House is Right

Lisa Edelstein Interview With Jewish Woman

by Lynn on December 17th, 2007

Thanks to Patrick for the tip about this great interview with Lisa Edelstein at Jewish Woman. I was very impressed with her candid discussion of her long, diverse career, including writing an off Broadway play, playing prostitutes and being an MTV host. Here’s an excerpt:

What inspired you to write “Positive Me,” the AIDS-related musical you also composed and performed off Broadway in the 1990s?
It was inspired by my friends, everybody dying and there being no education about the matter. The president hadn’t even spoken the word yet. There was a lot of confusion, a lot of fear, no treatment and a lot of dying. I had volunteered for Gay Men’s Health Crisis to visit people in the hospital who were dying. They trained us and gave us all the information that was available at the time about the disease and how you catch it, so we wouldn’t be afraid to go into the hospitals. The play also grew out of my internal struggle of growing up hearing about the sexual revolution – “be free, do what you want” – and then learning that there were things that could kill you if were too free. My play was really about the things that get in the way of taking care of ourselves.

There’s a world of difference between your first job on MTV and starring in one of TV’s hottest dramas. Do you feel more at home in one universe than the other?
I absolutely hated my job on MTV. It was five days a week, four hours a day, of national humiliation. I never wanted to be a host. I felt like an idiot doing it. But it paid, and I had just finished working on my play for two years and I was broke. So it was a great job in terms of getting me grounded again, and it got me a good agent. But I absolutely feel more at home in my career now. It’s been a long career and one I’ve worked very hard at. Being on such a successful show is a great gift. Emmys or no Emmys, I’m already at 9 out of 10 in terms of being filled with gratitude.

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