Lip Service S01E01

Great LezBritain: Interview with Ruta Gedmintas from Lip Service

When we first went onto the Lip Service set, we cannot tell a lie, it was Ruta Gedmintas that first caught our eye. We can thank series creator, Harriet Braun for suggesting the frankly delicious haircut, but we must give her parents and genetics a massive high five for the rest.

Our interview with Ruta took place during filming back in December last year. In person, she was intense, thoughtful and extremely articulate. She talked passionately about the show and had obviously spent a lot of time studying and coming to grips with the role of Frankie.

Since the first episode aired, two things have been made clear to us; Frankie is undoubtedly the most divisive character on the show and many of you would like to have your wicked way with her. We talked to Ruta about how she got the role, the Shane comparisons, and whom in the cast she admitted to having a crush on.


AfterEllen.com: From what we have seen, Frankie is a character that will be a bit of a love/hate figure — isn't that a great character to play?
Ruta Gedmintas: Yes, definitely and I was given a bit of a licence to develop the character. Harriet (Braun) gave me the general archetype of who Frankie is and [said] I could go off and play with it, but the scripts have been great, so I have moulded to them, and they have to me.

She is someone who is very strong minded, independent and loyal to her friends but she takes a lot of risks and is a bit messed up – which, all in all, makes her a fun character to play.

AE: What was the casting process like and how did you find out you had the role?
RG: I was in Bulgaria shooting a horror movie when I was sent the script, so I was reading it in between takes of screaming while covered in blood.

It's not often — especially with the current lack of funding going into the arts — that you read a new script that catches your interest, but as soon as I read Lip Service, I thought it was really good. And when I read the breakdown for Frankie, I was like, "I can do that."

I think I went straight to the plane to the auditions, blood encrusted, and I was feeling really ill. I went to the audition and really loved everyone in the room. I had a four-hour recall where I read for lots of other people. I think, in the end, I found out about getting the part through a friend of mine texting me to say, "Well done," and I was so happy because it's such an amazing part.

AE: Did you have any qualms about Frankie being a bisexual character?
RG: No, it would be the same way I would tackle any other script. Her being bisexual is just another trait of Frankie, I didn't think, "Oh, I'm doing a lesbian show." It was about playing the part of Frankie.

AE: I have seen the pictures of you before Lip Service and the way you look now is pretty different. Tell me a bit about the makeover.
RG: [laughs] Well, I had really long blond hair before and then they cut it off short.

AE: Do you like it?
RG: I do. I really like it. I see pictures of my long hair before and I think, "What was I doing?" I kind of think it didn't really suit me and when Harriet saw me in the auditions, she told me that she was relishing the fact that my hair was going to go. [both laugh] It was quite nice having an excuse to do it because as an actress, you always want to be quite malleable and for people to see you in a variety of ways, and if you have long hair, they can do a lot with that. That's why actresses tend to have long hair. But I love it and I don't really want to go back now.

AE: The whole styling of Frankie is really spot-on and you must realise that she has the potential to become a massive lesbian favourite — do you feel prepared for that?
RG: I don't know. Harriet has said that to me before, but we will see. The styling has been fun and Leslie the costume designer is great. We have shared a lot of similar ideas on how Frankie should look and just added a few quirks here and there. Leslie is great because she is willing to work with the story as well. Frankie's storyline gets a lot darker towards the end of the series, so we've taken that through into the colours I wear as well.

AE: Frankie is already being compared to the character of Shane in The L Word. Do you see the similarities and what would you say are the biggest differences are between the characters?
RG: There is an archetypal similarity between [Frankie and Shane] in that androgynous, boyish, cool kind of thing, so we are obviously going to have comparisons drawn between us. Frankie uses sex as escapism and as a means of control, which I guess Shane used as well. And there is the short haircut but I think that is as far as the similarity goes. Frankie is a lot darker than Shane is. And Shane is seen by her friends as very trendy and doesn't really put a foot wrong with them, whereas Frankie kind of tests boundaries a lot more than Shane did.

I think the big difference between The L Word and Lip Service is that The L Word kind of tackles major lesbian issues, whereas this show is about three lesbians living in Glasgow and just their general lives. And obviously, it's not quite as glitzy as LA – they don't have the money.

