by SP

"Guess Who’s Coming Back?" PART 1

Who is “Marina Ferrer”?

When you hear the words “Exotic L Word Beauty”, who immediately comes to your mind? For a great number it’s of course non-other than, Marina Ferrer.

Yes, she is the huntress, the seductress, the sultry owner of the “The Planet”, and the woman behind Jenny Schecter’s coming out story. Marina is the woman if a million surprises as she tried to commit suicide and was rumored to be dying about eight different imagined deaths. She managed to surprise us all in the beginning of the second season, not only by the fact that she was alive, but by the fact that she was married to Count Manfredi Ferrer, or as Kit Porter called him - “Count Dracula”. This revelation stunned the characters who mistakenly believed the man to be Marina’s daddy. However, raised eyebrows leave us thinking that it was more likely he was her “Sugar Daddy”.

Like a modern day Catwoman, it seems that Marina had more than one life to live.  Perhaps season two wasn’t the last time that we were to hear of Marina.

The sultry European, played by the sexy Karina Lombard, was a popular character in the first season. Many fans were incensed when she didn’t return for Season Two and began the campaign petitioning for her return – writing countless letters to Showtime and Ilene Chaiken (The L Word’s executive producer and creator). The character’s and actress’ fans have at least been able to console themselves that Marina hadn’t been killed off as were Dana or Mr. Piddles and the effort to demand her return was at least worth a try.

Now as the gang is settled into Vancouver producing Season Four of the series, it has been revealed that Marina will return, albeit briefly to the show.

Marina Ferrer: 101

In the first season of The L Word, Marina was introduced as the intellectual, mysterious, worldly, beautiful and hot, and was characterized by Chaiken, as “the fabulous seductress who rocks Jenny’s world.”

Jenny Schecter (played by Mia Kirshner) arrived in Los Angles to live with her boyfriend, Tim. She then met his neighbors, Bette and Tina (played by Jennifer Beals and Laurel Holloman), and was introduced to their friends, instantly became Marina’s prey. Jenny began to question her sexuality and inevitably embarked on a journey of self-discovery, having an affair with Marina, which changed her life forever.

In an October 2004 interview with Curve Magazine, Lombard said about her portrayal of Marina, “What was fascinating in Marina, and what attracts me in life, is what I really wanted to portray – an individual that connects both the feminine and masculine sides in all its dimensions, both emotional and mental, and able to function in the male and female worlds without being too much one or the other. To strike balance in between, I thought was fascinating.”

In the same Curve interview,the interviewer mentioned that Lombard’s character produced a new term that was attributed to Marina – the ‘macho femme’, which fitted well with the whole “butch” or “femme” concept on The L Word. After the first season the critics were using this new term in regards to Lombard’s character because in her case, just as the actress described in her interview, Marina was beautiful and feminine but at the same time aggressive and somewhat “macho” in way she went after Jenny.

And again, in the same interview with Curve Magazine, she was asked about her love scenes with Kirshner, and how they were different from filming love scenes with her male partners like Tom Cruise (The Firm) or Brad Pitt (Legends of the Fall), she replied that it was different because “Mia is much smaller than I am, so I was definitely in the position of protector, when you thrush around and get wild … I did a sex scene in the bathroom, all of them in the bathroom I had to be really careful. Because you’re bigger, you have to, and she was against the wall, so you have to be careful that she actually doesn’t hit her head … But it’s very technical … it’s choreography …”

Later in the same interview Lombard also mentioned that her sex scene with Mia was the first sex scene of the pilot and actresses Kate Moennig, Leisha Hailey and Erin Daniels left her a bottle of wine in the trailer for good luck. She said, “I arrived there and I took my robe off and I jumped in and said, ‘OK, let’s go!’ And I forgot that I was completely naked … we had a really good crew, which is so important to feel safe because there’s not much else you can show after that.”

Interviews by Ilene Chaiken brought fans to understanding that Marina was a plot device to further the character of Jenny, one of the creator’s alter-egos but fans were hoping for more from this intriguing personality and were devastated when Chaiken announced that she would not be returning for the second season.

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