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 Michelle Clunie
is an exceptionally intense actress, not to mention a truly dynamic person. On screen, her character, on Showtime’s ‘Queer As Folk’ is strong, intelligent, nurturing, honest and just plain ballsy. Off screen, actress Michelle Clunie comes off as pretty much the same, although the actress will openly admit that she and her alter ego Melanie have some rather vast differences between them. She's positively captivating to watch with an awareness that richly expounds into each scene. On the show, which is already attracting hordes of critics as well as some avidly devoted fans, Clunie of course, plays Melanie Marcus, a lesbian attorney whose partner of eight years has just given birth to a beautiful child, Gus. Factor in to this equation an extremely arrogant, often selfish sperm donor named Brian Kinney and there is more than enough heated controversy to go around. Throughout the first season of the series Melanie’s had to deal with an enormous level of drama, including an ongoing competition with Brian, not just the sperm donor mind you, but the gay man with whom she suspects her partner Lindsay has had an affair; motherhood, although she does not have any legal rights to a child she considers partly her own and prejudice, at the hospital and elsewhere.
Currently wrapping up the filming of its first 22-episode season, ‘Queer As Folk’ is a project which Clunie and the other stars are more than just a little proud
of— because it’s the first time that a television show has taken a raw and honest look at the daily lives of gay men and women. Clunie has been in the business ever since she played ‘Cinderabbit’ in a school play in the fifth grade. After that, she performed at rest homes for the elderly and joined the Academy of Professional Ballet for seven years. At the age of 17, she moved to Los Angeles. Today her credits include ‘The Jeff Foxworthy Show,’ ‘ER’ and the film ‘The Usual Suspects.’ She’s pretty sure ‘Queer As Folk’ will get picked up next season, giving her ample opportunity to develop her character much further. Clunie's unwavering dedication to her craft is obvious from the moment she begins to speak. There’s already at least one fan website dedicated to Melanie and Lindsay. And although Clunie can’t speak seven languages like Melanie can, she is learning French in her spare time. She also likes to travel, go to movies, hang with her friends and
cook— her favorite is a dish something she calls “dirty red chicken” or “ghetto food.” At the time of this interview, Clunie had just finished off a cup of tea and considered herself to be rather "wired," since she was off caffeine. Playful and forthcoming, Clunie laughed quite a bit throughout the course of our informal chat, and quite frankly, so did I.
UPBEAT Your show, ‘Queer As Folk,’ is extremely unique for television. Can you tell us what your thoughts
were when you first became involved with the show?
Michelle Clunie “The first time I saw the pilot, I had never seen anything like that. Literally, I’ve never seen the
obvious— two men making love. But beyond that, I’d never seen a mix of people in really explicit homosexual situations making love, and they you see the real characters and what they go through. I thought that was fabulous. And it’s
also the first show that is all about gay people—
it’s not like there’s a token gay person or a very funny comedic relief gay person, or a lesbian toting a gun in a bimbo dress trying to be sexy for straight men. It’s purely a show for gay people and I think that’s very, very, very unique.”
UPBEAT What do you feel is ‘Queer As Folk’s' underlying message?
Michelle Clunie
“I think a lot of people misconstrue this and they don’t get it, but it really tries to show people not all black and not all white,
but in varying shades of gray. Just very complex people with all their flaws-their good, their bad, people as they really are instead of trying to make homosexuals the saints and heterosexuals the cruel people or vice versa. I think that we really try to show people in their raw state with all their peccadilloes and foibles and all their flaws and all their greatnesses. I think all great art tries to show that.”
UPBEAT Once you’ve gotten past the sex on ‘Queer As Folk,’
which is actually done in an extremely erotic yet tasteful manner, what
inevitably keeps people tuned in— is the character-driven drama.
It's both sincere and provocative.
Michelle Clunie
“That’s what we really try to do because we realize that sex in anything-a relationship, a TV show,
anything— will not hold someone’s attention very long. But relationships between people, it touches you to see two women just trying to live their lives as normal people and to see this man who may be narcissistic and wants to screw everything that moves, that he really does have a heart and pain and a place where that comes from and I just think that is so important.”
UPBEAT What do you say to unfair critics who really don’t understand what the show’s
all about, and can’t see past the explicit sex scenes?
Michelle Clunie
“I tell them to go make their own TV show. (laughs) It’s really difficult to create in this world. You have to be prepared to go to war, you really have to be prepared to have the balls to lay your point of view out there, and to know that not everyone’s going to like you and to have something to say. Maybe the show just isn’t for
them— maybe they shouldn’t watch it. There’s always the fact that the show is important regardless because it is the first all-gay show. It’s important regardless of how anything ends up. It’s a step in the right direction.”
UPBEAT In what ways would you like to see the show, and more
importantly the characters, develop in the second season?
