Sexy siren Joss Stone heads Stateside to makes a splash at this year’s L.A. Pride festival.

by Paul E. Pratt

Joss Stone remembers her first lesbian kiss like it was yesterday.

According to the Grammy Award-winning British soul singer, the experience actually came shortly before her 21st birthday, just last month, while shooting a scene from her upcoming film, Snappers.

“I think I would have been nervous kissing anyone on camera,” admits Stone, who performs Saturday, June 7, on the WaMu Mainstage at Los Angeles LGBT Pride. “That it was another woman made me a little more nervous going into it, sure, but at the end of the day, that my first time kissing someone on camera was with another girl was quite a relief.”

The vocal powerhouse, whose third album, Introducing Joss Stone, debuted at No. 2 on Billboard’s Hot 200 album charts last year, pauses for a half-beat. Perhaps realizing how her statement might be taken out of context, she laughs. “What I meant,” Stone clarifies, “Is that for the other actress, who is not a lesbian either, it was also her first time. We were both nervous and that made it a little easier in some ways. Neither of us knew what we were doing.

“After a little while, it felt like we were play-acting and was very comfortable,” recalls Stone. “And by the end of the first take, we were like ‘We’re in this together! Let’s do it!’ I don’t know that I’d have felt that way if I were kissing a man.”

Last year, when Stone was asked about her big-screen debut in the box office hit Eragon, she publicly questioned the decision to cast her as a witch in the fantasty/dragon flick. “I’m a singer,” said Stone, who first garnered international critical acclaim with her 2003 debut, The Soul Sessions, “Not an actress.”

With Snappers, things proved much different. After seeing the yet-to-be-released film Stepdad from director George Bamby—“It is so bloody funny,” Stone shares, “George is absolutely brilliant!”—she asked the British filmmaker to write a role for her in his next project. When Bamby called to ask Stone whether she was comfortable playing lesbian—including the lingering French kiss called for by the script—she jumped at the opportunity.

“I told him to write a character completely unlike me, and that’s what he did,” relates Stone, whose collaboration “Family Affair,” with Sly & the Family Stone, John Legend and Van Hunt earned a 2007 Grammy Award. “Sure, he could have written something exactly like me, but then it wouldn’t have been acting, now would it?”

While pleased to participate in a secondary role—“Not having to be a lead character takes a lot of the pressure off,” she says—Stone still feels more confident behind the microphone than in front of the camera. Yet despite selling more than 10 million albums worldwide and scoring a string of Top 20 hits in her homeland, the Brit sensation has yet to achieve similar mainstream success in the U.S.

Unquestionably, savvy radio listeners picked up on her 2003 reworking of the White Stripes’ 2001 hit “Fell in Love with a Girl,” which Stone recorded as “Fell in Love with a Boy.” She gained further momentum on urban radio a year later when “Don’t Cha Wanna Ride,” from her sophomore set, Mind, Body & Soul, landed outside the Top 50 on U.S. R&B charts.

Prior to her 2007 win, three nominations and a duet with Melissa Etheridge at the 2005 Grammy Awards brought Stone her greatest recognition. Strong digital sales of the pair’s televised tribute to Janis Joplin provided Stone’s lone foray into the U.S. Top 40 when their inspired rendering of “Crybaby/Piece of My Heart” debuted and peaked at No. 32 on the Billboard Hot 100.

“Melissa is just a brilliant performer and such a strong woman,” says Stone, whose next film project is a documentary about the American Civil Rights Moment featuring John Legend and former Fugee Wyclef Jean. Shrugging off Etheridge’s strong lesbian fan base, she says, “She’s a legend in her own right. With all that she has gone through, she really is a role model for anyone.”

Perhaps that is what inspires Stone’s laissez-faire attitude toward people’s possible response to her big screen smooch. (“At the end of the day, it was just 30 minutes of snogging,” says Stone, “Who really cares?”) According to the singer, there’s certainly no fear of backlash.

“Not much really scares me,” she notes, “And when something does, I usually do it anyway!”

Joss Stone will be performing at L.A. Pride on Saturday, June 7, at 9:30 p.m. on the WaMu Mainstage. For more information, go to www.lapride.org.