Curve Magazine – February 2007 issue.
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One-on-one with Mandana Jones.

The sultry actor gives us a little face time to talk about her Bad Girls role and what her father thinks about all this – LeeAnn Kriegh. (copyright Curve magazine and LeeAnn Kriegh. No claim made by MJ Net).

What made the chemistry between you and your co-star Simone Lahbib, work so well?
We just made choices together about what we would do in each scene, and we worked together extremely well. I think chemistry happens when you’re just open and it flows and there’s no self-critique, there’s no getting in the way, and there’s no ego. I don’t think you can create it, really. I think it’s something to do with that feeling when your intellect and your heart and your guts are all in line, and then something really special can happen.

Playing Nikki Wade gave you an opportunity to play the “other,” to explore an entirely foreign landscape.
Yes it did. She was a real outsider is what she was. First of all, she was gay. Second of all, she was in prison. She wasn’t even in the normal world. Third of all, her particular crime was against a policeman, against authority. She was a sort of outlaw on more than one level, and in a sense, I think that’s what Nikki’s strength was. She knew who she was, she was self-defined, and she didn’t for one moment dither about the choices she had made.

Did playing the role impact you personally?
On a personal level, I had a catalog of failed relationships, and the one thing they all had in common was they all had me involved in them…. And Men. [Laughs] That was interesting, to step into the story of what it would be like to be with someone who essentially gets what you are going on about.

Imagine that.
Imagine. [Laughs] Just imagine how much easier it would be and how much less jealousy and fallout there would be over ridiculous issues because you’re being constantly misunderstood and misinterpreted. The show very much gave me that platform to explore, and I found it fascinating.

Through much of the show, Nikki is an astonishingly self-assured woman.
It is really interesting because she has killed a man, a policeman. She likes to sleep with women. She’s inside, not outside. But in all of those things, she doesn’t for one moment think she did the wrong thing. She would probably, were she a real person, have the country up in arms about her. Her behaviour would be panned by millions. By millions. But Nikki believes what she is doing is right and what she is doing is true. What are numbers and what are people to tell you that you are behaving with integrity? There’s a wonderful quote by Boris Pasternak. Its one I often think about in life, and it is: “It is in our power to do one thing, and that is not to distort the living voice of life.” That’s the thing I’m talking about. Nikki really does know about the life that sounds within her, more than most of us, I think.

Can you tell me about a scene that stands out to you?
There’s a scene in which Nikki tells Helen, “I’m completely and utterly in love with you, and there’s nothing I can do about it.” I remember that because its just a snapshot of just one individual laying herself utterly vulnerable and talking entirely from the heart. In that line and that delivery, in the way it was done, it wasn’t like Nikki was after anything; it wasn’t like she was trying to pressure Helen; it wasn’t anything. It was just an expression of love and nothing more. There was a purity about it that I remember quite well.

Despite the serious content, the show wasn’t always taken seriously, was it?
I personally feel that my own father, if I had been playing a straight character, he would’ve taken it more seriously. I remember him saying to me during the second season, “I watched your program the other night. I can’t hear what you’re saying. You must learn to speak up Mandana.” Which I found fascinating because my own dad was saying, “I couldn’t hear you.” Just this notion that you’ve got this award winning, most popular drama on TV and there’s one character in it who is mute. My father is a very straight laced, rather parochial person, and I think he must have found it hard at some level to see his daughter playing a gay person and to understand any of the issues she was up against, and so he chose not to hear her. He literally couldn’t hear her.

That’s rather stunning.
Yeah, it is. If people want to zone out of that storyline, then they will, and to some extent there’s nothing you can do about it. You can’t pull people back from entire prejudice. You may be able to seduce a few people along the way, but your not going to win them all over.

With thanks to a Helen and Nikki forum member who passed the scans of this magazine on.