[01] In early May, I got a phone call from my distributor representative telling me exciting news: "Xena is going to be at VSDA." Everyone who works with me knows that I am a total Xena fanatic. Stills and posters from the show adorn my office walls. Whereas most people have photos of family members and friends, I have framed pictures of Lucy and Hudson from the Burbank Convention on my desk. [02] I need to make a few explanations here. I am a buyer for a large chain of video stores in the midwest. VSDA stands for Video Software Dealers Association, and the acronym is also used for it's annual convention. The convention was held this year in Las Vegas, at the Las Vegas Hilton Convention Center from July 9th through the 12th. The Convention is a place for video retailers and studios to congregate for meetings, functions (i.e., parties) and lots of product (especially movie) talk. Most studios and distributors have booths on the show floor, and they bring in stars from upcoming releases to sign autographs.
[03] I found out in early July that Lucy Lawless and Kevin Sorbo were scheduled to appear at the Universal Studios booth on Wednesday, July 9th. Also, they were going to be the official ribbon cutters for the opening of the show floor. The booth appearance was to be from 1:30pm to 3:00pm, and the opening ceremony was to be at 10:30am. My joy went to instant agony. I had meetings scheduled during both of those events. Meetings that I could not realistically miss. Oh the Horror!
[04] So I called my Universal Representative: "Was Lucy going to be anywhere else? Was this it?" She checked into it and called me back. Turns out Lucy (and Kevin) would be appearing at a Universal press conference to announce the release of the animated video on Wednesday Morning at 8:00am. She assured me that while this was not technically open to the public, I would have no problem whatsoever getting in. The only problem was she did not know where exactly the press conference would be held -- only that it was going to be at the Las Vegas Hilton Hotel, and she would not find out until she got to Vegas. We made arrangements for her to leave a message at my hotel Tuesday night telling me where to go for the press conference.
Press Conference
[05] I arrived at the Las Vegas Hilton at 7:30am. I met up with some internet friends, Margaret and Marilyn, who had decided to take a chance and come to Vegas in hopes of seeing Lucy Lawless. They had already scoped out the area and had checked us in to the press conference (attendees were supposed to RSVP, but they were not being too strict on that point). Around 8:00am, they led us into the room. It was pretty small, but was decked out with giant posters of each of the animated characters, along with blowup pictures of Lucy Lawless and Kevin Sorbo from recent press clippings (the TV Guide cover and the People picture of Lucy were especially appealing). At each chair was a bag that included a T-shirt for the movie, a press kit (promo video -- not the movie because it's not finished yet), some animation cells, a button, LOTS of press info, a mini-poster, and a doll (most of them seemed to include the Xena version 2 figure). The crowd (around 80 people) was about 99% press (mostly photographers) and Universal Employees. I believe that we were the only Hard-Core Nutballs there. We had really good seats, second row center. [06] First up was Louis Feola, the President of Universal Home Video. He thanked everyone for showing up at that ungodly hour (nobody gets up that early in Vegas). He talked about the animated movie, "Hercules & Xena" animated movie "The Battle for Mount Olympus"; about how Universal had high hopes that Hercules and Xena would be the studio's next big franchise; and how "really lucky" they were to have such enthusiastic star support. After giving a long disclaimer that this was not the finished product (the music was not done, the animation was not cleaned up, the sound was not properly synched, etc.), Feola showed two clips from the animated movie: one of Xena and Gabrielle fighting some goat-men over a bag of gold and the other Hercules and Iolus climbing Mount Olympus.
[07] The animation is unusual. I realized that it reminded me of Saturday morning cartoons from the 70s (not necessarily a bad thing if you grew up on those).
[08] Then, Andrew Kairey the Executive VP of Universal Home Video got up to speak. His job was to talk about all the marketing support that will surround the video release. The really interesting thing is the "Hercules & Xena Road Adventure." This truck tour will hit ten of the top markets in the country and will consist of "The Hercules & Xena Road Adventure Museum" -- featuring animation from the movie with real storyboards, art cells, and original character sketches. Also the truck tour will include live DJ remotes from local radio stations, interactive games similar to American Gladiators, and giveaways. A tentative listing of cities includes Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Detroit, Chicago, Atlanta, Houston, Los Angeles and San Francisco.
[09] The October Conventions are also playing into Universal's promotional plans, billed as "Hecules & Xena East" (Valley Forge, PA) and "Hecules & Xena West" (San Francisco). Unfortunately, Universal is advertising Lucy Lawless and Kevin Sorbo at these conventions. But according to Creation Entertainment, neither one is scheduled for either con. However, as of the date of this article, Lucy Lawless has been scheduled for a New York Con in September, and Kevin Sorbo for an August Minneapolis Con. Neither are still schedeuled for either Valley Forge or San Francisco.
