The L Word reunion: The cast watched a sex tape to prepare for love scenes

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The L Word never shied away from nudity or sex. The series, about a group of lesbians living and loving in Los Angeles, was bold and frank in its portrayal of love scenes. As it turns out, the cast and crew took these very seriously. When EW reunited the cast, they talked love scenes with other women and doing sex scene research.

Mia Kirshner: These girls said that my breasts were the ninth character.

Jennifer Beals: Well, the ninth and the 10th.

Sarah Shahi: I will say this, in all seriousness: Doing love scenes with guys and girls, I much prefer doing them with girls because I feel like, as women, we naturally protected each other.

Beals: Do you guys remember that Rose [Troche, a co-executive producer on the show] made us a video?

Kirshner: Of lesbians having sex.

Beals: We had to watch a sex video because we had to do all these sex scenes. So we could watch the video and see what worked and didn’t work and analyze why it didn’t work. It didn’t work if people weren’t fully committed to it.

Shahi: I could have used that viewing. My first day I got introduced to Kate [Moennig, who played Shane], and it’s like: “Kate, this is Sarah. Sarah, this is Kate. And so in this scene, Kate is going to be going down on you.” And it’s just like, Whoa!