KEEPING PACE

Lee Pace attended high school here and acted at the Alley. Now he co-stars in a new movie based on the notorious Barry Winchell case

by Blase DiStefano

Photo by Ken Woroner/Showtime

If you didn’t see Lee Pace a the Alley Theatre in productions of The Spider’s Web and The Greeks (Parts 1 & 2) or as a guest star on NBC’s Law & Order: SVU, then you probably haven’t seen Lee Pace at all. That’s going to change this month when Pace stars in Showtime’s original production of Soldier’s Girl. Pace plays Calpernia Addams, the transgender girlfriend of Army private Barry Winchell (played by Troy Garity), who was brutally beaten to death 1999 by fellow soldiers who believed he was gay.

Born in Oklahoma, the 24-year-old Pace spent his early years in Saudi Arabia, where his dad was in the oil business. The family later moved to New Orleans, then to Houston, where Pace attended high school. After completing his high school courses, he entered Juilliard, where he studied from 1997 until 2001. His off-Broadway role in The Credeaux Canvas garnered high praise. Michael Lazan of Back Stage: “Lee Pace’s ethereal, sensitive, loveless Winston is surely one of the performances of the year. This fine actor … displays such a fine touch with his often-complicated dialogue that you have to expect he will have a major career in not too short a time.” The “not too short a time” is already here.

OutSmart spoke to Pace by phone while he was in New York, shortly before the premiere of Soldier’s Story.

OutSmart: So you lived in Houston.

Lee Pace: Yeah, actually in Spring.

Where did you go to high school?

I went to high school at Klein. It’s up by 45 on the way to The Woodlands.

How old are you now?

I’m 24. I just turned like two weeks ago, so I’m just getting used to saying it.

Didn’t you leave high school to perform at the Alley Theatre?

Yeah, I got a part in The Greeks, which was I guess in ’97. And I had one more semester left and I didn’t have many classes left to take. So I just finished by correspondence.

What about the Alley?

It was good. They were really a great group, and I see them every once in a while here up in New York. We’re just finishing Virginia Woolf up here [New York]. It was a great experience.

When did you move to Houston?

I moved there in the seventh grade.

Did you get to know it okay?

Well, I was up in Spring, and I didn’t make it downtown that much. But yeah, I like Houston. It’s a nice place. The weather’s so nice.

Well, sometimes. Sometimes it gets…

I wouldn’t complain about the heat. This winter [in New York] has been unbelievably awful. It’s windy, and even when there is no snow around, it’s biting cold.

Regarding Soldier’s Girl, my first question is, “Do you have your acceptance speech prepared for next year’s Emmy’s telecast?”

[Laughs] Oh, no. I don’t know. It hasn’t even premiered yet.

Soldier’s Girl was a good film, but the two of you—you and Troy Garity—were superb.

Oh, thank you. We are real proud of it. Troy is really terrific, isn’t he? He’s just a pro, and he told me a lot of basic stuff, kind of kept me on track.

What was the process for you in transforming yourself physically and especially emotionally into Calpernia Addams?

I never really know how to answer that. Yeah, as far as the physical, they had an amazing design staff that put that together. I really had nothing to do with that. I lost about 25 pounds for it. It wasn’t really very healthy, to tell you the truth.

How did you lose it?

By not eating anything and sleeping all day … a really pathetic life [laughs]. But then they did prosthetic breasts and hips and kind of made me a new body. Early on, after Frank Pierson [the director] had cast me in it, he kind of just said, “You know when you’re preparing for this, don’t go to drag clubs or watch how transsexuals behave, just watch how women behave.” I don’t know if I could pull off the drag queen thing, because it’s just so big and extroverted. I didn’t think I could pull this off, but the fact of the matter is she isn’t a biological woman. I played that as best as I could, even though I’m like six-three and I’ve got a deep voice and every once in a while the stubble comes through the makeup. I mean that’s where the story comes out. That’s where you really get what’s happening.

Did you get any kind of info or anything from Calpernia Addams herself?

We’ve become pretty good friends working on the film. She came up a few times. She came up when we were shooting all the pageant stuff, which was really great. I was really nervous because I’m not much of a dancer, and she was terrific with giving me pointers. Then she came up for the very end of the shoot. She’s easy to talk to and so forthcoming with the details of her life and this significant event in her life. Really great and articulate.

I have friends who say that if a straight man convincingly makes out with another man on screen, then he must at least be bisexual. I say it’s the same as a gay man convincingly making out with a woman. It’s called acting.

It has to be honest though. If it’s not honest, it’s not really worth it. It’s not going to be compelling, you know what I mean?

Um…

It’s real. I mean me and Troy would act up when we were hanging around the trailers and stuff, and we’d play Playstation, but when we got on the set, we did take that seriously. Because it was real, it was like a real love affair that they had and it was passionate.

It was really obvious.

It was a little scary. A lot of that is Frank Pierson, how he shot the thing, because we were really nervous about it, not only doing it, but our mommas were going to see it [laughs]. We were worried about how they were going to shoot it. If you noticed, they keep the camera really close to our faces, so you don’t see a lot of our bodies. We thought we were getting the easy way out of this, but we watch it now and it’s like Jesus Christ…

Very intense.

Yeah, but Troy was great. He was a complete gentleman to work with.

In the film, Winchell was portrayed as someone who apparently kept an open mind about sexuality. At the beginning, I was a little bit confused though—was he considered straight? Or was he gay?