Michelle Clunie
“I’ve talked to a lot of my friends about it, I’ve read a lot of letters about it and I’ve tried to take in everyone’s point of view. For me, what I think is crucially important is that the second season is about fleshing the lesbians out more and making them have more of a life, so when the guys come over we’re not just sitting around in our
pajamas— we’ve got some friends over, three or four recurring lesbians who are very much real women and not stereotypes, and have them
over for an Ethiopian dinner party, so we have a life. I also want to get more lesbian artists
involved— I want to write letters over the hiatus and talk to people about using their songs on the show. I just think it needs more of a voice for the lesbians, and that’s what I’m looking
at— making sure it stays exciting. In the first season there are a lot of relationship problems, stuff to work out. And now that we’re back together, I think as in any relationship we have to work on it and make it exciting and show how much we love each other.”
 UPBEAT What
has been the biggest challenge for you playing Melanie?
Michelle Clunie
“There’s a rawness to Melanie, a real guttural raw honesty about the character, and that’s what I connected with when I first read the script-and that’s what I wanted to bring out. And playing her that way, I’ve had to make choices. Like in the hospital scene when I tell the nurse off, I told the makeup artist it’s in the middle of the night, I don’t want any makeup on and I want the camera shoved right in my face so people see the anguish of what I’m going through. And it’s not pretty all the time, those emotions that I go through playing Melanie. They’re just not beautiful emotions, but I think that if I’m going to do
any justice to this part, I have to show that it all its unapologeticness,
(laughs) if that’s a word. I can’t apologize for that. I have to have the balls to say, this is what I feel right now. This is how I react to prejudice, and it’s not a beautiful thing, prejudice. I think that’s the biggest challenge because we all want to be perfect and pretty and no one wants to hurt in front of other people. I’ve just tried to stay true to the rawness, and the fact that Melanie doesn’t apologize for much.”
UPBEAT Melanie’s an extremely complex, multi-dimensional character.
She can be tough when necessary and yet she's also quite vulnerable in
many ways. And she's very well-versed. We know she speaks seven languages, for
example. What aspects of Melanie can we find in Michelle?
Michelle Clunie
“(laughs) You know, it’s funny. There is a side of me that just wants to jump out of the shower, throw on a T-shirt and jeans and not try really hard to look perfect or anything, but that’s a very superficial thing. I think the part of Melanie that I feel very close to is her honesty. I do have a very strong point of view and I do sometimes, I can’t help myself but just say what’s on my mind. It gets me in trouble sometimes, but but at least people know where I stand. Love means a lot to me, and I’m not afraid of standing up for something, especially when it comes to love.”
UPBEAT Are you at all afraid of being typecast as a lesbian character?
Michelle Clunie
“That’s interesting. I just got back from Los Angeles and I was reading for these films. My agent said to make sure you dress really feminine when you go to this audition, and I was like oh, of
course— it’s a leading lady role, of course I’m going to do that whole thing. And she said, well, they were just concerned that you weren’t feminine enough, they saw you playing Melanie. I’m like, Oh
Jesus, don’t they realize I’m an actor? It’s 2001, don’t the casting directors get that it’s my job to transform and get into character? So it really just cracked me up that people could be so shallow as to think I’m Melanie or Melanie’s me, or I’m necessarily a lesbian in order to play this role, you know? I find it’s kind of funny, actually.”
UPBEAT In the past you’ve done a number of comedies, including ‘The Jeff Foxworthy Show.’ How does being on such an intense drama differ from your sitcom experience— or
some of your previous roles?
Michelle Clunie
“It was like night and day. People just don’t recognize me from one role to the next so I’ve never played anything similar to me, that’s what I like. I heard Robert DeNiro talk once and someone asked him,
‘Why did you want to become an actor?’ and he’s said, ‘Because I wanted to express myself.’ And it just clicked for me when I heard that. I was like, of course, that makes sense. That’s why he gains weight and loses weight and he transforms himself— he’s just exploring all these different parts of himself and
that to me is really exciting. So I try to take each character and make it completely different, like not even
using the same mannerisms or anything. So Melanie is so different from anything that I’ve ever
played— and the great thing is that when you leave a character or you’re done with a project— you have part of that character in you, it kind of lives with you and you
do miss it. It informs you about your life, and teaches you something
about yourself— to play a particular role."
 UPBEAT Is there any role,
perhaps a dream part, that you’d love to tackle sometime during your career?
Michelle Clunie
“Oh God there are so many. (laughs) Wow, truly? There are so many roles I would love to play. Sometimes I’ll be daydreaming of playing something where I get to like work out with a trainer for six months like Linda Hamilton in ‘Terminator 2’ and I get to pack a machine gun and I get to go to war. I dream of another character who’s maybe a nymphomaniac and crazy— an international spy but she’s a hooker with a heart of gold. There are so many characters that I would like I would just love to play. I’d like to play something that’s really simple, and plain. Some girl that’s deformed like the female version of ‘My Left Foot,’
(laughs) I have a very vivid imagination. It helps when you’re an
actor (laughs)."
UB
Helen Lee's extensive writing, editing and webmastering credits include
MVP.com, UltimateTV.com (now Zap2It.com), Gamespot.com, Videogames.com,
noahsays.com, TVQuest.com, the Soapin’ with Soaprah website,
MovieQuest.com, Nuke.com, Cinescape magazine, Electronic Gaming Monthly
magazine and Lycos’ Women’s Wire Web Directory.
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