AE: Is there anything you had to do to get yourself in the mindset of playing Frankie?
RG: At our first costume fitting, the director gave us a guide to lesbian sex, and told us all to read the book cover-to-cover. I started reading it on the plane on the way back from Glasgow and I didn't realise there were pictures the whole way through it. I was flying with a granny on one side of me and a little kid on the other, and just flicking through it. I opened it at a page with a massive picture of a woman with nipple clamps on and saying, "Oh sorry. This is for work."

In terms of getting into Frankie's character, I approached it the same way I do with every character. I look at images and play music and I read stuff about the kinds of things they have gone through and are going through. I have a Frankie mood board that has everything that is inspirational to me, and I have a Frankie playlist on my iPod that I listened to everyday during filming.

AE: What's on that playlist?
RG: There is one track that is the "Frankie track" but I want to keep that just for me. But if I have to be really loud and a bit lairy, then I'll listen to The Black Eyed Peas. If I have to be sexy, I listen to something like Peaches, and if I have to be really emotional, then there's a lot of Damien Rice and stuff like that. It's just using stuff that I think will help me relate to where Frankie is.

AE: You have a lot of sex scenes. Were you nervous about doing these?
RG: There is always a bit of nerves when doing it. It is such a cliché thing to say but they are the unsexiest of things when you are filming them. The sex scenes were probably the biggest challenge for me because Frankie is quite a predator and so she has to be extremely confident, which is difficult when you are naked in a room full of people.

AE: How was filming those sex scenes in the Glasgow weather?
RG: The flat we have been filming in for the past three weeks has been freezing — an absolute freezer. So that has been interesting trying to pretend that you are really warm and sensual but you're actually in an icebox.

AE: How are all the cast getting on?
RG: We have been really lucky with the cast. I kind of went onto set thinking, "Oh God, a bunch of females. There could be bitching," but actually, it has been lovely. Everyone is so nice and you can actually see why everyone has been cast in their parts.

AE: Have you been out and about much together?
RG: I think I have been out, at the most, three times in three months, just because my schedule has been really crazy. I have been working everyday and if I ever get a day off, I think "Brilliant, a day off. I can learn lines."

We did have the wrap party a few days ago and you could tell that none of us had been out much as we were all, "Yeah, sambuca!" but that has been pretty much it.

AE: What do you hope happens from Lip Service?
RG: I haven't really thought about it, but I just hope people think it's a good show. I don't like watching myself but I will because I think it is the only way to learn. But I won't watch it with other people. I'll be in a darkened room watching from between my fingers and I will probably hate everything I do. But I do want to see it. I would like to see everyone else's performances as well.

We saw a cut together at the wrap party and just seeing Fiona Button do her scenes, I felt like a proud mum — she is so good.

AE: Apart from Lip Service, have you got anything else in production?
RG: I have the horror movie I mentioned, Prowl, that comes out in April. I did another indie film in New York at the beginning of the year called Zero Sun but I am not sure when that is out. Other than that, I am off to LA for a few meetings and a bit of a holiday. I go every year and always stay in Venice. I think it is kind of like Camden in LA.

AE: Lastly, have you ever had a girl crush?
RG: I have always had a crush on Angelina Jolie. I think she's beautiful, plus I've developed a bit of a crush on Heather [Peace.] I think she's so cool and beautiful.

Television Series: Lip Service (S01E01- In Cold Blood)
Release Date: October 2010
Actress: Ruta Gedmintas & India Wadsworth
Video Clip Credit: In The Raw










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New BBC3 Drama Does More Than Pay Lip Service

More This Life than Queer As Folk, and with less baggage than The L Word, BBC3's Lip Service follows five lesbian friends in Glasgo, writes Rebecca Nicholson...

Lip Service isn't the world's first drama about lesbians – that accolade belongs to The L Word, which finished after six series in 2009 – but it is the first that Britain can claim as its own. The show's grey and drizzly Glasgow setting differentiates it from The L Word's sunny Californian sheen as does its sense of humour. And unlike its Los Angeles cousin, it's not driven by issues: there's no co-parenting, no gender transitioning, no horrific tales of coming out gone sour, and no killer cancers to educate the viewers with. It operates on the basis that gay women being gay isn't really a story at all, but that love and heartbreak, friendship and betrayal, crap jobs and worse bosses happen to everyone, even though the sex bits might not always be the same. There's a mystery to unravel, lots of lounging around in bars and warehouse flats, and enough full-on sex to get it a 10.30pm timeslot; all of which makes it more of a This Life-style late-twentysomething angstathon about the ups and downs of the everyday, with added bra hooks, candles and feelings.