[10] Finally, Lucy Lawless and Kevin Sorbo were introduced, and the flashbulbs started popping. They each talked briefly about the video and how much they love and support it. Lucy commented on how "lush" the animation was. They offered to answer questions, but only two people asked. (I was too in awe to structure any sort of intelligent question.) Kevin Sorbo made some jokes about Disney's Hercules movie, and Lucy Lawless made a comment about how watchable and fun the animated movie was...and how important that was as a parent because kids like to watch things over and over, and this movie will not "drive you crazy" after repeated viewings. [11] At this point, Lucy and Kevin stepped off the stage and were mobbed by the photographers. I decided to wander over and try to get a closer look. I stood against the wall and had a pretty good view. Then my Universal Representative spotted me. She grabbed me and took me over to Andrew Kairey. Seems that they knew all about me. Andrew said, "Let's get you in there." Lucy was talking to some press people, but Kevin was open. So Andrew brought me over and said, "Kevin, this is Stacey Robillard." I shook his hand and made some small talk (I do not really remember any of what I said because I was doing a mental countdown to meeting Lucy). [12] Andrew grabbed Lucy and brought her over. I just have to say that I think I held it together pretty well. Andrew again introduced me: "Lucy, this is Stacey Robillard," but he added, "She's a big fan." She extended her hand, and I shook it, placing my other hand over it. She then looked at me strange and sort of pointed at me -- like she was trying to place me! I told her I had been at the Burbank Convention, and she said, "Yes, that's it." (I was telling this to a friend who had been in Burbank with me. She said it did not surprise her that Lucy remembered me -- considering what I had her sign. Those of you who read the Whoosh Convention reports may remember the story of Lucy signing a t-shirt that portrayed Xena and Gabrielle kissing, and Lucy telling the story about filming with Renee in a hot tub. Well, that was me.) I lifted up my Chakram necklace, so she could see it, and she said, "I've got one of those!" I told her I knew, and she asked if it had come from me. (A friend had these Chakram pendants made exclusively for a few friends, and we gave MommaROC two at the Convention -- one for Lucy and one for Renee.) She said that Daisy keeps trying to take it from her, but she would not let her have it! I told her that I was going to New York, to see her in Grease -- and Kevin (who was standing off to my side) asked when she was starting that. I told her I was also going to be at the next Convention, and I was really looking forward to seeing Renee. She asked if that was the Philadelphia Con. I said yes, and that I was disappointed that she was not going to be there, but I understood about her Grease commitments. [13] Finally, it was time for some pictures. A Universal photographer and Margaret were taking the pictures. Kevin was on my right, and Lucy on my left. They put their arms around me and took a bunch of pictures that way. I joked about them being so tall and towering over me (I'm 5'3" on a good day). So they both moved to stand behind me -- Lucy leaning her arm on my shoulder!
[14] Alas, all good things must come to an end. I turned to Lucy and thanked her for being so gracious. She shook my hand again and asked how I pronounced my last name (people screw up my last name all the time). Before I could walk away, she said, "I'll see you in New York, and thank you." I shook Kevin's hand again and thanked him. [15] I could have stayed there all day, but this was a working convention for me, and I had a meeting to attend, so I had to leave. But not before groveling at the feet of my Universal Representative for making it happen. She told me that she would make sure to get the pictures to me. [16] To say that was the best experience of my life is not doing it justice! Lucy was more sweet and friendly than I could have ever hoped for. I was talking to a representative from another studio before I left the convention, and she said that out of all the celebrities who were there, everyone was saying that Lucy and Kevin were the nicest and friendliest.
