Quote:

---

PB: On Firefly, you play Inara, a "companion" or highly revered sex worker better compared to a courtesan than a call girl. On the show, companions are universally respected and they choose their partners. Is this an enlightened attitude of the future, do you think?

MB: I think so. I think it could be something very interesting because she's modeled in some ways after a geisha. There's a lot of ceremony and history that comes with being that character. They say that geishas are keepers of tradition, and Inara has a very old-fashioned feel to her. She went to a companion academy, a training school, as a child, where she learned different languages and different instruments. Very cultured. It seems like she's a keeper of an older tradition in a world where everything is so fast and about survival, and it's more about indulging the senses and the arts. It's so fun.

PB: What is Inara's code of behavior?

MB: She doesn't sleep with any crew on the ship. That would be bad. There's this thing called the Companion Database where a client enters their name. I will look it up and pick and choose really carefully whom I'll choose to be my client. You start to have the same clients over and over because you do know them and it's more revered that way.

PB: What kind of research did you do for the role?

MB: I've been fascinated with geishas for a long time. I read that book Memoirs of a Geisha, and I really loved it, and there's another book called Geisha: The Life, the Voices, the Art with beautiful pictures of geishas today in Japan. I'm reading a book right now about legalizing prostitution. I'm very curious about that because I'm not sure how I feel either way. There are pros and cons to it. There are very strange and interesting arguments. The argument is that it might clean up its association with drug dealing if it were legal. For example, places like the Mustang Ranch seem like a very controlled environment. But also, it's bizarre because it seems to me the women there don't really live like regular people. They're confined to that space and they're objects.

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by Bai_Shen:
-blink- For some reason, I never realized that Morena was that young. -wanders off in shock-

---