch proved herself to be such a diverse actress that she could easily adapt to any role. When she talked about the beginning of her acting career in the AfterEllen interview, Lynch said, “I always wanted to be an actress. I majored in acting in college, and then went to graduate school and did a professional training program at Cornell with only six other people in my class. So I got on stage a lot. I was just thrown into parts I would never have played otherwise; I was stretched to within an inch of my life and it really revealed that I had more talent than I thought I did. It was like boot camp: whatever you have rises to the surface. I played ingénues, I played old lades; I learned how to fence, to dance, to sing.”

Lynch is not only talented, she’s also funny, she likes improvisations and as we read in the PlanetOut interview, she “has a refreshingly down-to-earth sensibility and a quick wit that seems to ooze out of each of her performances -- a unique quality not all actors have, and which she makes look easy.”

<< Previous Page   Next Page >>