The PANTS podcast debuted in May of 2020, thick in the middle of a spring saturated with existential terror and wells of loneliness. Hosted by actors Kate Moennig and Leisha Hailey, the podcast promised to deliver unto its listeners a window into the real-life friendship between the actors who played legendary best friends Shane and Alice on seminal lesbian television series The L Word and its uneven reboot, Generation Q. They interviewed original series cast-mates like Mia Kirshner and Sarah Shahi, chatted about their own lives, and eventually started recapping the show that brought them together. They made merch, did live shows, and, in 2024, added video. Their dynamic felt familiar and lived-in, their dialogue as charming for its banality as it was for its casual glimmers of stardust. Listeners, who they called “pockets,” were hooked. “It’s a show about nothing,” writes one reviewer. “But their openness and wit make it one of the best parts of your day.”

In October, they took that openness to a new level, revealing the 2025 debut of a project they’d kept close for the year it took them to write it — So Gay For You, a memoir on “friendship, found family, and the show that started it all,” a book described by Tegan Quin as “must-read queer lit and a testament to the enduring legacy of The L Word and the culture-changing stars at its heart.”

In December, they announced they’d be starting a Book Club with Allstora, an online queer book marketplace founded by RuPaul and author Eric Cervini. Spun out of Cervini’s prior venture ShopQueer, Allstora is an enterprise dedicated to improving royalties for authors (who receive a higher percentage of sales for books sold through the platform than they do from Amazon) and ensuring distribution of LGBTQIA+ banned books. The store has been gradually rolling out a modest selection of book clubs, including a flagship club hosted by RuPaul and another focused on queer history. This week they announced two more: Olympic skiier Gus Kenworthy’s Coffee Table Book Club and “fierce female leads, steamy rom-coms, empowering self-help” from trans TikTok legend Dylan Mulvaney.

The PANTS Pod Book Club is Allstora’s sole sapphic-focused faction, and Moennig and Hailey are stoked about uplifting lesbian authors. They declared their intentions for the project in an announcement video: They’ll be picking books that made their hearts skip a beat,” “whether it’s a raw memoir or a compelling piece of fiction,” and then taking that reading experience, bringing it into a shared space, and talking it out. Their first pick is How Does That Make You Feel, Magda Eklund? by Anna Montague, a “heartfelt and hilarious” story about a 70-year old therapist realizing her feelings for her dead best friend were more than platonic. For a limited time, it’s just $1 to sign up.

Just like The L Word’s very special and unique storylines provided a foundation for queers to connect with each other, working out their own personal drama through microaggressions against Jenny and affection for Bette & Tina, they’ll now be invited to do the same with sapphic books, in conversation with their favorite queer television stars.

When it comes to queer representation in the arts, progress has rarely been linear. But when it comes to queer literature specifically, things truly have just gotten better and better every year. There’s never been more out there to choose from or more specific identities showcased than there are now. In that spirit, the PANTS pod book club will be a space for passionate readers as well as those who’ve not picked up a book in a long while.

Last week I hopped on a quick zoom call with Hailey and Moennig to talk about the project and tangentially related topics. This interview has been edited for clarity, style and length.

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Riese: Okay, if your book club did take place in real life and it wasn’t a virtual one, what space would you imagine it being in? What would the vibe be?

Kate: Oh, wow.

Leisha: Let’s see.

Kate: I would choose an old school library.

Leisha: Oh, I was going library too—

Kate: An old one. One of those older ones that are—

Leisha: Good, we had the same thought.

Kate: Okay, great. So then you and I won’t argue about the location. An old school library.

Leisha: At night when it’s closed down.

Kate: I’m thinking of the Philadelphia Public Library on the Parkway. It’s really beautiful…

Leisha: Yeah, the lighting would have to be really good.

Riese: That’s really important for all things, for the lighting to be good.

Kate: It’s all about the lighting.

Leisha: Someone would have to be in charge of catering.

Kate: You’re not allowed to eat in the library.

Leisha: I think after hours, a lot of rules can be broken.

Riese: Yeah, you can do whatever. That’s the unspoken truth of the library.

