·                  Katherine Moennig (Shane):
I wouldn’t say this is the most amazing experience, but during the pilot, Bette and Tina had a party and we shot that scene a good eight times.…We all hated our outfits, so that added to the irritation. Jennifer [Beals] looked like Jesus. Leisha [Hailey] wore a pleather jacket number, and I had leather jeans with flames.

I always liked it when we would share rides with each other to and from set if we had the same hours. Leisha [Hailey], Erin [Daniels] and I did that a lot the first few years. We were essentially car pooling to the office.I wouldn’t say this was the most amazing experience, but during the pilot Bette (Jennifer Beals) and Tina (Laurel Holloman) had a party and we shot that scene a good eight times for various reasons. Either a character was changing or they were replacing someone.... We all hated our outfits as well so that added to the irritation. Jennifer looked like Jesus. Leisha wore a pleather jacket number and I had leather jeans with flames. Those days were so hot and never-ending. However, now I can laugh at them

Jennifer Beals (Bette):

For me it’s like choosing between children, but in terms of work, Season 2 was the most satisfying for me because I was given so much to do and so much to go through. Bette was having a difficult time with Tina, the relationship was not going well, and Bette was acting out. There were a lot of obstacles, which was trying but satisfying.

Daniela Sea (Max):
Max was usually treated as an outsider in the story, and a fair amount of that bled onto me personally from a few people I had to work with. At the end of shooting, I was happy to let that rest and step outside Max’s shoes. In a weird way, I will also miss his sweet and vital ways. I love Max like a little brother.

After four years on the show, you’d think a wealth of anecdotes would come to mind. It all feels like a blur, somehow. I guess, for me, the funny stuff came up around passing as a guy. I remember once, while shooting in the sports arena in Vancouver, Max was using a public urinal for the first time. I had a pissin passin packer on, and it was filled with a bag of yellow liquid under my arm to use at the urinal. It turned out all the men using the other urinals had the same device, and they figured that I was a bio guy like them. When our AD Sandra called my name, Daniela, they were all really confused and spent the rest of the time shooting the scene trying to figure out what the deal was, if I was a guy or a girl, etc. We had a lot of fun with it. From then on I asked the AD’s to use Max when talking to me on set, so I could be more undercover.

Another funny episode was when Alan Cumming and I had a make-out scene, and things were to get hot and heavy at the bar at the planet. In the midst of rehearsing, I picked him up and carried him over to the bar, all macho, and that stuck. The director, Frank Pierson (who wrote Dog Day Afternoon) was really great about the whole thing, and it was one of my favorite love scenes, for sure.

As for a memorial moment, I’m assuming you mean for the end of the show, the last day of shooting, etc. for me it was a mix of sadness for the end of a project and a finish to seeing all my friends who make the show happen every summer, and to Vancouver, the beautiful and pristine city in the north. For the most part, I felt excited to move on to new adventures, but that’s the type of person I am. Max was usually treated as an outsider in the story, and a fair amount of that bled onto me, personally, from a few people who I had to work with a lot, so I was happy to let that rest and step outside Max’s shoes. In a weird way, I will also miss his sweet and vital ways. I love Max like a little brother. I learned a lot about being a nice guy and standing up for myself while playing him. Standing up for Max’s storyline, where I wouldn’t necessarily stand up for my personal self, out of commitment and a deep caring and responsibility for the story was great training for life!

Working with Pam Grier was one of the highlights of working on the show for me. When Max and Kit have a talk about transitioning, Pam and I rehearsed it and talked at length about the implications of everything we were talking about. She is so dedicated to the story and really understanding and communicating the truth of what’s going on. I admire her very much. She was always interested and supportive and could really relate to Max’s story.

During what’s come to be known as the “Lobster Scene”, where Max is ostracized when first meeting all of Jenny’s friends and has a class crisis, being a Midwest working class person amongst the nouveau riche of Los Angeles at a fancy restaurant, and orders a salad and fries ’cuz that’s the only thing under 20 bucks, a plate of wheat grass arrives. This was my first time working with this whole group, and it wasn’t necessarily the easiest two days for me for a host of reasons. As the camera is pushing in on me down the table, I proceeded to have a laughing attack. At first it was funny for others, then it reached the “ok, that’s enough” phase, and I was trying my hardest to stop laughing. I proceeded to unpin a safety pin from my trousers and stab myself in the leg, unbeknownst to anyone else. It worked. I stopped laughing.

Rachel Shelley (Helena):
I remember my very first day on The L Word set, which I joined during the second season. I had only booked the job two days before and had pages and pages of dialogue. I had to be the smiling villain, the fearless ice maiden who could cut someone dead with a look, a powerful and supremely enfranchised being. I’d never played anyone like Helena before, though I’d always wanted to. So here I was going head to head with the iconic Jennifer Beals and I was nervous as hell—heart pounding, tottering around on ridiculously high heels, speeding on caffeine after a 4am wake up call. I was completely petrified. Looking back I’m not sure how I made it through that 17-hour day, but I’m so thankful that I did. It was the start of an amazing five-year ride.

One of the most memorable episodes for me is the finale of season three. It was like nothing The L Word had ever done before—we all came back to Vancouver just before Christmas and shot almost entirely at the ski resort in Whistler. It truly was a twinkling winter wonderland. We all stayed at an amazing, schnuggly hotel, I took a skiing lesson with Sarah Shahi (surprise-surprise the instructor fell in love with her almost instantly) and Cynthia [Summers, costume designer] dressed us all beautifully in cuddlesome coats and boots. I had some great scenes with Holland Taylor who plays my mother Peggy, and even Alexandra Hedison (Dylan) came along for the ride. It was probably the most fun I’ve ever had shooting the show. I spent hours filming on a ski lift with Jennifer [Beals], singing our hearts out in between shots to keep warm and melt the icicles hanging from our noses. We laughed a lot. I had to keep reminding myself that I was actually at work.

Pam Grier (Kit):
One of my most memorable moments working on The L Word was with Ossie Davis. There was a scene where his character collapses onto the bathroom floor and my character rushes to hold him and places his head in her lap while they wait for help to arrive. After the master was shot and while the crew was striking a new lighting set-up for the close-ups, Mr. Davis stayed on set instead of the usual course of having someone else as a stand-in. I thought, If he’s staying on set, so am I. Well it took over an hour before they were ready to shoot so that whole time we just sat together, with Mr. Davis lying in my lap, talking about life, work and everything in between. Even if I had wanted to get up (which I didn’t) I couldn’t have stood up as my legs had fallen asleep. It was one of those unplanned, unscripted moments where I had the privilege of spending time with one of the great ones!

Also, in relation to Mia Kirshner’s recent book release [I Live Here], I was really taken by Mia going to Cambodia and traveling around the world to these destitute places in order to give voice to people who are being denied the most basic of human rights, I respect and see Mia in another light.