L a u r a  I n n e s

Interviews

Woman on top

The Advocate, Oct. 2002

In a lean time for gay and lesbian characters on TV, ER's Laura Innes digs deeper into her role as a lesbian doctor—and her understanding of the gay experience. [...]

During seven years on NBC's powerhouse medical drama, Innes has convinced TV fans all over the world that she is Weaver—smart, workaholic, unfazed by the disability that requires her to walk with a crutch—but ripped wide-open by the dawning awareness that she's gay. [...]

In a season of few bright spots for gay and lesbian viewers, it's worth noting that NBC is putting Weaver front and center. As for Innes, the heterosexual married mom in her mid 40s is reacting to her heightened visibility by doing what she's always done: embracing and defending her character. [...]

Out in the world, sad to report, Kerry Weaver gets mixed reports, and Innes hears them all. Many lesbian viewers are delighted by their positive representation on TV [...]. But some fans are less impressed. And Innes finds herself --as at a May 2002 Hollywood panel on lesbian media images -- fielding passionate complaints from lesbians who feel that progress is too slow.

Then there's the public at large, where Innes sometimes meets ER fans who are downright squirmy about the sapphic turn her character has taken. "One thing that has really surprised me is the degree of ambivalence that still exists in the general population. I'll be on a plane with my husband and family, and people realize, She's not really gay, so they talk about their feelings a little more freely,” says Innes [...]. One of the main homophobic complaints Innes says she has heard from ER fans: "I just don't like it shoved in my face.”

Innes gets a kick out of that. "We haven't really shoved anything in anybody's face,” she says. Aside from a few kisses and a truckload of longing, in fact, the character of Weaver has mostly displayed her own discomfort rather than a wild lesbian libido. Two seasons ago her self-loathing drove the stunning psychiatrist Kim Legaspi (Elizabeth Mitchell) from her arms, and this past season she nearly repeated that mistake with the appealingly butch firefighter Sandy Lopez (Lisa Vidal). Finally Weaver stopped fighting her feelings and settled into the new relationship.

"This is what Kerry's drawn to and needs now, because this person is so incredibly direct,” Innes says. "That was the point of introducing this character [Lopez], who was in a way the opposite of her. Legaspi was this pre-Raphaelite beauty, thoughtful and articulate. And Lopez is like, 'Cut the crap, let's out her against her will.' ” [Ooops...typo... Ivanova's mistake. Here's what LI really said:] 'Cut the crap, let's figure this out.' ”

As for actor Vidal, who also stars on the Lifetime series The Division, Weaver describes her as "a total pro and a very joyful person. She's great. She's smart; she communicates; she's a beautiful girl. She has a couple of kids too, and we talk about our kids a lot. It's like, we kiss, and then we'll say, 'So what school are your kids going to?'”

Innes can't reveal how their fictional relationship will unfold this season other than to say that it will continue and that Weaver will consider achieving something in common with Innes: motherhood. "Hopefully, [Weaver's] gayness won't be less of an issue,” says the actor. "But it will be more integrated in a real way in the workplace. When things happen that reverberate in some way with that, they'll be part of the story.”

As she has from the start, Innes will be intimately involved in the creative decision-making. Aside from her work as an actor, she has become a respected TV director, with an Emmy nomination under her belt and plans to direct episodes this season of three of ER executive producer John Wells's shows—ER, The West Wing, and his newest series, Presidio Med. She's even landed a "little development deal” with Warner Bros. and is exploring potential feature-film material to direct.

It's from that perspective that Innes evaluates the significance of her show's outreach to gay fans. "I've really examined—because now I know more about the producing end—how much was at stake when John Wells and the other producers of ER decided to pursue this story line,” she says. "And how much was at stake for NBC. ER is a huge moneymaking show, and for them to do this is really a big deal. It's great that there are gay and lesbian characters on shows like Six Feet Under and Queer as Folk, but there's nothing that compares to this battleship that is ER in terms of the mainstream nature of it, the economic tentacles of it, how many people it reaches.”

Regarding the lesbian storyline, Innes has profited from the wisdom of ER writer Dee Johnson, who is a lesbian. [Ivanova would like to comment but is having a strange coughing fit.]

Oh, Good, She's Hot!

LI at the outfest panel "Lesbian Images
on Television", May 15 2002

First of all, she was wearing black pants and a black long sleeved collagoldenrod shirt and hoop earrings. Her hair's a bit darker and has grown out a little. she did this really cute thing where she would sit with her leg up on the chair like a teenager. Basically, she looked GORGEOUS.

So, first each panelist talked a little about their work, and Laura talked about some stuff that we've already heard in interviews: the producers calling her in for a meeting, how she liked pulling the rug out from under Kerry, how she liked examining Kerry's "intimacy issues" and "sex issues" (very cute expressions on those).

She's always "startled when talk show hosts tell me before the show 'oh, i'll be sure to mention your husband and child'" and how it's bad that they need to do that.

"The media don't represent people who don't look a certain way."

About privileges that heterosexual people take for granted and that gay people don't even think about since "it's not on their radar because of all the fucking trouble it takes to get it" and that that kind of stuff "riles her up" (she used her gay male friends trying to adopt a baby as an example).

"Elizabeth Mitchell, all the girls loooooved her..." (with a cute little smile).

And then (this was the best part) she talked about how when EM was on the show for the first time, her mom called her right after the show was over and "she asked me, 'is that gonna be your girlfriend?' and i said, 'yes' and she said, 'oh good, she's hot!'" The audience was roaring.

She also told a story about her in-laws who live in a retirement home in Minnesota where everyone watches ER and used a cute midwestern accent to immitate her mother in law saying, "It's ok if you're straight or gay, we don't care either way".

About lesbians in ER: "Y'know, we can't do the same thing on ER as on Queer as Folk." [Not that we ever really tried... - Evil Ivanova]

Some words of advice, talking about getting more women directors/writers etc.: "Work your ass off!"

This exclusive report was brought to you by january girl!

M o r e  I n n e s
i n t e r v i e w s