Saturday, June 2, 2012

Maura Could Consider a Lesbian Tryst - Sasha Alexander - Advocate.com

Great interview with Sasha on Advocate.com.

Excerpts:

The Advocate: All the girls in the office here love Rizzoli & Isles. Let's talk about your character, Maura.
Sasha Alexander: Thank you. Absolutely.

I love that she’s oddly awkward around nearly everybody except Jane [Rizzoli, the police officer played by Harmon]. What part of the character do you identify with?
[Laughs] Well, it’s funny because I so enjoy playing her, and I think as you get down the road of playing a character you start to realize what are the parts that excite you. And for her, it’s, What is she thinking about? She’s got so much going on, and I like the fact that there’s this kind of innocence, this kind of almost naïveté or sort of enthusiasm for all subjects and all things. And I’m kind of like that. I’m really interested in all things of the world, people, and cultures. I like information. I like people who have information. I enjoy talking to people like that, and my parents are like that.

And socially?
I think that we all have a little bit of that, that part of us. I am now, in this stage in my life, a much more outgoing person than I was as a child or in my teens. You know, my parents were both immigrants in this country and they spoke another language, and I remember feeling like a little bit of an outcast, like, Don’t speak any languages in front of my friends.

There’s a belief among some critics, especially lesbian critics, that Rizzoli & Isles is a lesbian buddy cop show that just doesn’t know it yet.
[Laughs] I love it.

It’s really not afraid of the lesbian label, that both these fictional characters and the real-life people behind them just don’t fear the interest or speculation about their relationship.
No. I mean, you know, it’s such a strange thing because people are always going to get from any film or TV or book or anything they want, what they want to see. And that is all of our right to do so. I mean, it’s completely subjective and that is, that is art. So that’s one part of it, but I feel like we have a unique situation on our show, which is that the books were written by a woman. The show was created and is executive-produced by a woman, and it’s starring these two women who are very different people, they’re very different characters, and so we have a lot more estrogen on our show than most shows. [Laughs] And I think that it’s a great thing because we have a woman spearheading it and she is writing these characters in a way that is just much deeper. They are, they’re deeper. Their relationship; it could be sexual one day, I mean, they’re not gay in the books. But who knows?

Well, how effortless is the chemistry between you and Angie Harmon?
It’s pretty effortless, I must say. It’s kind of one of those things that clicked from the moment we read together. And it was, it was kind of great, you know? We read together, and then when I — she was cast first — when I left the room they said, “Hang out for a second.” And within a second she came in. She said, “You know what? They want us to do it again. Could you come back in?” I thought, Really? I thought that was pretty good. And we came back in and they stood up and clapped and said congratulations, you guys are it. Like, this was it. So they, even the people in the room, understood it immediately. And I think it, you know, Angie and I are very different people. We’re raised different. In real life we’re very different, but the chemistry just works.

There is some boob-grabbing?
There is boob-grabbing. Yes.

I need to know about that immediately.
I’m going to admit to the boob-grabbing. [Laughs] Um. Yes, there’s a lot of female love. It makes the men very uncomfortable. It’s like a female locker room.

There seem to be subtle winks to the show’s lesbian fans, like Jane goes undercover at a lesbian bar, the episode where you’re in bed and Jane asks Maura, “Are we having a sleepover, or is this your way of telling me youre attracted to me?” All those little insidery winks that lesbian fans always pick up on.
Well, I think that if Jane were open to it, I think Maura would absolutely experiment because she’s just a little bit more open-minded in that way. But Jane would never. She’s so straight.

Read the full interview

No comments:

Post a Comment