Autograph Line
[17] The official autograph line at the Universal booth was scheduled from 1:30pm to 3:00pm. I had a lunch meeting at the Hard Rock Cafe at noon, so I was really anxious about getting back to the Convention Center in time. I basically skipped out of the meeting early and grabbed a cab at 1:00pm. I arrived at the booth at about 1:15pm. The line had already started to form (about 50 or 60 people I'd guess). My problem was that I had another meeting at 2:00pm, so I only had a half hour. Standing at the booth, I noticed Margaret talking to someone. She then pointed out that Marilyn was standing in line already (she was about 15th in line) holding "our" places. Problem solved -- I would get my autograph. I had brought some pictures in hopes of getting Lucy to sign one of them, but I was told that they were only letting Lucy and Kevin sign the glossies they had brought. The pictures were B/W publicity photos (not Xena pics...but Lucy pics). Lucy and Kevin showed up mobbed by photographers. They took pictures for about 5 minutes. [18] Lucy and Kevin then got behind the booth to get ready to sign. The signing booth was set up as a circle with Lucy up first, and Kevin on the other side. I got up to the front, and Lucy smiled at me and said, "Hello again." She asked how to spell my name, and I told her s-t-a-c-E-y. She signed, "To Stacey," then went back and re-did the E to emphasize it. Then she signed, "Love Always," (most people just got a personalized pic, but Margaret and Marilyn and I each got something extra because she recognized us from the press conference and acknowledged the fact that we were huge fans). I thanked her again for everything, then Marilyn yelled for me to turn around and snapped a picture (I have the goofiest look on my face). [19] I had to run to make my next meeting, so I could not stick around. That was the last time I saw Lucy. I had such a busy day scheduled, so I am lucky I got in what I did. I missed Lucy and Kevin at the ribbon cutting, but I really cannot complain. I got more than I ever could have imagined out of the day -- it was bliss. [20] Since the convention, Universal has announced that they were delaying the release of "Hercules & Xena - the Animated Movie: The Battle for Mount Olympus". The scheduled release date of October 14, 1997 has been changed to January 6, 1998 due to "production delays."
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"A REALLY LOVING FAMILY IS WHAT MATTERS" LUCY LAWLESS THE WARRIOR PRINCESS TURNED SINGER ON LOVE, RAISING KIDS AND LIVING IN A FORMER PARTY MANSION
OK Magazine
January 2006
Starring in the hit TV show Xena. Warrior Princess has provided Lucy Lawless with a wonderful home in the Hollywood Hills. The furnishings in her home, however, do not reflect her wealth. Lucy laughs as she tells OK that she buys knick-knacks from the lower end of the price scale because her two rambunctious sons break so many things when they're playing.
Born in New Zealand 37 years ago, Lucy has three children: a son Judah, three, Julius six, and 17-year-old Daisy (from her first marriage) who is in high school in New Zealand. She married Xena's executive producer, Rob Tapert, her second husband, in Santa Monica in 1998.
Lucy, utterly transformed from her days a scantily dad weapon-wielding superwoman on TV, invited OK! into the gorgeous Spanish-style house with its own place in Hollywood history. "Rock Hudson used to party here,' smiles Lucy. "We love having people over, and we have a constant flow of visitors staying." While husband Rob cooks in the kitchen and the boys paint in the playroom, Lucy tells us about keeping her kids' feet on the ground, her singing career and also looks back on her bruising days as Xena.
Do you feel settled here in LA. after moving from New Zealand?
I have been coming and going for the last ten years but have only lived here the last two years. At first, it was hard here because I didn't have a support system in place. Just finding basic things, like where to buy a stamp, was difficult It was a learning curve because every single thing was different.
What do your kids think of LA.?
They prefer New Zealand. Over there, you can play in puddles, and we can go to the beach daily They don't have quite the same freedom here. It takes us 45 minutes to get to school every day because the traffic is hideous. However. I do really love it, and I feel like we have the best of both worlds.
How often do you go bock to New Zealand?
I go back for important occasions. I am also a trustee on the board of The Starship Children's Hospital's Starship Foundation, and I try to attend their fund-raising events to help raise money.
Will your daughter Daisy move here?
She wants to go to film and television school next year in New Zealand. She comes over here at every opportunity to have an exciting time with her mother!
Were you and Rob in New Zealand when you first started your relationship?
Rob lived in L.A. when we first met. He came to New Zealand as our relationship developed. He's from Michigan, which is very similar to New Zealand in culture. In the Midwest, they have that genuine attitude, and New Zealand looks a lot like Michigan so he's very at home there, Rob would love to move, but work keeps him here and my work keeps me here for the moment.
What makes your marriage work?
Everybody I know that is in the industry and has a great relationship doesn't take the Hollywood thing too seriously. They know that it's not brain surgery. Were not cleaning up after hurricanes. We're not doing famine relief. We're entertaining people. At the end of the day. a really loving family life is what matters.
Are you and Rob a romantic couple?
Not at all! Were terrible! We forget Valentine? Day, We are not even that good with birthdays or wedding anniversaries. We're just not concerned about it. Rob is thoughtful and loving in many other ways.
Why do you think so many celebrity marriages fail?
I think it's because celebrity feels like love sometimes. When two celebrities meet, there is so much excitement and buzz around them. They fall in love with the luster and it feels like love. but then three months later, you're looking at. each other and think I don't have anything in common with you.
How was it different for you and Rob?
Rob had sworn off actresses a long time ago because he thought they were flaky. He must have decided I was different!