Um, it’s hard, because the only person he was really open to was Calpernia. Now Calpernia says that he identified himself as a gay man, although he was dating and the only other men he had dated were transsexuals. You look at pictures of Calpernia at the time, and she looks completely like a woman. And she characterizes their relationship as a very heterosexual relationship. So I think he was 22 and he was kind of figuring it out, and I think these two people found each other and they had a really special connection.

I’ve always thought it would be great to have a fluid sexuality. That it would be nice to just meet people rather than “OK, this is a person that I could conceivably have a relationship with, and this one isn’t.”

That makes sense. I’ve never heard that perspective take on it, but I think that’s what actually happened.

Winchell seemed to have a slight problem with it, but he kept himself open enough to continue.

Yeah, and Calpernia herself is very—how to say it?—she’s charismatic, and she’s got this real magnetism to her. She really draws you in, like you become very loyal to her.

About how old is she?

Oh, I don’t know. She says 27, but I know that’s a lie [laughs]. I know it’s a dirty lie. I really have no idea.

So what’s your take on gays in the military?

I think that it’s an issue of human rights, and the government is kind of turning a blind eye to the fact that people are being abused and murdered. And I think that’s it’s one of the few policies that you look at, and no one is happy with. The government policy is vague—don’t ask, don’t tell. It makes no sense to me. It just seems like you’re asking for a lawsuit. I am very happy that Barry’s parents, Pat and Walter, have been able to use the movie to get them a certain amount of attraction with their lawsuits, and I think Justin Fisher was denied clemency about a month ago, because he was going to be up for parole. I think he was sentenced to nine or 12 years, I’m not positive. But he was going to be up for parole in three and he was denied clemency because he was involved with a hate crime. So it’s great that people are recognizing that this wasn’t just two guys in their bunker, fighting. It was a murder, and it was a hate crime.

Do you know if the way it was portrayed in the film was pretty close to the way it was in real life?

As far as the details go, I think Wally, Barry’s stepfather, says it’s not accurate, but he was looking forward to seeing a lot more of the court proceedings that he was there for. But so much of the movie takes place on a personal level—scenes between two people.

It really is a love story.

Yeah. I was so excited, because when I read the script, I kept thinking there’s so many ways they could look at this story. They could look at it from the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell perspective and doing an exposé on the state of American young men in the military. They could look at it from her point of view and this transsexual snaring this young military guy. There were a number of ways they could have looked at it, but they just focused on making a simple love story between the two of them. And I think that you get all the rest of it within that. You get the fact that he was killed wrongfully.

That was actually kind of difficult to watch, because it was pretty brutal.

It’s harsh being in a screening room where people are seeing it, because people cringe. I think Frank Pierson was so brilliant when he put that sequence together because the minute you see Fisher pull out the bat and say “We’re gonna go play some baseball, if any of you are interested,” you know what’s going to happen. You know it’s going to happen. But he draws it out and really brings out the suspense.

OK, since this is our May issue and since Mother’s Day is in May, I thought I’d ask you if your mother has seen the film?

She hasn’t yet. I think I’m going to bring her with me to L.A. to see the premiere of it.

Does she know what to expect?

I think she does. I brought my sister with me [to the Sundance Film Festival] to see it and she was like, “I knew what to expect, I knew that you would play a woman, and I knew that you show your boobs.” I actually sent a set of the boobs to my brother. He’s 14 now. I have awful images of him hiding them under his bed and feeling me up [both laugh]. So I think she knows what to expect, but when it comes down to it, it’s going to be shocking, because she’s going to see her little boy with boobs and a lot of makeup.

How long did it take you to get into makeup?

Oh, about three to four hours every day. So it would be me, the makeup guys, and craft services there at the beginning and end of every day. Everyone else was gone.

Did you feel that it helped?

It did help, yeah. Because I don’t feel like I was prepared for pulling this thing off before I got into all the stuff. I remember walking on the set for my first screen test, and I was wearing that red wig and the blue dress, and the crew was kind of whistling and saying “You’re hot,” and I was like, Yeah, right. And then I was like, Yeah, whatever, let’s get this over with, but a week later, I was walking on stage and they started whistling, and I kind of smiled and said thanks. I just kind of got into it.

[Laughs] Do you expect that having done this role is gonna be a problem for future work?

I don’t think so. I think people in the film business are smart people, and I think that they see the work for what it is. It’s not a part that I was able to imagine myself playing before I’d actually started working on it. But I’ve been asked this so many times, I wonder if I should be worried about it. I was a little worried I wouldn’t be able to play anything else after that, but then I got a play off Broadway a few months later. It was a Russian gangster.

So you gained your weight back.

Yeah, which was more fun than losing it.

Soldier’s Story premieres on Showtime on Saturday, May 31, at 8 p.m., with repeat airings during gay pride month.

WINCHELL CASE UPDATE

In 1999, an Army court convicted Calvin Glover in the murder of Barry Winchell in Fort Campbell, Kentucky. Glover is serving a life sentence at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. He will be eligible for parole in 2010.

Justin Fisher, Winchell’s roommate, received a 12 1/2-year sentence for obstructing justice and lying to Army officials about his involvement in the murder. Fisher is also serving his sentence at Fort Leavenworth. He was recently denied clemency, according to Steve Ralls of the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, but will be eligible for parole this summer.

President George W. Bush has re-nominated Major General Robert T. Clarke, who was Fort Campbell commanding general at the time Winchell served, for the rank of lieutenant general, the second highest in the Army. The nomination is pending with the Senate armed services committee.

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