Pam Grier on How The L Word Changed the World

There are few women in Hollywood hotter than Pam Grier. The legendary actress who broke barriers with her turn as the blaxploitation superstar in the 1970s in films like Coffy, Foxy Brown, and Sheba, Baby has long been heralded as the first female action hero. Grier's performances have defined every film she's starred in, including Fort Apache the Bronx and Jackie Brown. But her role in the groundbreaking Showtime series The L Word 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's bud in Larry Crowne, 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, its spin-off reality show The Real L Word is prepping season 3, 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 for LGBT activism. The actress has shown up at fund-raisers, celebrations, and protests in support of LGBT rights, and often acts as a bridge between straight African-Americans and the LGBT world. In recent months she was awarded the Entertainment AIDS Alliance Visionary Award and 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 spokeswoman for Dining Out for Life, a project that involves restaurants and their customers in raising money for AIDS service organizations. We caught up with her to talk about TV badonkadonk, Twitter, and how The L Word changed the world.

The Advocate: So The L Word was one of the all-time highest-rated shows on Showtime.
Pam Grier: 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 women -- 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 it's the adoption of children, marriage, benefits, [or] 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 is your 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.

I remember how African-American queer women were so excited to see you in person as well as on the show.
I was invited to a wonderful, wonderful symposium in Las Vegas of African-American lesbian women. It was a community, it was an organization, very prolific, very successful, very informative -- and it was so amazing that they could have this seminar and have a great retreat in Las Vegas. I know often in African-American communities ... they are still uncomfortable [with homosexuality] in many areas. I think they are more religious or old-school, if you will. Eventually, as Howard Zinn -- the social activist, who was the first white professor at Spelman College, which was an African-American women's college -- said in a statement that has always lingered with me, it is something very special, he said, "Small acts, multiplied by millions, can transform the world."

That's really resonant.
And it has been a part of my family's mantra, small acts, and if The L Word in relative terms was a small act, look at the millions of people it reached. It's playing in 20 some countries. I get emails from Finland, Brazil, from gay women who love The L Word. And my mom asks me, "Are you shocked if a lesbian woman gives you a compliment?" I'm like, "No, it's flattering, can't do much, but it's flattering."

It means you connected with lesbian viewers.
It's the fact that we highlighted the life of many women, so other people can herald the greatness of people. That is why I had to be a part of it. And Jennifer Beals, my sistah, wanted me to play her sister in the show, and I am so grateful for that because I would not have known what I know. I've met so many incredible people who are my friends for life. And they still can't adopt children, and they still can't get insurance, and they still can't buy a home comfortably, and there's all these other ridiculous issues. And so with that, I thank Jennifer and Jerry and Showtime for allowing me to learn and be a beacon of knowledge and information for others who have no idea.

We've talked about how this show affected others. What type of impact has it had on you?
Oh the impact on me is still, oh, we won't know. We won't know because people on my Twitter page of half a million people still talk about The L Word, and it's great because many of them are African-American. Back in the day we had church, we had no other form of social media, there was no lecture series, maybe a school somewhere, but we didn't have what we have today. And thank God for it. Thank God for information and knowledge to break down barriers. Thank God one tweet can start a Wall Street protest. [Laughs]

Yes, the Occupy Wall Street movement really relied on social media.
But you know that's this country, and that's who we are -- we want to do better, we want to be better as a community. I am still, as far as people when they come to sign autographs, they bring my book and three L Word sets. And many women ask, "Can I [get your autograph]?" Of course you can! One lady told me she had raised her children, she was a doctor, she was a single mom, and then she came out to her children and her children had a difficult time understanding it, so they abandoned her for a while. And maybe they will come around, maybe not all of them. But it is interesting, the forces of community and common sense and education and what it does. And I think eventually they will all come around and see that she is still mom. She still had three jobs and went to school and put us all through college. And just because she came out, she's another person? So their dialogue is going to be amazing. And it is going to be very simple. They're going to see how simple is that, how easy. And as people start realizing historically, the incredible people that were gay, you know, since a thousand years ago. You can go back. It's all about education and information, and I think all the schools should have gay studies.