Nip/Tuck’s Jessalyn Gilsig Gives A&U the Scoop on Why Her Character’s HIV Story Line Breaks the Mold

by Chael Needle

What happens when a television character living with HIV/AIDS is not very likeable? That’s one of the questions FX’s Nip/Tuck—a show about plastic surgery and the culture of beauty in Miami—puts under the knife as its second season comes to a close this month.

Nip/Tuck, which follows the rocky friendship of Dr. Sean McNamara (Dylan Walsh) and Dr. Christian Troy (Julian McMahon), plastic surgeons who share a practice, has been criticized for its frank portrayals of sexuality and surgery, its salty language, but also praised for its ability to mine relevance from a profession that many turn up their noses at by not putting a pretty face on ethical challenges. But that doesn’t make it less of a risk for the show’s Gina Russo, a recurring character who is trying to recover from sexual addiction, to contract HIV. The story line could so easily play into stereotypes about AIDS as retribution or seroconversion as the consequence of less-than-vanilla sex. It could so easily swing the other way and romanticize AIDS. Jessalyn Gilsig, the Montreal-born actress who plays Gina, trusts that this story line will be complex and honest because the show’s creator, executive producer, and frequent writer, Ryan Murphy, has a good track record in that regard.

“She’s an odd person—very outspoken, very direct, and also very destructive,” says Gilsig, who honed her craft at Harvard’s American Repertory Theatre before dividing her time between the New York stage, Hollywood, and a painting studio. “She’s the type of person who lashes out as a form of self-defense and ultimately ends up damaging herself as a result.” The second season, for example, found Gina using Wilbur, the child that she introduced to Christian as his, as “leverage to get things that she wanted—attention, support, and, ultimately, the love of this man.”

When Murphy came to Gilsig with the idea of an HIV story line, she realized more than ever that “he really is the quintessential writer. As soon as he told me [that Gina would contract HIV] I realized it was the only next step for her, in some ways. Obviously, she also operates as a mirror for the lead character, Dr. Christian Troy, [both of whom] have such high-risk lifestyles. [Contracting HIV] is not an inevitability if you live that lifestyle, but you’re increasing the chances of it.”

Without health insurance, and unable  to pay for medications, Gina ends up in the hospital with a respiratory problem, depressed and too proud to ask for help. “She felt completely defeated. She’s completely alone in the hospital; she doesn’t have many visitors....She kind of neglected herself—didn’t really explore all the possibilities for healthcare she could have.” 

Gilsig notes that the episode on which she discloses her status brings out an interesting facet of someone who relies primarily on sex for connecting with others: “She says to Christian when he comes to visit her in the hospital that she’s almost terrified to live with [HIV] because if she doesn’t have the sex, what does she have? If she doesn’t have that as her go-to, then she’s really going to have to get to know herself now and accept herself without moving to sex with the same kind of frequency that she used to.”

No stranger to heady story lines from her work on shows like Boston Public, NYPD Blue, and The Practice, Gilsig approached the story line in part by doing research. Her work with a nutritionist who has worked with people living with HIV/AIDS, was particularly enlightening about how changes in appearance that often accompany living with HIV might affect her character’s sexual self-image: “I asked [the nutritionist], would anyone not take the medicine for vanity reasons? We started exploring the side effects of the medication and, as you know, for women there are a lot of hormonal [problems], fat deposits [in the face], deterioration in the face. In a way it was kind of humbling to think about what that puts your body—your mind—through. For this woman, her appearance is her armor and if that’s going to deteriorate I don’t know if she has, at this moment in her life, [enough wherewithal] to understand who she would be if she didn’t have her appearance, if she didn’t have sex.”

The character thinks she contracted HIV at a “breeding party/gangbang,” says Gilsig, who explains that Gina went there in pursuit of getting pregnant but did not escape her usual inability to think through the consequences. Gina had a baby during the first season and Gilsig’s understanding of the character is that the pregnancy was desired, providing her with a temporary refuge from her issues. “I’ve observed that sometimes when women get pregnant, it’s actually the healthiest time of their lives,” she says, citing women she has known with addiction problems being able to kick their habits while they are carrying but sometimes not beyond the birth. “There’s something about being pregnant that can be sort of empowering, and can make you feel that you have a purpose. Gina thought if she could just get pregnant again then she could have that feeling again.” In the end, Gina does not conceive.

Nip/Tuck has yet to be renewed for a third season, but Gilsig would be pleased if the producers asked her back to continue the story line (if it is) and find out how even the character you love to hate can demand our compassion and recognition. “It would be nice to see this character live with this disease, which, of course, people do. And explore the depression, how it affects your body, but also how it must affect your mental state. I can’t even imagine the range of emotions you go through in a day, even if you felt like you were coming to accept it.”

Nip/Tuck has mastered a sleight of hand when it comes to its story lines: First you see surface, now you see depth. The show has already taken an important step away from the myths of AIDS patients as noble victims or suddenly wise oracles. “The show gets so much attention for having a lot of nudity, graphic sex, and this, that, and the other, but what I’ve always liked about it [goes back to] the reason you’re motivated to become an actor: You want to assume this great responsibility to tell stories that people can identify with and hopefully that we can learn from,” says Gilsig. “When a show shows the complexities of what it is to navigate every day of your life—that to me is interesting as opposed to a show where, at the end of forty-eight minutes, everybody sits down at the table and talks it through and comes to a consensus....We’re all sort of knowingly or unknowingly constantly hurting the people that we care about. So I find there’s something human about the show, amidst the facade of beauty, glamour, and wealth.”

Chael Needle interviewed author and activist J.L. King for the August issue.

October 2004