Pam Grier on How 'The L Word' Changed the World INTERVIEW

There are few women in Hollywood hotter than Pam Grier. The legendary actress who broke barriers with her turn as a blacksploitation superstar in the 1970s, in films like Coffy, Foxy Brown, and Sheba, Baby is long heralded as the first female action hero. From Fort Apache the Bronx to Jackie Brown Grier has changed every film she’s starred in. But it was her role in the groundbreaking Showtime series, The L Word, that brought her a whole new audience. She’s done plenty since the show stopped taping in 2009 (turning up as a villain on Smallville and Julia Roberts’ bud on Larry Crown, and releasing a tell-all memoir Foxy: My Life in Three Acts). But as Grier reminds us, The L Word isn’t really over, nor is it off the air: it currently airs on Logo and in 46 different countries that have syndicated it, it’s spin off reality show The Real L Word is prepping season three, and the entire glorious series, a cast reunion, and several rarities from the iconic show have been released on the The L Word Complete Series DVD Collection.

For Grier, the show was a catalyst to LGBT activism, and the actress has shown up at fundraisers, celebrations, and protests in support of LGBT rights, and often acts as a bridge between the straight African-American community and the LGBT world. In recent months, she was awarded the Entertainment AIDS Alliance Visionary Award and she appeared in support of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (“I really support them because they really fight for injustices. They go down there and they really kick ass,” she says of NGLTF). She’s also a spokesperson for Dining Out for Life, a gourmet food movement that raises money for AIDS service organizations. We caught up with her to talk about TV badonkadonk, Twitter, and how The L Word changed the world.

So The L Word was one of the all-time highest rated shows on Showtime.

It was? Past tense?

No, it is.

[Laughs] There you go!

What impact do you think the show had on the world?

It is still continuing. In education, it’s a formidable tool of information, for families from diverse backgrounds, cultures, class — it's still resonating, it's still very, very popular. And the fact that so many woman — and because of its overall theme, and men, gay men, bisexual and transgender men — have been able to be more authentic with themselves and more comfortable, and people who were ignorant or not knowing would find a comfort zone.

It brought up issues we hadn’t seen on TV.

Even myself, I had no idea of the many injustices in the gay community, whether its the adoption of children, marriage, benefits, estates. But a lot of it was the assumption in the hetero world, in the straight world — my mother and I, we just assumed that gay people received automatically, by birthright, the same benefits as us.

You said your mother and her friends discussed the show.

My mom being 82, and being very wise and cultural, she often assumed that there shouldn't be a problem [with being gay]. My mom is an academic and she wants to go back to school at 82, because of [her love of] information. But I was relaying this to her and her friends who had gay children and still didn't have an idea of how to approach them or let then know it was OK [to reconnect] after they kicked them out 15 years ago. How did they reconcile the fact that they are more tolerant and they understand and that it is OK now? As a matter of fact, you know that isyour child. It used to be that these people, my mom's generation would sit and have discussions … about how so many people haven't been able to, or are uncomfortable, or will not be ever ready to come out and just be themselves. So to have 82-year-old women discuss that is great.

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