Daniela Sea

A jill of all trades, Daniela Sea talks about music, her film debut in John Cameron Mitchell’s sexy Shortbus, her role in the upcoming Itty Bitty Titty Committee, and of course, the new season of the luminously lustful L Word.

By Tara Lombardo
Published: January 16th, 2007 | 1:32pm

A jill of all trades, Daniela Sea talks about music, her film debut in John Cameron Mitchell’s sexy Shortbus, her role in the upcoming Itty Bitty Titty Committee, and of course, the new season of the luminously lustful L Word.

The fourth season of The L Word started January, 7 2007. Your character, Max, is involved in a support group for trans men. How do you think your character contributes to the dynamic of queerness on the show?
If you take a cross section of people — whether or not they are lesbians — you are going to have all different kinds of people who are part of the crowd. In the queer scene, I feel like it’s more representative of what is really going on to have a guy on there who is dealing with this, you know, as lots of my friends have transitioned.

What did you do to prepare for your character and his transition?
I like to start from what I know and what’s common about me in this character. I read through a script and see what the parallels are between me and the character.

It was really important that I agreed with the way the script was written. We worked as a team, and the writers know how to make the story intriguing. Like, if I’d say, “Well, it’s totally inaccurate for his hair to grow in that quickly.” They’d say, “Yeah, but we have to tell this story in this amount of time to parallel with the other stories going on.” It’s really different than saying what would happen in real life.

I understand.
Part of my preparing would happen organically when I would get a script. First, I’d call up one of my best friends who has gone through some of the transition stuff. I’d say, “In your experience, what did it feel like when you were hoping to get a mastectomy?” And once the T [testosterone] started, I started talking to people and got access to the local FTM [female to male] scene, which is pretty prominent in Vancouver [where The L Word is filmed]. My friend came over and he’d look over the script with me and we would talk. I do it very meticulously because that’s how I like to work.

You also work in film. Shortbus, which was released in September 2006, was your first feature film debut. What was it like to work on the movie?
It was really great. I haven’t pursued acting my entire life. I’ve lived my crazy life, I’ve traveled, I’ve been in bands.

But in a way, I feel like I have always been preparing. If I was living in some village in Romania, I was definitely doing character studies and learning new languages, trying out accents. I feel like organically I was crafting this certain kind of artistic eye. When I got that role, I decided a few weeks before that I really wanted to pursue acting. It was kinda like magic. A couple of weeks later, I got word through my friend that they were casting for this movie and they had me come in for an audition. That experience was great because it was more like what my life had been like up to that point in the sense that it was communal. We created the script with the director based on our improvisation.

Yeah, that’s what I read — that everyone was involved.
It’s a great opportunity for the kind of actor that I am, which is, it’s hard for me to separate my life from my acting from my music. It felt very familial because some of my old friends were in it or there were new friends who were like kindred spirits. I felt like I couldn’t ask for anything better.

When will Itty Bitty Titty Committee be released?
It will be at South by Southwest [the film festival takes place March 9–17, 2007].

In a clip about the film, you said this film portrays feminism in a comedic way. Could you expand on that?
I think it’s the same with a lot my friends who are artists, who are creative, and even just the humor in the feminist community in general, which I think spans the board. I have a lot of guy friends who are also feminists. We get this reputation as feminists that we are serious, man-haters, humorless, uptight, angry — similar things that they may say about older lesbians. And it’s just so ironic to me because some of the funniest people I know — or don’t even know but respect as artists — are hilarious. I don’t know if you saw But I’m a Cheerleader?

Yes, I did, and that’s the same director, right?
The same director, the same producer, they are actually partners. It’s a similar tone in a sense that it’s a bit campy, in a good way. It makes it completely palatable to people who may not feel comfortable saying they are feminists, who could take these pretty strong feminists ideas and swallow them like a little pill. I also like to describe it as a feminist action movie. It’s about this group of women who start an action group with strong ties to the riot grrl scene from the ‘90s, definitely reminiscent of that style of feminism. They have a lot of great dialogue about misogyny and the patriarchy, but it’s hilarious at the same time.

Are they in high school?
Early college years mostly; some are younger. My character is mid-20s — just back from the Iraq war — who comes home and they recruit Calvin into their organization, the Clits in Action (CIA).

The premiere is March 11, 2007 and it has a really great soundtrack. It was fun to make. It was like guerilla. We didn’t have permits, so we’d go into the Greyhound station to film and they’d kick us out, so we’d go somewhere else. Again, it really was fitting to how I live my life.

You’ve been playing shows with your girlfriend, Bitch. What role does music play in your life, and will you and Bitch collaborate again in the future?
I’ve played music since I was a little kid. And being from the punk scene, music has been a doorway to so much possibility. I’ve traveled all over the world — some pretty extreme places — just with my music. When someone asked me last night in an interview, “What would you choose, acting or music?” I can’t even separate them. I get really sentimental about it.

When Bitch and I met, we played music together right away, but we’ve been together five years now and we never wanted to put that into the public eye or make a product out of it. At a certain point, it just organically happened that we wanted to collaborate together and play for people. I accompanied her before on keyboard and toured with her, cooking macrobiotic food and tour managing, but this is the first time that we put it out there and created a whole show. It’s so satisfying. We’re also writing a script together and just living life, but music will be an ongoing thing. We’re already talking about making a record together, and I will be playing with her this spring a little bit.

Who are some of your musical influences?
Wow, well firstly, I would say my mom; she’s a folk singer. And then my dad was constantly playing all kinds of music for us — he had this huge record collection and still introduces me to great music. A lot of psychedelic stuff was in our house … soundscapes … and my dad would be like “imagine the story behind this.” Joni Mitchell was a big influence on me. The Violent Femmes and then those bands like Crass and the political punk from England really opened my mind to communal living and politics in music. Public Enemy is a big one for me. And now, the Dead Prez — they’re saying straight up what I’m thinking right now.