Sex on camera, drunken rants in bars, bed-hopping, clouded decision making and juggling women – these are none of the behaviors The Real L Word’s Alyssa Morgan has engaged in during her two-season tenure on Showtime’s reality show about lesbians living and making it in LA. By contrast, Morgan -- who is great friends and roomies with the show’s lovable lothario Whitney Mixter—is the Real L Word’s de facto voice of reason as she’s happily engaged and continually fostering and furthering her career and doling out advice to her, perhaps, less-grounded Real L Word posse.
A beauty make-up artist who also knows her way around special effects makeup -- a skill she took away from a job in which she did casualty simulations for cultural training videos for the government – Morgan is even and entrepreneur having kicked off her own special effects company with Mixter entitled Body Farm Studio.
When on camera The Real L Word, Morgan is often shown amidst any number of the five dogs that also inhabit the Morgan / Mixter residence and she’s often depicted quietly taking in the drama unfolding before her or cautioning her friend Mixter for or against various hook-ups or behaviors. Yet, she never crosses the line into engaging in the wilder antics that have come to define the reality genre.
SheWired caught up with Morgan to chat about her industrious career, her past with Whitney, her engagement to the lead singer of Love Darling, Shay Magro, how she manages to keep out of the fray of the Real L Word madness and the ups and downs of molding a penis to create the “Inseminator.”
SheWired: As we don’t get a whole lot of background about you on The Real L Word can you tell me how you ended up in Los Angeles?
Alyssa Morgan: I had moved from Connecticut to New York and I lived there for 10 years, and I met my now fiancée (Shay Magro) in New York. We just decided to try something different. I had never been to the West Coast and I figured why not give it a go. I packed up my dogs and drove across country, and it will be four years in September.
Magro and Morgan
The dogs on the show… Are they all yours or are some of them Whitney’s?
Two of the dogs are Whitney’s. There is a little fluffy black Chihuahua named Judy, and there’s a shorthaired off-white one named Kiwi.
How many are there in all, because I think I’ve never been able to count them all.
There are five. A Puggle named Jake that I adopted in Brooklyn and then Whitney and I both got Chihuahua’s from a friend of ours whose dogs had puppies. Meechu is mine and Judy and Meechu are sisters. We adopted a little scruffy one named Noodle when we moved up to L.A.
Tell me about your background with your career as a make-up artist. We’ve heard quite a bit about the special effects makeup you do on the show but I didn’t realize you did ‘regular’ makeup as well.
Yeah, it’s funny. In the show they sort of glamorize that we do special effects makeup, which is true, but I’ve been a beauty makeup artist for about 11 years. I went to graphic design school in Manhattan, but while I was in school I was paying for school by doing makeup during the day and then school at night.
I loved the idea of being able to be artistic and make a living and being my own boss and not really working in an office, and so instead of doing graphic design, when I graduated I kind of just continued make-up, and somewhere along the lines I started doing makeup for various television stations like Discovery Channel and Biography Channel.
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How did you cross over into special effects’ make-up?
I met a producer that got this wacky job producing a cultural training for the government. She called me and said, “I have this really weird job it would require you to do special effects and you would have to come and live on an army base for a month at a time. Would you come and work with me?” I said, “That sounds really interesting. I don’t really know special effects but I’ll give it a go.”
I had no idea what I was doing, but over the process of several months sort of fell into doing casualty simulations with dead bodies and wounded soldiers and I took some free time to teach my self how to do whatever I could. I wasn’t planning to be a pro or anything, but over the course of three years doing this job with the government every four months or so I sort of taught myself some interesting special effects.
Whitney and I decided to open a little special effects lab, so in addition to the beauty makeup, we do some special effects. But the show sort of glamorizes the special effects because it’s a little bit cooler than the traditional commercial beauty makeup.
I’ve watched The Real L Word religiously for two seasons but I don’t think I realized knows that you and Whitney have known each other since high school.
Whitney and I did go to the same high school but I was a little older and I didn’t actually know Whitney in high school. But the way that she tells the story was that she saw me in school and wanted to always talk to me, but she wasn’t the really big pimpin’ Whitney that everybody knows now. She never approached me and talked to me.
It was the summer between freshmen year and sophomore year in college. I came home for the summer and I actually went back to visit my old art teacher. I was hanging out in school and Whitney came up and introduced herself, and it was that summer that we started dating.
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I completely forgot you dated. How long did you go out?
Whitney and I dated for two years. We were babies. We did a TV web interview after season one and I said we dated when dinosaurs walked the earth because that’s how long ago it feels. We didn’t actually know each other and we weren’t really friends, but a friend of ours tricked us into going on a date and we sort of dated for two years and then realized that we were way better friends then anything else.
She moved to New York for college and I let her move into my apartment because lesbians are weird and actually live with them (their exes) forever. Throughout college she and I were roommates, and then she met a girlfriend Rachel, who was actually on season two, and they moved in together. It wasn’t until I moved to New York and Whitney -- I think she talked about it in season one -- she was really really sick and she was hospitalized and when she was recovering she decided she wanted to make some life changes. So I let her move into my guest room in LA and the rest is history on television.
