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Tavis: Pam Grier doesn't look old enough to have been making movies back in the seventies, but we'll take her word for it. The award-winning actress is now stirring things up on the small screen in a controversial new series on Showtime. Here is Pam Grier in a scene from 'The L Word.'

Oh, come on, don't walk ou--oh, come on, girl. Don't walk out of here. Don't walk out! Come on! We gotta stop doing this to each other!

We?

OK, I gotta stop doing it. I'm the one that always ran away, OK, but don't do what I did. Stay, hear me out, because I'm not gonna say what you think I'm gonna say. There's-- there's only one thing that cuts across all our realities, and it's love, the bridge between all our differences...and you have so much love in your life.

Tavis: Pam Grier, nice to see you.

Pam Grier: Thank you, again.

Tavis: Again. And every time I see you--I tell you all the time, you are such an ageless beauty. How do you do it?

Pam: Uh, Vaseline, Crisco. (laughs) Keep my stress level down.

Tavis: Yeah. Livin' in Colorado.

Pam: Yeah. Livin' in Colorado, but I grew up there, and my family really is a part of the black West.

Tavis: Yeah. When I told my friends you were coming on the show and you were coming on in part to talk about this new TV series on Showtime, 'The L Word,' you know what they said. Why is Pam Grier in 'The L Word'? How did you end up in this new series?

Pam: Because I knew when I read the script that it was going to be brilliant. We know what it's like to be excluded as a group, and for a group of women who are friends just trying--struggling for freedom, love, equality. Some are gay, bisexual, curious. My character's straight, but has some little things that happened in her past, being an eighties singer and songwriter on the road. So that's gonna be revealed along the way. And she's very inclusive and that's the only family she has, is this group of girls, of women in this little group.

Bette Porter, portrayed by Jennifer Beals, is my half-sister, and we're each other's truth serum. She got the education and the family life that I didn't get when my father ran off with her mom, because my mom and I sacrificed for our dad to get that medical education, you know, become the doctor, and then we would have all of our dreams come true, which didn't happen. So my character's a part of the women in the seventies who gave up their education and their careers for the family and the husband and then when he left them, they had nothing, and so she says, "Kid, don't give up your dream."

Tavis: You mentioned that there are some things that are gonna be revealed over time that--about your past, and I'm not gonna get ahead of the writers on the show, but here's how stupid I am: when I actually saw the billboard, the advertisement for 'The L Word,' I thought it meant 'The Love Word.' I said, "Oh, another show about love!"

Pam: Oh, yeah!

Tavis: '‘Sex and the City's' goin' off. Another show about women in love," and then I was like, "Oh, my God! It's--it's lesbianism! ‘The L word.'' Um, but I raise that because your character is heterosexual, as you said a moment ago--

Pam: Thus far.

Tavis: Thus far. Ooh. OK.

Pam: Ooh!

Tavis: I'm about to ask if they had offered you, or if you had the opportunity--maybe you did, I don't know--to play a lesbian character. At this point in your career, you ain't worried about being typecast, but for any other reason would you not have accepted a role, a character like that?

Pam: Oh, I would jump at the chance to play, walk in somebody else's shoes and see what it's like to have a family either embrace you or disown you or who are still in search of why? What makes us attracted to someone of the opposite or similar sex? Is it conscious choice, which is nobody's business, or is it biological? And is it a gene that makes us a little more, a little less?

Tavis: What do you think it is?

Pam: I think it could be both. However, what if someone did make a conscious choice to say, "You know, I'm comfortable with women. I don't know if I could please a woman sexually, but I would rather be with a woman than with a man," because she's afraid of them or doesn't get along with them, doesn't like them? That's her choice.

Tavis: You know as well as I do that gayness, homosexuality, lesbianism, still very much a taboo subject--not as much as it used to be, but still very much a taboo subject inside of black America specifically--

Pam: Oh, espe--yeah.

Tavis: And black folk love Pam Grier. Everybody loves Pam Grier, but black folk especially love Pam Grier. What do you say to black folk who say, "Now, Pam Grier, you done got caught up in it. Now you done gone too far"?

Pam: Well, all I can tell them is that look at their children. I could go to any church congregation and ask, "Does anyone know or is anyone related to someone gay?"

Tavis: Or is anybody in the choir who happens to be gay?

Pam: Or the choirmaster or the preacher. Let's go on down the line.

Tavis: Exactly.

Pam: And everyone would raise their hand, and we have been tolerant of our hairdressers and some of our designers and dancers and--but it's still taboo because we're not as knowledgeable, you know, and ignorance isn't bliss, but it will keep you in the closet and it will separate. As you know, ignorance separated the races for so long.

So now that we're becoming more informed, we're probably saying, "You know what? Straight families give birth to a gay child, and that child was raised in a straight family. How did this child--and why is this child of 6 wanting to wear pink and a purse and drive a pink Corvette, you know, when he's been around nothing but ‘Hey, oh, yeah' all his life?"

So there's some critical thinking that needs to take place so that we can be more inclusive, so that we can use the people that we've excluded from to show that, hey, they're the best people they can be. They get educations. They're CEOs, the heads of record companies, the greatest designers, fashion designer, and the reason why 'The L Word' didn't get made before 'Queer as Folk' or 'Birdcage' is the fact that there are more wealthy, gay men than there are females--wealthy, gay lesbians or bisexuals. I mean, there's--how many gay, female billionaires do you know that own studios and record companies?

Tavis: Not out of the closet yet.

Pam: Yet, yet. And they may not be yet, and that's their choice.

Tavis: Let me--let me do the flip side of this. This flip side of this is--

Pam: Uh-oh.