Was it difficult having a long-distance relationship?
Rob moved to New Zealand and we were back and forth, but we got married in L.A. He was shooting in New Zealand, and I was setting up here alone, which was difficult, but we're together all the time now.
Do you find it hard being a working mom?
Sometimes it's really hard. As a mother, I feel like I need to be with the kids, but they are needing me less and less now as they get their own friends and their little worlds start to develop. I'm not the center of their universe anymore. We try and make sure there is one parent sleeping at home every night.
How do you keep your kids grounded?
Don't let them watch your television show! Julius saw Xena blowing some guy's eyebrow off with a fireball one morning, and I rushed to turn it off.
You're best known as Xena; would you ever go back to a role like that?
I wouldn't go back to the 18-hour days. It was great being the star of the show — you get to be queen bee — but it would make me tremendously unhappy if my kids were unhappy.
After having played Xena, do you get offered a lot of physical roles?
A lot of policewomen!
Do people in the street still ask you about the show?
Some people know the show but often they don't recognize me because I don't look the same these days. I'm about to send the costume to the Smithsonian Institution. I've just got to find the chakram - that disc that she throws. I think I've got a sword somewhere.
You performed many of your own stunts as Xena. Then you broke your pelvis after falling off a horse on The Tonight Show With Jay Leno in 1996. Does that hold you back from doing stunts now?
I was extremely nervous for a while after the accident. It's taken a while to heal because I didn't get the right kind of follow-up care. I'm trying to address it with a lot of yoga, otherwise I seize up. I try and do yoga at least three times a week.
You've done so many stunts, but is it true your nickname used to be Unco, as in "uncoordinated"?
Yes. I didn't have any coordination at school. Xena was the school of hard knocks — literally. I was bruised for two years solid. It was good training. Now if someone throws me a set of keys, I can catch them without ever. looking. It's nice to be able to do these things
Earlier this year, you recorded a dance song called "Come to Me." How did that come about?
The gay community often asks me to perform at events. They were big fans of Xena, so I wanted to record a song to show some gratitude. I asked a friend of mine from the club scene which song he thought would work, and he told me about "Come to Me."
Have you sung live?
I recently sang at Girl Bar at The Factory, a gay club in West Hollywood. I did this crazy stage act with all these go-go dancers. It was one of the wildest rock 'n' roll experiences of my life — especially for someone who sees herself as a housewife from the suburbs!
Would you like to have more kids?
No plans. I think I'm done. I fear that the ones I have wouldn't get the same amount of attention if another one came along. They're already at such different age groups. But this is a great time for us. We are really happy.
Lucy Lawless On Her Family Crisis, Her Precious Children and Celebrity Life in LA
Transcribed by MaryD
After Lawless Learned her beloved father was ill. she gathered her great big family around her and fed them comfort food.
Tradition in in Lucy's family dictates that when the going gets rough, the Ryans go then the bombshell dropped go fishing. So when the bombshell dropped that her dad Frank Ryan had cancer, Lucy and her husband, Hollywood producer Rob Tapert, put on a "fish fry" at their sprawling Auckland home above Mission Bay for her parents, her brothers and sister, and all their children. On the menu - battered snapper just hooked from the Hauraki Gulf.
"It's what we do." Lucy explains. "My husband is quite a cook, so everyone piles over to our place, swims in the pool, plays tennis and eats fish. Rob and Dad. and two of my brothers. Bill and David all go out fishing together. It's great that they're such good friends."
And when their father's life hung in the balance, Lucy, her five older brothers and one younger sister all banded together. "We are real close, all of us." she says.
When I meet her by the beach at Mission Bay, it is less than 24 hours since doctors told Lucy her father's operation to remove the cancer had complications, and he was clinging to life in Auckland Hospital. Yet she is still happy to sip a soy latte and talk about the feverish working year ahead - a television series, a New Zealand movie musical and the release of a new song.
And then she chats about the family she adores - the young-at-heart parents who inspire her, a loving husband who encourages her, and three children who make her laugh.
She begins by apologising for being a little disoriented, spiralling in her own cosmos right now. She calls it Planet Lucy, a world slightly removed from here, yet who can blame her?
Despite everything that's happened to her father in the last few weeks, there's still a sparkle in her eyes and she can giggle about her kids - Daisy's green mohawk; the boys' love of food but their distaste for Mum's cooking.
Lucy, Rob and their two sons, Julius, six, and Judah, three, stayed in Auckland longer than planned on this late-summer visit, so they could be beside her parents. It meant delaying the trip to Vancouver where they are going to live for four months while Lucy films the sci-fi hit television show Battlestar Galactica. But staying on in Auckland was worthwhile, to see her strong-willed father slowly improve each day.