Leisha: There’s no librarian like, “Shh.”

Kate: They’re pretty strict in libraries, Leish.

Leisha: I know, but this is a fantasy. We make the rules.

Riese: It’s like The Library After Dark. It’s like a different vibe, I guess, I mean, you’d have to be safe. You don’t want to ruin the books with your food. You wouldn’t serve ribs.

Leisha: We would have napkins.

Kate: It would really wind up being cheap wine and cheese—

Riese: Boxed wine and string cheese?

Kate: Boxed wine and string cheese. As long as there are leather club chairs that everyone can sit in, like you’re at Oxford during a lecture, then that is my fantasy.

Riese: What made you wanna start a book club?

Kate: Well, RuPaul and Allstora reached out to us and we figured it seemed like a great opportunity.

Leisha: They wanted us to take over their Sapphic book club, and that just sounded really interesting and cool for us. We’ve never done anything like this, so we thought it was a great opportunity to get PANTS involved with books because we have a book coming out, and it all seemed on brand and fun for us.

Riese: Do you guys read a lot of books?

Leisha: I don’t read a lot of books. We spend a lot of time reading scripts, so we’re entering into a new thing — one of the things that was appealing about the book club to us was that it would help us learn more about this world. So every month we’ll take part of an episode of PANTS to go through what we read with the people. I’ve always wanted to join a book club personally.

Riese: What did you imagine it would be like?

Leisha: Ok, so my friend has one, and they rotate hosting the party, they have snacks, they all pick a book, they have snacks and wine. To me, it’s more of an intimate, personal experience—

Kate: That’s what it is.

Leisha: So I’d be with my friends and it’s less of an insular experience when it’s a book club. That’s what I like about it, and I’m hoping we can do this virtually with people. We can have our callers ask questions about the book so it’s something we can share with them. Right now we don’t have that connection, besides the advice questions on PANTS. We don’t have that kind of outlet.

Riese: That’s interesting too, because a lot of your fans obviously connected over the stories that were told in The L Word, and that was a subject matter for them to come together and talk about and build their own community around it. And now you’re kind of trying to do that with talking about a different kind of story, like a literal story in a book. You know what I mean?

Leisha: You get it.

Kate: Full circle. It’s full circle.

Riese: How does the process start for you guys with deciding which books to feature?

Kate: We have a team at Allstora, and they’ll bring us ideas, and also our publisher has ideas, and then if something pops up on our end, we add add, and then Leisha and I decide, all right, which one sounds most exciting?

Leisha: What’s great about this team is that we get books that are not out yet, so we’re getting pre-reads of something that the world doesn’t have access to yet. So that’s great that we can take this platform that we’ve built and help people promote their books.

Riese: Yeah, it’s always a good cause to be supporting lesbian books and publishing.

Leisha: Exactly. And we actually understand what that means now, because we’re doing it next year!

Riese: Now that you’ve been through the process of writing a book, what do you think about Alice having done all of her rewrites in 12 days?

Kate: I think that’s my favorite question.

Leisha: I realize it would take longer than that. Yes. It’s a very, very long, laborious process to write a book, and Alice is incredible.

Kate: Yeah, that’s true.

Leisha: And that’s why she could do it.

Riese: I mean, Jenny did too, Jenny wrote her book pretty fast.

Leisha: Jenny was pretty good.

Kate: Jenny made a lot of money off her book. I mean, that girl was able to finance a lot of things just based off of one book and a movie that was made off of it.

Leisha: She had her movie deal pretty quickly too.

Kate: It was immediate. She had a whole entire lifestyle change based off those two things, and I think, you know — The L Word was a special place.

Riese: I think it was a New Yorker article, and then it became a book, and then it became a movie, and then she was off!

Kate: And then she’s able to afford Porsches and photography studios.

Leisha: You know… life might imitate art this time.

Riese: Definitely I think that will happen for you.

Leisha: We’re waiting.

Riese: Ok so how many of the books that are currently behind each of you would you say that you’ve read? [ed note: we were on a zoom call and they were each sitting in front of bookshelves in their own homes] 

Kate: Actually, I can answer that very easily, because I just did an audit of my books.

