And it's sort of an old-fashioned ER, in that it's very much about the medicine, and how these people cope. There's very little about the personal lives of the characters.

But I'm not objective when I'm acting.

I think they do a great job on Queer as Folk.

I'm straight and I have a lot of gay friends.

The thing with Kerry is that all of this is a natural progression, her troubles. It's a cycle.

We try to be driven by what's a good story, what's truthful, and the drama of what happens next.

I have a friend who is around my age, a little younger, and she's gay and came out to her own community when she was younger but not to her family and to the community at large.

It was sort of that in-between area when people don't talk about their personal lives. That's the kind of life I think Kerry would be living now if it weren't for the Lopez character sort of outing her.

Our intention is to really explore this transition and, beyond that, explore the particular things that someone comes up against when they're gay or lesbian.

The story line was done in a way that's organic and was doled out very slowly in little bites. We think that's authentic for this character, that her feelings are very deeply buried or she never felt them.

We've been back since July, but I spent some time with the family in the south of France over the summer. We rented a house with another couple and took it easy.