"It's been a bit of a rollercoaster ride for Dad. but now he's definitely on the upward climb all the time," Lucy said a few weeks later.
"I'm just so thankful we'll be able to take our beloved Dad home. In a few months he should be playing tennis again." Frank was disappointed that he was not well enough to go to Government House to see Lucy become a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for her services to entertainment and the community. "But Mum and I went to see him in hospital right afterwards. He was so pleased and he asked for a tomato sandwich," Lucy laughs.
She has always been close to her parents - Frank was the mayor of Auckland suburb Mt Albert as she grew up; her mother, Julie, is a compassionate, community-minded woman who has obviously passed on the same traits to her daughter.
"Mum and Dad are extremely low-maintenance people. They're tennis players, church-goers, and they go off on their little excursions around the world. They came to the Caribbean at Christmas, and Dad was cycling around Jamaica. It's just a pleasure to hang out with them," Lucy says.
Staying in New Zealand longer also meant Lucy could spend more time with her daughter, 17-year-old Daisy, who has chosen to stay in Auckland rather than Los Angeles with her mother.
"She has no desire to move. She loves New Zealand, she loves her friends - she's very much a homebody - but she comes over to the States and goes to rock concerts and things. I think, like me, she enjoys having the best of both worlds," Lucy says.
When Lucy and her first husband. Garth Lawless, divorced when their daughter was six, Daisy would live with her father during the week while Lucy filmed Xena: Warrior Princess in Auckland, and stay with Lucy on weekends.
"It just feels like a continuation of that. Now she's with her Dad for six weeks and comes over to me for two or three. It's hard to believe she's nearly I7, with a green mohawk and a boyfriend, and going off to film school," Lucy laughs.
"People say she is like me - sometimes I fear she is! She's great, I like her so much."
When on-location shoots don't drag them away, Lucy and Rob divide their time between Auckland and their Spanish-style home in Hollywood Hills, where 1950s heart-throb Rock Hudson once partied.
'It's hard to get them into schools, and there's so much homework; my six-old will have an hour of it every He's very gifted, but I still don't if that much homework is healthy at his age," she says. When I went to school, I didn't even know what the alphabet was. I heard all kids singing the 'L M N O P' song, and I wondered 'how do they all know It?" But it didn't do her any harm - she was head girl at Marist College in Mt Albert, before starting a degree in languages at Auckland University.
So when she brings the boys home to New Zealand, Lucy Lawless, actor, becomes Mrs Tapert, open-air school teacher. "We took them out of school to come here, so I bought them a microscope. We made slides of moss -and then they wanted to look at my blood," she says in horror.
She takes the boys on outdoor adventures on the volcanic paths of Rangitoto Island, through the Auckland Domain, to a farm to milk cows and along the wild beaches of the west coast to run them ragged on the black sand.
"I have to take them on these long excursions, because they have so much energy and if they don't burn it, it can turn to really bad behaviour," she says.
"That's where Auckland is fantastic. I love this glittering city, it has such a wealth of community resources. Oh my God, we are so lucky here. If you're in LA, you go to the beach at Malibu and have to park a mile away, it's too cold to swim, and then you're not allowed to sit on the beach because some snotty homeowner will chase you off. It's appalling!"
Wherever she lays her hat is her home, but New Zealand is where, Lucy says, her body is most relaxed. "When we land at Auckland Airport, it's so nostalgic, it smells like a racecourse by the sea, like wet horses," she laughs. "I once described Auckland as the Scarlett Johansson of cities, it's young, unpretentious and it's so full it's practically falling out of its dress. It's a most divine city."
Despite her years in the United States, she still speaks "Kiwi" - the accent more Ml Roskill than Melrose. Her friends know her as Dot in the States, a name she adopted because "it's easier to spell when you order a takeaway coffee". She's even been asked to keep the accent for her Battlestar Galactica character, D'Anna Biers - an android masquerading as an investigative reporter. She had cameo roles in earlier series, but will star in 10 episodes of the third. Vancouver is where she went to drama school 15 years ago as a "penniless" young wife and mother. This time it will be a genuine Canadian experience, the family choosing to live "in the boondocks", with bobcats and bears.
"I'm not looking to make everything comfortable for my kids. When we were in Louisiana last year, out in the alligator-infested bayous, the boys were catching frogs as big as your head." she says.
Lucy hasn't ruled out a return to the cut, thrust and mid-air spinning kicks of Xena yet. There's talk in Tinseltown of a Xena: Warrior Princess movie, and she would do a backward flip to hold onto her alter ego.