Riese: Oh, you did?

Kate: I’d say out of all the books up there — I’m going to say 85%, I can say that in all honesty.

Riese: Wow. Yeah, that’s good. I don’t know if my bookshelf is 85%. It’s probably like 60%.

Leisha: I can say 100% because they’re all art and design books.

Riese: So you looked at all of the the pictures.

Leisha: I looked at all of them. I look at the pictures, Riese.

Riese: That’s great! How has your interest in reading changed now that you’ve become writers of a book?

Kate: I respect anyone who puts out a book truthfully, because the process is laborious and intense, and it’s not for the faint at heart, so a massive amount of respect, truthfully, to anyone who puts one out and births it into the world.

Leisha: The process of writing a book was one of the most vulnerable things I think either one of us has ever done. Ours obviously is a memoir, but I’m just picturing the years and years people spend writing. It took us over a year. Imagine the people that have just tucked away forever, their life’s work.

Riese: Some people take ten years to write one book.

Leisha: Aren’t you writing a book?

Riese: Yeah.

Kate: Are you writing a book?

Riese: I am writing a book. Yeah. It’s taking ten years.

Kate: What kind of book?

Riese: Well, I was writing a book, and then I kinda finished it, and then I decided I didn’t like it, and now I’m writing a different book, so I probably am always perpetually saying that I’m writing a book, but yeah, I’m writing—

Kate: Nonfiction?

Riese: No, I’m writing sort of a queer romance novel right now, it starts in the mid-nineties, there’s some love triangles, friends-to-lovers and so on. It’s centered on these four main characters, two are in their thirties, one owns this exclusive resort in Palm Springs, and then her best friend is this novelist, then there’s two girls in their early twenties, both students and one is more naive and the other is a former child star. So it’s a lot of intergenerational friendships, and there’s a love story that traces through it all, and it’s centered around this resort in Palm Springs where lesbians go, but I’m explaining it really poorly right now. I guess I could describe it better than that, but it’s going to be good, I think.

Leisha: Great. See? So you know.

Kate: When does it come out? Maybe we can promote it in our book club.

Riese: Well, I have to finish writing it first.

Kate: Well, okay. When you finish writing it.

Riese: For a while I was like, “I want to write a National Book Award-winning book,” and then I was like, “No, I think I just want to write a book that will be fun for people to read.” You know what I mean? Anyway, so that’s what I’m working on, and I’m also going to work on my way of describing it to people as well, so that it sounds more captivating.

Kate: You got to find that one magic sentence.

Riese: Right. Yeah. I need an elevator pitch! Something like that. But in the meantime I am very excited to read your book!

Leisha: Did you pre-order our book?

Riese: I will.

Leisha: You will?

Kate: You did or you’re about to?

Riese: I will, I’m about to. I’m about to. I actually, I’m going to do it today. [editor’s note: I did]

Kate: Okay.

Riese: I really will. Preorders are important.

Kate: They’re very important.

Riese: Are you going to do your own book in the book club?

Leisha: I don’t know if we want to do that.

Kate: It’s a little self-serving.

Leisha: Yeah. We’d rather help someone else.

Kate: Honestly, I think at that point we’ve spoken enough about ourselves. We don’t need to add to it, so I’m going to say, no.

Riese: But you also get to go on a whole book tour and talk about yourselves even more.

Leisha: We are. We are.

Kate: Exactly. We’re going to, which is why — let’s pay it forward and we talk about someone else’s book.

Riese: Well, I’m really excited about it. I think it’s going to be great. Everyone’s really thrilled. I’ll interview you guys again about the book when it comes out but I think it’s gonna be a hit!

Leisha: We worked really, really hard on it.

Kate: We sure did. We sure did. Yeah, we sure did. It was an experience for sure. We can’t spill too much now, because we have to make you look forward to something in a few months.

Riese: Well, congratulations! Finishing a book is hard.

Kate: Thank you very much.

Leisha: When you’re done with your book. Let us know.

Riese: I will!

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You can sign up to join the Pants Pod Book Club on Allstora for just $1.