How is it that when everything seems to be going berserk on The Real L Word – Whitney’s love life, Claire fighting with every body… How is it you consistently come off as cool and collected and you just don’t get swept up into it? They must try to pull the crazy out of you.
Although the show is very crafty at maneuvering us to have an end outcome that will be most desirable for people to watch, they do try really hard to let things also happen organically. And just by nature I try to avoid drama. And a lot of my friend’s sort of come to me for advice. I mean, what you see is what you get on the show in terms of my life. Of course, there’s that whole thing when Whitney disappears I don’t tuck myself into a broom closet. I do have my own life and things that revolve around people other than her. The part of me that is helpful and drama free -- those are real. I’m not edited to look like that I guess.
I don’t think you could edit somebody to look like that.
To answer your question when you asked, “How do I do that?” I don’t know how I do it. Because it’s kind of crazy, and there were times this season where I was opposed to some of the choices Whitney was making, and last season too. I think season one I kept my opinions more to myself whereas this season I sort of let it go more because we did have the same crew, which does feel like creepy silent family members at times. So it was a little easier to let some of my guard down.
But obviously, also, you are still always conscious of the fact that there’s a camera there -- at least I am. There were some of my friends this season where I was like, “Why did you do that?” Or you know, “I can’t believe you said that there’s a camera right there,” “You really decided to do those things with a camera crew five feet away from you?” But for me, I always keep in mind, even if I’ve had a couple drinks, or I’m out with the girls, or I'm angry, you have to understand that it’s not just the moment it’s also -- the world is seeing you. But without being fake about it. It’s just, how do you see yourself? And how do you want people to see you? And you kind of have to act accordingly. I wasn’t really raised in such a way that I would throw glasses at people in bars or lose my cool over trivial things.
That’s very Connecticut of you really.
(Laughs) Oh, the land of country clubs and apple orchards and horses.
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Exactly! Shifting gears a little, has the show put any pressure on your friendship with Whitney? You’ve known each other a long time and now I know you’ve dated. Has the show ever gotten in the way of your friendship, or has it made it stronger?
I never actually wanted to be on TV. We were working on a job together and a friend of mine, who I hired to work with us, got an interview to be on the show and Whitney went with her to keep her company because she was nervous. It turned out Whitney got on the show instead of this girl. And when she came and told me it didn’t hit me that it meant they would be filming here in our house. I thought that maybe they’d sweep them away like Tila Tequila into some place.
None of us knew the format of what they were going for at the time. So when she was like, “The cameras are going to be here everyday, are you ok with that?” it was sort of a little bit alarming. But after we settled into the idea we kind of told each other, if this is what’s going to happen and it’s a real show about real people, obviously they are going to edit it they way they want, but we are going to go into it giving them real us. Whatever we are, however we are it going to be what we really are.
Initially, in season one, there may have been a couple instances where one or the other felt maybe betrayed that we were honest about something, but at the end of the day we have known each for like a decade, and no television show or relationship or whatever is going to change the friendship that we’ve had.
You mentioned that you have a fiancée, who happens to be the front woman for Love Darling. When are you going to make it official?
I kind of have this sort of fairy tale idea of what I want things to be like, without sounding too Connecticut. I kind of want to wait until I can afford to make it be all that it could be. We have been engaged now for two and a half years.
Did you get engaged when it was still legal here in California?
I believe it was at the time. Actually it wasn’t legal yet, and then it was legal and we missed our window because I was away for work for a couple months. When I got back we figured, “Oh Prop 8 and everything will be overturned and then we can do it and I’ll have money at the time…” and things seemed to be falling into place. And then everything sort of went south for it.
For a while we thought we’d wait, but now it’s not necessarily about the legality of it all, although it would be nice to have the same rights as everybody else. It’s more about what it means without it being on paper legally. So we are kind of setting a goal -- next spring or fall, hopefully that will work out. But we have been together for eight years so I don’t think either of us is going anywhere anytime soon. It s like we’ve been married for the past eight years.
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This season you and Whitney crafted the “Inseminator” for Cory and Kaci. Can we expect a line of Real L Word branded sex toys from the two of you any time soon?
Well, you know the show wanted us to sort of put out inseminating dildos and we’re not opposed to it. And I’ve actually received several emails from people asking if they can purchase them. But right now the special effects company that Whitney and I run -- it’s called the Body Farm Studio -- because we don’t really have the facility right now to mass produce we’re doing them per order, so if somebody wants one we will craft one for them and send it out.
The thing was that on the show it sort of trivialized it and highlighted the obviously entertaining portions of molding a guy’s cock on TV but the reality was that we did put an awful lot of research and time into it and we did talk to fertility doctors and we did put something together that could potentially could work if somebody chose the do-it-yourself method, which I guess a lot of people do try. So there was a little bit of science that went into it as well. And of course, if we can help people we’d love to be able to do that.
How long did that take you to actually get it right?