Writer Harriet Braun, who cut her teeth on dotcom drama Attachments and later Mistresses, had the idea for the show three years ago. "I'd seen a film called Go Fish, and Queer As Folk years ago," she says, "and been really inspired and excited by them. I thought I'd love to do something like that."

Though she admits that The L Word "paved the way", she thinks a Lip Service-style show wasn't possible until now because there wasn't anyone around with the knowhow. "There has to be the writer with the desire to do it," she says, "and a knowledge of that culture." There were several things Braun wanted to avoid in Lip Service, such as the characters being too "glossy", feeling the need to represent everyone, and showing characters struggling with coming out. She reels off a checklist of her ambitions for Lip Service: "Lesbians are under-represented on TV. I thought it was high time we had some on our screens. I wanted to show characters who happen to be gay, but their sexuality is completely part of their lives. I also wanted it to feel very real. And funny; some of our most painful moments tend to be the most absurd, and retrospectively, very funny."

The Lip Service gang gets its fair share of laughs, particularly Tess, played goofily by Fiona Button, who disastrously gets off with a Christine Bleakley-style TV presenter (Roxanne McKee, previously known as wobbly drunk/murderess Louise from Hollyoaks). But the heart of the show is the swaggering Frankie, who kicks off the series by returning from her hipster photographer life in New York to deal with a family death, encountering still-bruised ex Cat (Laura Fraser), sleazy best mate Jay (Emun Elliott) and many conquests along the way. The first episode does little more than set her up as the Moody One, though the subsequent story takes the show in a more mysterious and thoughtful direction. Braun says she had assumed casting Frankie would be difficult. "We needed to find an actress who could carry off androgyny, cockiness and confidence," she says. "I was thinking, 'Where are we going to find this person?' Then Ruta Gedmintas walked in the room."

A few days later, we meet Gedmintas in a posh central London hotel and recount Braun's tale. "When I read the breakdown for Frankie, I thought, 'This is brilliant, I'm never going to get it,'" she says, surprised. Her biggest role up until that point had been Elizabeth Blount in The Tudors (she's currently on a break from filming in Budapest, where she's squeezing into another corset for Showtime's series The Borgias). Ruta thought it might be a stretch, then, to imagine her as a scruffy lady lothario. "Frankie's really edgy and dark, and that wasn't really what I'd been cast as before. Plus, at the time, I had this big, long, glamorous blonde hair. I went into the audition straight off a plane, tired from a horror film I'd been making, like, 'OK, whatever, I'll just do it.'" And is that what made it work? "It was obviously Frankie to them."

The Lip Service shoot took place over "three or four months" in Glasgow last winter, and for Gedmintas it was an intense experience. "After a while I became a bit insane," she admits, saying she stayed in character for almost the whole duration, which didn't help much. "It was … dark. I had to call up my mum and say, 'Can you talk to me like a human being?'" Then there's the fact that the glamorous-looking loft spaces the characters inhabit were actually old post offices and warehouses. In Glasgow. In winter. "There are quite a few scenes where you can see the mist," she smiles. "When we had any sex scenes, it was warm coats until the last second, then pretending you're in this intimate moment."

She must have risked hypothermia, because there's a lot of sex in the show, and lucky Frankie gets most of it. "I'm actually really strict on when I do nudity," Gedmintas protests. "There have been jobs before where I've thought, 'I don't think there's really a need for that scene, so I won't do it.' For this, there was no question. You needed all those scenes. That's who Frankie is."

Writer Braun is similarly happy with the frequent and frank sex scenes. "It didn't seem like the kind of show where we'd go for a cutaway," she says. "It would be a bit naff. Also, let's face it, the internet is saturated with images of lesbians having sex but they're not very realistic. We wanted to get it right: a realistic representation of two women enjoying being with each other."

It's perhaps for this reason that Lip Service is being called groundbreaking, particularly by the gay press. Not that Gedmintas agrees. "Queer As Folk had a groundbreaking status because there hadn't been a show like that before. But we're not trying to do anything that hasn't been done before. We're just making a relationship drama." She's got a point: it's not groundbreaking, and that's no bad thing. Skins had first love; Tipping The Velvet had social history; even Corrie's got teens coming out. Lip Service is just about the ordinary, day-to-day business of lust and being in love. With added lady parts.
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