|
Daniela Sea talks to Katrina Fox about her role as trans man ‘Max’ in The L Word and why she’s glad she’s not straight.
Anarchist Emma Goldman, civil rights activist Martin Luther King and environmental campaigner Vandana Shiva are among Daniela Sea’s heroes. If they’re not the typical names you’d expect from a Hollywood actor, that’s because Sea is anything but ordinary.
Raised in Malibu and Hawaii by hippy/artist/surfer parents, she left home at 16 and moved to the bay area of San Francisco where she joined DIY punk/feminist/artist space Gilman Street Project and played in several punk rock bands.
A desire to meet new and interesting people saw her hitchhike alone through Turkey, perform as a fire juggler with a travelling circus in Poland and dress as a man in India for eight months to gain better access to the culture.
While Sea – who named herself after the ocean – had studied improv acting and appeared briefly in Shortbus, a film by John Cameron Mitchell (Hedwig and the Angry Inch) with her real-life girlfriend Bitch, her first big role was as ‘Moira’ in The L Word. Moira, a butch dyke from the midwest, then begins a transition to become ‘Max’.
“I haven’t had any negative feedback on how I portrayed Max, but there’s definitely been questions about the storyline,” Sea tells CHERRIE from New York. That storyline includes [SPOILER ALERT] Max becoming angry due to testosterone treatment and embarking on an affair with a gay man where previously he’d been exclusively with women.
“I had some conflicts regarding the rage from testosterone,” she says. “It didn’t seem accurate to me with the research I’d done. I tried to make it make sense, so if he’s raging out, it’s not just the hormones but something from his family life that caused him to be that way.”
Of the gay affair, she says, “When I did this, I asked how it would affect people: what does it mean in terms of culture? I am a sociologist type – I like to think about things politically and I think it’s really exciting. It seems really accurate compared to what a lot of my friends are going through, some of whom are gay men who were born as women, maybe lived a lesbian life and transitioned with hormones or even without, then identified as gay, getting with each other or gay men.”
When Max came out as trans, blogs in the GLBTIQ sphere posed the question, ‘Is lesbianism dead?’ To this, Sea offers a resounding ‘no’. “Absolutely not! I hang out with lesbians from 14 to 85 and there’s plenty of lesbians! I’m not worried about that at all. Being raised by a gay dad and I knew some of my best friends’ moms before I knew them and their moms are lesbian and they’re lesbian. It’s a culture and whenever you try and define people and try to put them in boxes it’s going to be problematic, but it’s also part of our strengths to have an identity and understand who we are. The fact of being a lesbian is a lot about gender anyway – it’s a gendered situation, so plenty of people have butch friends. We’ve always played with this; it’s not a foreign idea.”
So, does Sea identify as a lesbian? “Yeah, that’s one side of my identity, sure, because I’m proud of my foremothers and I understand the struggles that went to my freedom and I’m kind of a retro type person. I think it’s cool to call yourself a lesbian nowadays. But I also feel sometimes like a gay man, or bi – sexually I’m bi; I’ve been in love with men before.”
The love of her life for the past six years, however, has been the renowned singer Bitch (aka Capital B). Both of them are creative spirits with a beautiful energy, a passion for human and animal rights and a huge love of the natural environment.
“Loving somebody in a partnership way like that, you have to give a lot of room for creative working or expression of all sorts,”
Sea says. “It’s something you can hold on to but you can’t hold on too tight; you’ve got to let people breathe. She’s got to go out on tour, I’ve got to go to Vancouver to work, I’ve got to make a random trip somewhere to make a short film. A lot of time in the past year we haven’t been together much physically at all and that’s been a challenge but I’ve definitely learned and grown so much and it’s how it’s meant to be. I put art first and so does she.”
For Sea, who describes herself as a philosopher, her eccentricities and differences are her strengths and have helped rather than hindered her path through the Hollywood scene.
“I never had a choice because I’ve always been different,” she explains. “So as a person who played in punk bands as a teenager, as a crazy traveller, I can’t even imagine what it would be like to be a normal person, or try to navigate through the system as a femme, straight woman. If I were a straight woman it would be a lot harder to want to be in this system because I’d be so much more a victim to a lot of horrible things that go on in this industry. I see the patriarchy in the system we live in. I’m aware of it and I try to speak out for other possibilities and ways of interacting in the world. For myself I think being different has always been a strength and the golden sword – it’s given me a lot of special opportunities.”
With one foot in the Hollywood system via The L Word and the celebrity status that comes with it, and the other firmly planted in an anarcho, punk, hippy, feminist sensibility, how does Sea balance doing art for its own sake versus mainstream entertainment?
“I guess, it’s a daily thing,” she says. “Sometimes I look around and think, ‘What am I doing?’ It’s cool and everyone who works on [The L Word] is nice. I’m learning a lot about my craft and it’s nice to be earning an income but sometimes I think I’d rather be making a film about some elven hippies in southern Italy or some punk kids I’ve known have made whole kingdoms out of the garbage of society and to me that’s much more interesting, but I don’t think it’s necessarily a compromise to learn a different medium and then use it to tell those stories.
“I had to buy a car so I got an old Mercedes that I’m converting to run on used vegetable grease, then I go to these Hollywood things and I talk to people about things like that – that’s what I mean about difference being a strength because you can effect a lot of change with your own spirit.”
While Season 4 of The L Word is currently screening on Australian TV, the final ever season (6) will air next year. When asked what Sea would like for Max, she says, “I’d like to see him fill out and inhabit a love story and go further with the relationship he’s having and I’d like his friends in the community of The L Word – the Alices, the Shanes – to make more than just a surface effort and really accept him as part of their queer world. I’d like him to be happy and have friends and nice work although it might be interesting to explore more turmoil, I don’t know!”
Meanwhile, keep an eye out for Sea later this year, when Jamie Babbitt’s fabulous and hilarious film Itty Bitty Titty Committee is released on DVD. Sea plays Calvin, a butch former military servicewoman hired to make a bomb for a radical feminist group called Clits in Action (CIA). “It presents feminism in a light-hearted way because we get such a bad rap for feminists being such downers which is so not true,” she says. “Most of the people I know have huge humour – it’s the only way to survive in this system that seeks to domesticate us, rape us and kill us.”
The only thing left to ask now, of course, is whether Sea has any plans to visit Australia. “I’d love to!” she enthuses. “I used to live collectively with some Australians and I know there’s a really cool progressive movement there and nature wise it’s just amazing. When I look at a surfing magazine, if I can see a wave, I’ll know what beach it is but if I see Australian waves I’ll know it’s Australia just by the look of the water.”
www.danielasea.com
The L Word screens on Movies Extra, times vary.
 |
Show/Hide comments
Show/Hide comment form