"If there's a Xena movie I would definitely be up for it that character has a lot of life left in her. I hope they do it soon, because if it's not in the next few years it won't be me." says Lucy.
Fitting back into the leather and copper costume, now housed in the Smithsonian Institute in Washington DC, would be no problem. She's in great shape, doing yoga at least three times a week, but not sure she wants to be Xena at 40. The Xena fan clubs are as robust as ever, and Lucy still has a strong following from the lesbian community which turned Xena into an icon.
"I've come to really respect them -they're kind and very generous. It's the show that they love - they understand that Lucy and Renee [O'Connor] are completely different human beings to Xena and Gabrielle."
Five years after filming of the Xena series wrapped up in Auckland, Lucy and Renee remain good friends. Renee had a baby daughter. Iris, while Lucy was in Auckland, and the Tapert-Lawless clan gave her a special gift.
"We have a woman in LA who comes and cooks for us three nights a week. So we sent her to Ren's to cook and clean for her while we've been away," Lucy says.
"I love having someone to help do the cooking. My kids have cottoned on to the fact that Mum just doesn't cook well. Julius has asked that I don't make his sandwiches anymore because 'they just don't taste right".
"It's a relief. Feeding three kids, they keep asking for food and you go 'oh my God, haven't you just finished eating? You want feeding again?'"
Lucy and Rob are determined to keep home life as normal as possible for the boys trying to ensure one parent always sleeps at home each night. Julius is going through a phase where he doesn't like his mother going out. which isn't easy when she has a list of singing engagements, meetings with the board of the Starship Foundation in Auckland, interviews and movie premieres. "Sometimes he rejects me a little bit, the other day he called me a ding-a-ling behind my back. We are trying to set the bar really low for cussing in our house," she smiles.
A former Mrs New Zealand, Lucy refuses to wear the crown of charity queen, even though her contributions to worthy causes here and overseas are boundless.
She's not only on the board of the Starship Foundation, but she has done work to support breast cancer research, prevent child abuse, and promote breastfeeding. She made a documentary for World Vision on the plight of Bangladesh, and sponsors a child there. Last year she supported fundraising efforts for New Orleans, after being evacuated from the film set of tele-horror movie Vampire Bats when Hurricane Katrina hit.
"I don't really think of myself as a charity queen. It's easy to help, because it feels right. You're doing God's work," Lucy says. "I don't know if it's particularly my Catholic upbringing, but my mother was a big influence - she was always bringing home people who had nowhere else to go. At the Ryans' place, it would never be Christmas if you didn't have a few batty old ladies with outrageous behavioural disorders.
"I'm just like Mum. I have three homeless people living in my house at the moment two Kiwis and a girl from New Orleans who are all starving actors. I'll have to kick them out soon, because my husband needs to be able to get his car out of the garage.
"Rob's a really generous man, but I think I've really pushed the boundaries this time. And I realise this is how my father felt all those years."
Rob and Lucy, who met on the set of Xena: Warrior Princess, are about to work together again, this time on a movie musical, Welcome To The Pleasure Dome. For the past three years, Rob has been creating the script with Kiwi director Mark Beasley (Savage Honeymoon, Outrageous Fortune). It's the story of an over-the-hill disco diva, played by Lucy, forced to contemplate her life.
"It won't be Rocky Horror, but it will have the same fun quotient. It's a big and fabulous risk, but you've got to live it," Lucy says.
"We're Kiwis, so it will be wild and creative, done on the smell of an oily rag and tied together with number eight fencing wire."
While Lucy cannot relate to the character, who has lived life hard and fast, she's seen it all in Hollywood. "I 'm 38 now, and if I was a hard-living gal like this character, it would be time to start thinking about my life," Lucy says. "It must be so hard for people who have placed so much on the physical realm, on how they look, because at some stage there's got to be a shift in your consciousness.
"I have no intention of ever becoming an A-list celebrity. I want to be an A-grade human being first. 1 know I still exist even if I'm not in the magazine pages, and that's why I'm not jealous of anyone in Hollywood. 1 went away for years after Xena, and I know I'm a way better person for it."
Hollywood is not such a bad place, she concedes, and it's a matter of spotting the phoneys and keeping your distance. "Half the people are struggling to live on that really facile plane, and the other half are really real. They know what matters and are really fun to hang out with," she says.
"If I have any great talent, it's for making friends. Wherever I go, I always find people to laugh with. You know who is phoney baloney - the cling-ons don't stick to me. I don't feed them on whatever they're looking for."
