If you watched the second season of Little Women: LA, you undoubtedly saw promos for the franchises’ first spinoff: Little Women: NY. Six tough women (and one man) brave the bright lights of New Work where they live and love as people of short stature. Like their LA counterparts, their stature is what brings them together, but their love and friendship keeps them together.
Lila Call was featured in Little Women: LA when she paid a visit to her friend, Christy McGinity-Gibel. Call was previously in a relationship with LWLA star Terra Jole’s boyfriend Joe Gnoffo, and Call’s visit took the series’ tension to new levels. She was definitely one of the season’s most interesting plot twists, so it came as no surprise when the sassy lassie was announced as a star of Lifetime’s new series. I chatted with Call during a break in the shooting of Little Women: NY and we chatted about her time in LA, her new male castmate and why NYC rules.
The girls there aren’t my friends. I’m friends with Christy, and she introduced me to all of her friends, so I was an outsider coming in. I did have a little baggage with Terra, because I’d dated Joe in the past and they’re a little insecure in their relationship, obviously. So it was a huge stress for me to be there and they showed it. And they weren’t happy. Instead of being adults and grown up, and saying, “Yeah, we’re moving on, we’re having a baby, we’re doing great, you’re doing good. Congratulations on your sobriety,” it was a lot of smack talk. And so now, I come back to New York with my girls, and we’re close and we’re like a family, we still have our drama, but they have my back. It was like being released into the Hunger Games in L.A., It really was.
Tell me about the drama we’re going to see in Little Women: NY.
We’re girls, we get jealous, we get hormonal, we get angry. I’m sober, so a lot of drama happens when everyone else is drunk and I’m sitting there like a third wheel and not having the best fun. And I’m looking for a boyfriend; everyone else has someone in their life, so a lot of times, I’m the outlier. I’m trying to find my way into a relationship and in the meantime, a lot of things happen —a lot of misunderstandings. A lot of girls just being girls — jealous and catty — but we love each other and it’s worth it for us to make up and move on and move past and learn from it. So, you know, it doesn’t stop, it just doesn’t stop. When you put out one fire, another one will start.
And in this series, the show has a male cast member!
Jason, yes, he’s the only one who can tame us. He puts us in our place. A man’s perspective is very different from than a woman’s perspective because he can be very blunt and neutral. It’s annoying to them, they basically let you know this is ridiculous, they try to nip it really quickly and try to show you how ridiculous you look. “Hey girls, get it together. You look pretty mental right now.” He’s like our voice of reason but there are times when he does take sides, saying, “You’re being a total bitch to Dawn or to Misty, or to Jordanna. You’re being completely out of line.” It’s nice to have the male perspective on a female problem, but he gets his little butt in trouble too. He starts exploring territories he shouldn’t be exploring and gets his little nose bloodied now and then.
What is it like being a little person in New York City?
We’re tougher, we’re grittier, we’re not in this superficial Tineseltown, the “plastic fantastic.” We’re just making our way, we’re catching the subways, we’re getting our hands dirty on the banisters. It’s not all beautiful here, it’s very tough, and you deal with it being the biggest city in the country.
New York is a melting pot and diverse, and people respond to you in different ways depending on their culture. One day, you can have someone look at you and say something that’s completely out of line, and you can have people who don’t even care. They’re too busy! They’re on their way to work or on their way to catch their train. I think we blend in a little better here. Nobody cares; nobody has time to pay too much attention to us. In L.A., it’s like; “Ooh!” — you expect to see the oddities and that sort of thing.
So are people in LA in an insulated bubble?
Exactly! We’re on foot, we’re navigating through people and legs and stairs and turnstiles and catching a train and jumping through the door and sliding our train pass. We’re on it; we have to keep up. Otherwise, we’ll get … you have to navigate the city; you can’t be intimidated.
So do you think this cast is more courageous because of that?
Yes, we’re a little grittier. We don’t take shots at each other. We don’t need to team up and fight each other’s battles. We have a lot of heart, but we’re gritty. We can take care of ourselves.
The press release for Little Women: NY calls you the ringleader. How do you react to that?
I’m very intuitive to other people and their behaviors and personalities and I do my best to bring out the best in each of my friends. Like, if you’re really funny, I’m going to set you up for really good humor. If you’re sensitive, I keep that in consideration. I’m just very intuitive when it comes to my friends and when s@#$ hits the fan, it’s easy for me to assess everything with each of them. I understand them individually very well and you know — again — I’m not bogged down with a relationship, so I have a lot of free time to maybe stir up some drama… or diffuse it. I’m a little more available for everyone on a full-time level.
Since your available to your friends, do people come to you with ideas and problems?
Exactly, my opinion matters.
You can see Lila Call on Little Women: NY airing Wednesdays at 10pm on Lifetime.