The actual molding of it was only a few tries but then we had to pour it out and make one out of clay and flush out all of the impurities and cracks and then make one out of silicone. So when it was all said and done took about three and a half weeks to get it right and make one that actually worked with all the little plungers that were involved and all that stuff. Now that we’ve kind of got it down to a science we can bang them out in four or five days a piece.
How much would and original Alyssa and Whitney “Inseminator” cost?
Whitney and I were talking about it and we think that it would be fair to charge like $125. It’s cheaper than some high quality sex toys but keeping in mind that people are spending upwards of three grand to try and get pregnant themselves so we’re making it more affordable to make us feel better about selling them.
You’ve been on the show for two years now -- how close to reality is the finished product after it’s been cut?
You know, it’s tricky; because there are some things you really kick yourself about. They do the Franken-Biting where you won’t see your face on screen but you’ll hear a sentence that you’ve said but you have never actually said that sentence. They’ll sort of chop together things to make you say some of the things, and you can actually hear it when they do it. It’s pretty obvious. So there’s that, but at the same time, everything you’re seeing has actually happened. If I had to give it a percentage I’d say its 90 percent real life and then 10 percent fluff.
Do you have a favorite moment from the past two seasons?
I really love the charity fundraiser that we did for Falling Whistles this season –the Pants and Pumps Olympics. It was a lot of fun. Initially Whitney and I sat down and wanted to make this really amazing charity fundraiser event that was kind of like this faux Olympics. We had wanted to get some named celebrity attached to it and have it be a really, really huge event but because of the limits that we have with production and trying to get clearance for places to shoot and people who actually wanted to be filmed on television it kind of ended up being forced to be scaled down into a backyard. But at the end of the day we did raise a lot of money for the charity.
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Are there any moments that you look back on that are really cringe worthy that you wish didn’t make it on camera?
Actually there are two moments. Season one my cousin Tor, she really kind of got her heart broken, and she has avoided anything and everything that had to do with the show since then. She actually ended up moving back to Connecticut after the show. I felt really bad; it was sort of the first time she was treading in gay waters... It was her first time living away from home and her first attempt at a gay relationship, and having it being on TV was just way too much for her. I kind of wish I had just convinced her to move out after the show.
And then for season two I think some of the stuff with Rachel and her pill sand drinking problem -- those are all very real things that did happen while we were filming, but again, Rachel moved out here around the time of the anniversary of her father’s death and she still had high hopes that she and Whitney would maybe potentially be in a relationship, and she was looking for a new job... I think when you put all those things together it’s sort of a recipe for high potential for drama. So I think that they honed down some of that because it made for good television but at the same time it’s a real person’s life, I don’t necessarily think that it was 100 percent accurate I think they made it seem like there was more of a problem then there was. But it did happen, so it’s debatable.
What do you say to any criticism of the show? Do you read the blogs?
Yeah, I do. Season one was a little hurtful to read some of the things. But for a thousand positive comments, if there are three or four negative comments, I can’t really be all that mad about at it. People are entitled to their opinion. I just hope that sometimes, before people get online to spew their emotions, be it negative or positive, that they take into consideration that our lives are so much more than the show actually portrays and it’s kind of unfair to pass judgment before you have all of the facts and details. And if you are going to say something negative at least make a note that you are making a negative comment on what you saw on the show and not about that person as a whole.
I did an interview with Jill Goldstein from season one and before I went into it I had no idea that she has this fantastic business career.
You mean she’s not a housewife and she doesn’t pick money off the tree in the back yard? Yeah, we joke about it all the time. (Laughs) That’s why I was saying, “Oh, you mean I have a life and I don’t disappear to the broom closest when Whitney walks out of the room?”
Exactly. So, would you do the show for a third season?
Yeah. Right now I look at the show like a work in progress. Showtime has never done anything like this before. And I think they are still trying to get it right. The production company that they work with, Magical Elves, I don’t know they’ve done a show like this before either. I know that they do Top Chef, and Project Runway, but again, those are all like reality shows where it’s a competition and people are all living in one building and sort of battling it out.
We are several little groups living in different areas spread out all over Los Angeles and I think that its still finding its roots, and if they shoot it to do a season three I wouldn’t say no if they asked me to do it again. I can’t say that I have gained anything financially from the show. It hasn’t really spurred a career for me. I’m still living my life the same way prior to the show. But it is something that’s helping give visibility to the gay community. It is helping open some people’s eyes to what it means to be a lesbian in 2011. I would never say no to helping be a voice.
Are you working on anything else you’d like to talk about?
I’m actually starting work on a movie. It’s a new film by Jamie Babbit written by Guinevere Turner called Breaking The Girl. I’m doing all their make up and special effects for that. It should be a really amazing project, there are some really amazing people working on it. I don’t want to say too much but it’s a really cool little thriller film.
They are both legends in their own right, so that’s fantastic.
Yes, Guinevere is a really good friend of mine and I have met Jamie several times and have been dying to work with her so it’s going to be a lot of fun.