Two of her closest friends in California are Broadway singer-actress Marissa Jaret Winokur and her neighbour, vocal coach Eric Vetro. Eric has just produced an album, Unexpected Dreams, featuring major film and TV stars singing lullabies and nighttime ballads accompanied by the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Lucy sings a song on the album, written by Eric, called Little Child: "a beautiful song about the love of a parent for a newborn," she says.
Lucy admits she doesn't sing her own children to sleep - it makes them too sad. "My singing makes Julius cry, he's always been a very emotional boy. He used to howl when Ernie off Sesame Street sang to his rubber ducky, and evidently my voice has the same effect," she says.
"Yet when Daisy was little, we used to sing all the old jazz songs as I would ride her around Mt Albert on the crossbar of my bike."
Lucy is trying to keep her singing up, performing now and again at clubs in Hollywood, and has released a dance track, Come To Me, with drag queen RuPaul. "Acting is always my main engagement, but I try to keep my vocals in shape. It's good for my confidence," she says.
"In the future, I want to do a bit more singing, a little more acting, a lot more yoga and have even more fun. I really want to continue what I'm doing now I'm pretty blessed, man.
"I don't know that we will have any more kids - I would be pretty surprised if we did. I adore my little family as it is. You realise, in a few years, I could be a grandmother. Imagine that - a grandmother before I'm 45!"
Even if Planet Lucy has spun a little off-course, it's still a warm, caring and hilarious place to be.
Дата: Пятница, 2012-06-22, 8:24 PM | Сообщение # 28
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Lucy Lawless Interview SPARTACUS: GODS OF THE ARENA
by Christina Radish Posted:January 21st, 2011 at 3:39 pm
On the Starz original drama series Spartacus: Gods of the Arena, the prequel for the popular Spartacus: Blood and Sand, actress Lucy Lawless plays Lucretia, a woman who is always supportive of her husband Batiatus’ (John Hannah) dreams, however wild the direction they threaten to grow. Though conscious of the role she’s expected to play as a proper Roman woman, she will discover that when the moment most needs it, she can do what is necessary to gain power.
During a recent interview to promote the prequel, Lucy Lawless talked about returning to a character that she thought was dead at the end of the show’s first season, the pleasure of seeing the early life of Lucretia, how much she hates doing action scenes, and the fact that she will be returning for Season 2, which is being called Spartacus: Vengeance, and will now feature Liam McIntyre in the title role. Check out what she had to say after the jump: Question: So, Lucretia survived her wound in Season 1?
LUCY LAWLESS: For now, yeah. It was just a little poke in the tummy. Put a poultice on it and she’ll be all right.
What was it like to shoot that scene?
LAWLESS: I didn’t feel that I had scratched the surface of what the character was, or that I had done particularly good work. I just wanted to go deeper. But, they gave me such great material in this prequel. My God, I got the chance to go deeper. I think and hope my best work is ahead of me, but I’m really proud of my work in this, and I’m really proud of the show, and to be part of it.
Did you really think there was a doubt that they’d find a way for you to be in Season 2?
LAWLESS: I’m in Season 2, but I probably won’t be in Season 3. They’re bringing me back for Season 2, but I fully expect to die. It’s just the best role, ever. My character gets a lot of air time.
Is it fun for you to keep going, after thinking your character was dead?
LAWLESS: I’m on borrowed time, though. It’s really cool. To go back and revisit things, and learn things about your character, is such a gift. Steven [DeKnight] and his team are geniuses. They’ve tied up all these things with everybody’s storylines. You get to see Peter [Mensah] when he was married, before he became Doctore.
How is it, as an actor, to tell a backstory on a character that you may have already decided a backstory on?
LAWLESS: It was a rare pleasure, actually. That never happens, where you get to go back and fill in blanks and actually find out more about your own character. It was a huge thrill for me. And, you get to see these characters when they are in the honeymoon phase of their lives. You also really get to see a lot of Peter Mensah’s range. I thought he did a beautiful job in it, and you get to see a lot more of Doctore, emotionally, and more of his history. Actors usually don’t get to be seen younger, except occasionally in flashbacks, where they will just put some different hair on them and maybe fuzz the lens a little. What is it like to be playing younger than your character?
LAWLESS: I love it. They fix us in post. That’s not a lie. But, my character certainly was a bit more bright-eyed and bushy-tailed before her rotten college mate, Gaia, came back and taught her all these bad tricks, played by Jaime Murray. My character did not abuse the servants in the beginning, and she was devoted to her husband. So, you get to see the raw Satan, and that’s always fun to play.
What do you love about Lucretia?
LAWLESS: I love that she loves her husband. I love that she doesn’t fight because I hate the action.
Did you always hate the action?
