Rules to Live By
Inspired by our popular etiquette guide: New rules for behaving in polite society.
Do Kate Moennig and Leisha Hailey still like talking about The L Word? The series that launched them into stardom aired its finale 16 years ago, and that’s the one question that all inquiring lesbian minds want to know the answer to all these years later. Thankfully, the duo that portrayed Shane and Alice can keep their icon status among Gen-Z queer kids who are just now catching on to this groundbreaking lesbian show from the aughts.
In real life, Moennig and Hailey are best friends just like their characters. Since the series ended, they’ve gone on to act and make music, but their steadfast relationship has remained a constant. In 2020, they started the podcast PANTS, and this year, they’re releasing a joint memoir, So Gay for You, which chronicles their time on The L Word, reboot and all, as well as their earlier years before meeting on the show. While the two are used to the spotlight, they’ve kept their lives fairly private, partially owing to the fact that they were stars of the first mainstream lesbian show on television. And while last year marked the 20th anniversary of the first episode, they still love to hear that people watch it. “It fascinates me how this show lives on forever,” says Hailey.
Tell me about writing a book together. A joint memoir sounds like a tough thing to do. How did you navigate who would tell certain parts of the story?
Leisha Hailey: We realized we didn’t want to write a whole book just about The L Word. We also wanted to write about our experience growing up as queer kids in the different cities we lived in, and how we came to meet each other. When you’re gay, your chosen family is so important to your life, and we wanted to center the book around that.
Kate Moennig: We worked separately, though. We never sat down next to each other and said, “What do you think of the sentence?” Our childhoods are different, but when it came to the point in our lives that we had so many shared experiences, that’s when we sat down together and made a road map of who would take what. There were certain themes that we really wanted to address and keep it balanced. When we were talking about working on the show, so many stories would be repeated, so we divvied it up. Leisha took everything that happened off-camera and offset during our time on the show, and I took everything on set and what it was like in between takes. So we paint a full picture for the reader to understand what sort of utopia we were in.
Leisha: Minus the days we didn’t work together. We could both tell those.
Were there moments writing So Gay for You that made you think about The L Word differently? Was there anything you were nervous to share?
Kate: Writing a book is terrifying. We’re both very private people, so the thought that we were going to talk about the way we were raised and how we grew up was daunting. To think that you’re going to write your life story for anyone to read and speculate on? That alone was a big hurdle to get through.
I just watched The L Word for the first time last year, and it really did do something for me.
Leisha: I love that you just watched it and can still relate to it. It was interesting for both of us to learn about each other too. I know some things about Kate, but it’s a more vulnerable inside scoop on how she felt inside while she was growing up. I was scared to share the first time I fell in love. It seems so trite — like, who cares? But then I realized how no matter what generation you’re from, there’s a through-line that we can all identify with. Growing up queer is something we all relate to, no matter how we did it or how it was for us.
Kate: Or what year it took place in. [Laughs]
What was your favorite part to write?
Leisha: I liked writing about my first years in New York City because they shaped who I am today. Between the drag community that embraced me and my music career, it was profound for me to write about that. By the time I went to the L Word audition, I was a confident person. I walked in, like, Here’s who I am. I had nothing to lose, and that was because of that time in New York.
Kate: There was something fun in each section of the book. It was oddly therapeutic just to relive those memories in detail and remember exactly what those moments felt like. It also allowed me to forgive myself for any mistakes I made that I never would have considered otherwise.
Getting into the rules aspect, and still touching on all of this, I want to talk a little bit about friendship. Shane and Alice’s friendship is so important in The L Word, but I especially loved reading about how your real friendship came to be in the book. What’s each of your No. 1 rules for being a good friend?
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Kate: Consistency … Do I have to elaborate?
Leisha: I’m a big believer in communication, because I’ve had friendships in my life that have come and gone, or where we just grew apart. Kate and I have been at points where either someone isn’t picking up the slack, or, like Kate said, isn’t calling enough or caring enough, and we’ve both called each other out on that. We should be focusing on how important these friendships are in our lives, because sometimes they’re more important than our love relationships, and we take them for granted. We’re just like, Oh, that’s my friend; she’ll be there always. Sometimes you have to really work at them, and your friendship grows more deeply because of it.
What about balancing friendship and work, especially when you’re each other’s only co-worker, like for the book and on the podcast?
Kate: That’s where it’s tricky. We learn through error a lot of the time. We have this long-term intimate friendship and we had a quick launchpad into working together — not even just on the show, but more importantly, off the show — and finding the balance between friend conversations and work conversations is the hard part. It’s two sides of the brain, where I turn one off to turn the other one on. And it changes. Sometimes there are deadlines where there’s no time to bullshit and you have to get a bunch of stuff done because people are waiting on you. Other times, you have the morning off and you can yap on the phone and gossip.
Leisha: When we worked on the show together, sure, we were working together, but someone else made the schedule …
Kate: We weren’t the ones looking at the clock. Back then we just had to put on fun clothes and look cute.
Leisha: Now we drive the bus.
Do you talk about work on the weekends?
Kate: We’ve never had that conversation, but I’ve learned that I appreciate weekends now more than I ever have in my life because it’s two days where we just get to be, and it feels so good. So even if we had things to discuss, I know both of us would say, “Fuck it. We’ll deal with it on Monday.”
What’s your ritual pre–podcast recording?
Leisha: You’re talking to two people who just press “record” and go. We should be more self-produced than we are and think about things. That kind of got us into trouble when we had my friend, Ali Adler on, and we did this whole thing where we set her up with someone out there, a listener, and then we never did a follow-up. [Laughs.]
Kate: If it felt like work, then what’s the point of doing it? We purposely approached the podcast with a sense of, We’re doing this because we want to, not because we have to. The original ethos of this is a phone call between friends. There’s relatability in all the banality of what we’re discussing, and we’re not trying to be anything more than that.
Do you think it’s okay to tell white lies?
Leisha: I’m going to lean to “no.”
Kate: You don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings. If the option was “This will either hurt someone’s feelings or I just keep my mouth shut,” I’ll go for keeping my mouth shut. Who wants to hurt someone?
Leisha: Or pull out the positive of what you like. Like if you saw someone perform and you didn’t like what they did and then you see them backstage, kind of thing …
Kate: “You have no idea what you did up there.”
Leisha: “You … up there …”
How do you cancel plans with each other? Are you honest?
Kate: We’re way past that point.
Leisha: We call and say, “I don’t feel like it.”
What about a new friend?
Leisha: Mine’s usually like, “The week got away from me.”
Kate: I still say I’m tired and I don’t want to go out. People like to make plans ten days in advance. And I always think, I don’t know where I’m going to be in ten days.
Leisha: It’s a very L.A. thing. And then when the day rolls around, you can tell when a lot of people want to get out, and I think everyone’s always relieved when a plan gets canceled. But in New York, you probably pick up the phone and go, “Want to meet for a drink?”
Yeah, it’s always the day of or the day before.
Kate: See, that’s nice. I lived in New York for a while, and that was always my experience there. And 9 p.m. was, like, a normal, average time to go out for a drink. Here, everyone’s in bed at 9.
Interesting. Because of the driving?
Kate: Everyone likes their houses and they don’t want to leave. And they wake up early and go to the gym.
When it comes to rules around —
Kate: Wait, these are rules?
Leisha: We’re just two people who show up.
Kate: Well, we were talking about memories, and now we’re talking about rules. You have a lot to look forward to in the next 20 years.