Tavis: You know me, so you know what's coming.

Pam: I'm ready. I'm ready for your flip. OK, OK.

Tavis: There are some people, obviously, who are very happy that something like this, 'The L Word,' has finally been made, and to your point about why it had to come after 'Queer as Folk' or 'Birdcage,' I understand the point and I accept that. But there are--I have some lesbian friends, and I've had a conversation with them. And some of them, not all, but some of them have said to me that they are, at this point, a little bit worried, some offended, by the show so far because it does have such a heavy emphasis on sex, and that if being a lesbian's about anything, it's about being a complex, total person. It ain't just about the sex and that gay folk are demeaned when you spend too much time talking about sex.

Pam: Well, people do, if the sex scene runs too long--they don't want to see pornography, and we can't--

Tavis: Guys love it. The men want to see it.

Pam: Yes, they do. But also, they want to see--they want to see the relationships. With pornography, you have--you don't know why they're having sex. But in our show, we have the sex scenes that say who these people are and why they want sex and where they're going with it. It's not anything that's gratuitous sex or just in-your-face sex, and you're speaking of sex. What type of sex? You're talking about the...

Tavis: Ha ha ha!

Pam: The warm, fruity kind?

Tavis: Props! I love it!

Pam: Organic? Or someone you didn't know or met before? So what type of sex are you talking about here?

Tavis: You know what? I got to get off that subject real fast.

Pam: But when it comes--we will be crossing--you know, we couldn't show everyone and the different groups. There's girls that call themselves "bois," b-o-i-s, that are under 30. We have fems, lipstick fems, butch, dykes, dyke--we have leather, metal. We have iron, and we have--it's like I was not knowledgeable.

Tavis: A virtual potpourri.

Pam: And these wonderful people, highly educated physicians, scientists--they come from great families, straight families. Some have not embraced them. Some have and do, and that's what we, as a race of color, will be doing and have done. We just haven't discussed it. Now I think because of 'The L Word,' the water-cooler conversation, the bus stop, in your car, after the show--

Tavis: Everything's changed.

Pam: It's about communication.

Tavis: I got 3 minutes left with you, which is great, 'cause there are 3 things about you that I find--I love everything about you. But there are 3 things about you that I find very, very fascinating, and let's take a minute each for each of these, if I can. First, there's 1998--'88, '88. Diagnosed with cancer.

Pam: Yes.

Tavis: Told you had 18 months to live, and you're still here.

Pam: I'm still here, and the guy I was living with, he left me. Didn't even come to my surgery. I didn't see him till 5 years later. He didn't return my clothes or my sheets or nothing, you know. Yeah.

Um, that was very prolific for me, 'cause I felt I was gonna die, and I put everything in my mom's name, my estate, and just went over to Cedars-Sinai, and every day, people said, "Pam Grier, what you doing here?" And they wouldn't even notice my bracelet, you know, and I'm here taking tests and fighting the fight like everybody else. But they still saw me as Foxy Brown. It's amazing what film does, you know--the image of it, and they just thought, I can beat it, and I said, I don't know if I can. Yes, you can. Yes, you can.

Tavis: And you did.

Pam: And I did. And Tim Reid helped me come back into the film business by saying, "You can do it." He didn't know that I wasn't well. But I came back. They pulled me back in.

Tavis: I'm glad you're still here, Pam Grier. Second issue--you started out your career as a telephone operator in this business. How'd that happen?

Pam: That was one of my 5 jobs. When I left school in Colorado to come to Los Angeles, I was living in my aunt's garage, and the door kept going up. She said it was a guesthouse. No, it was a garage, and the wall kept going up and down. That was just one of my 5 jobs, and it was the agency for the performing arts that I worked for. They got me a job at Roger Corman's film company because I wouldn't let them steal parking tickets or things out of the supply room, 'cause I had this real black panther attitude--"I'm not gonna lie for you. No." So it was, "Get her a job. Get her outta here."

Tavis: And the third thing... You've now done over 50 films.

Pam: I don't count. I don't count.

Tavis: Over 50! That's a lotta work.

Pam: That's a lotta work. In over how many decades? That's...I'm blessed. But I really try to translate the time and understand it...because I think if you lose your curiosity, you stop growing and you start to die if you're not curious about other things and other lives and religions and people. And it's so good for you to wake up--and I lowered my bar. If I wake up breathing, I'm gonna have a good day. OK? But when I got my first job--

Tavis: It's better than the alternative. Yeah.

Pam: When I got my first John Deere tractor, I said I'm gonna low ride on this one. I'm not gonna be afraid of it. I'm gonna learn about it. And I'm gonna learn about flying. I'm afraid of flying. I took flying lessons. When you're afraid of something, you're always gonna be afraid of something. But when you get to know something, fear and ignorance dissipates. And that's where our character comes in. Which Martin Luther King said: "Be judged by your character." So when you step up and say, "Hey, I ski. I ski on 210s. I snowboard. I scuba dive..." I rode the first jet ski in Sheba, baby. They never thought blacks could swim. And they said, "Pam can swim." Remember all that stuff about that? We too dense, we sink. I got on that jet ski, did some diving scenes. It's like, we on! And then people would say..."oh. You're one of us."

Tavis: I'm so glad you're still here.

Pam: Me, too.

Tavis: Nice to see you. Whoo! Don't let go. Don't let go. Hold on to that.

Pam: That's a song. 'Don't let go of that.'

Tavis: That's our show for tonight. By the way, 'The L Word' airs Sunday nights at 10 p.m. on Showtime. Thanks for watching.

You can catch me tomorrow on the radio on NPR. See you back here next time on PBS. Good night, and keep the faith. Thank you.