LAWLESS: Yes, I hated it, but I wasn’t in a position to say no. Very quickly, I realized that I can’t be cringing every time they come and say, “Lucy, would you like to go and learn your next fight?” I haven’t even finished filming the last one and I would have to go learn the next. I said, “You know what, guys? Instead of asking me, ‘Would you like to?,’ just say, ‘Lucy, the fight’s up.’ Then, it doesn’t require a response. It just requires me to do what I’m told.” If they say, “Would you like to?,” it makes me think, “No, I fucking hate that stuff!” If I have a choice, I don’t want to go. So. we very quickly realized that it’s better to just give me an order and then I’ll do it without thinking.
What was it like working with John Hannah again, but in a different dynamic?
LAWLESS: It was lovely. He was so joyful. He was in such good form, I think because it was a shorter period of time that he was away from his family. It was much easier for him to be there. He knew everybody and everybody knew what the show was, so I think everybody was much more comfortable in the environment. So, your character is much nicer in the prequel?
LAWLESS: Much nicer, to start with. You can see when Lucretia had hope and trust in other human beings. She was crazy about her husband and she had some sort of faith in humanity, and then you see that eroded over the course of the prequel.
What was it like to have Dustin Clare for this season?
LAWLESS: The reason that Dustin got the job is because Underbelly, his Australian crime series, was an awesome show. He plays this cocky dude who has no morals and no qualms, and yet you love him. When Rob saw that, he was like, “That’s the guy I need for this.”
Has this series dulled your senses towards violence? LAWLESS: No, I don’t think so, and that might be something to do with the graphic nature of it. I think it’s because it’s so base. The shedding of blood like that is so sacrilegious, on an animal level, that it is a complete disillusion of all our taboos – sexual waste, human waste, waste of blood, waste of potential – in a society that was wasted and died in its own waste.
Have you gotten more comfortable doing the nude scenes now?
LAWLESS: No, I haven’t. Nudity and sex scenes are two completely different things. Nudity you can kind of get used to, but not when there is movement and relating involved. The sex scenes are very uncomfortable because that’s something to be protected, so you have a visceral reaction to not exploit that. Normal people in our society don’t put it out there that often.
Do you think that male sex in Spartacus has gotten more buzz and controversy than the female sex?
LAWLESS: I call it equal opportunity. People are, perhaps, surprised to see that, as well they should be surprised, because it’s such a taboo in our society. But, back then, they just had completely different guidelines. Since you’re married to one of the executive producers, has Rob told you what’s going to happen in Season 2 at all?
LAWLESS: It’s best not to know because you angst about it ahead of time. What good is that going to do for you? Or, you look forward to it and it doesn’t happen because they rewrite it. So, until it’s on the stage, what’s on the page doesn’t matter so much.
Do you consider this show a family business?
LAWLESS: What makes it easier is that I’m proud of this. I’m proud of my work and I’m proud of the finished product. I think Rob’s a brilliant producer and a brilliant boss. People bring 110% because he’s the kind of boss who sets them up. They’re not afraid to fail. They are not going to get shot down. They are going to take the best idea from whoever in the room has got it, so all the guns are pointed in the same direction and not at each other. That’s an environment of trust that he sets up in New Zealand. Chris Albrect and Starz have been so courageous. It’s great that Chris didn’t kill it because he could have, when he came in and took over. It’s like the leader of a pride of lions. The alpha male lion comes in and often kills the predecessor’s cubs. But, he had the foresight, the intelligence and the wisdom to go, “You know, this is working surprisingly well,” and he kept us alive. I, for one, am so very grateful to him and to his team.
Does Sam Raimi have anything creatively to do with the show anymore?
LAWLESS: I can’t possible comment. Sam is very serious about what he puts his name on, and he doesn’t like it to be misused, so he is very much a part of every single discussion. If his name’s on it, he’s part of the discussion. Sam loves movies and Rob loves television, so that is the division of labor. Like in any good partnership, you carve it up the way that keeps the family working.
Is it tough to go back and forth between the States and New Zealand?
LAWLESS: I don’t go back and forth. I just live down there. I’ve moved home. My kids are very settled there, so I don’t think I could get them to move now. So, no more performances at The Roxy?
LAWLESS: The energy to get them up and running was too much. Spartacus burned me out in a really good way. It just took everything I had. There was that terrible flu that everybody had for three months, and I had it for just about the entire shooting of the prequel. I was just not in good enough shape to do singing as well. It just didn’t present itself as an option. I’m a bit sad about that, but I’m too tired.
Have you spoken to Andy at all?
LAWLESS: We email one another. He’s a very spiritual man and he sees things in a much larger context. He’s just putting himself and his family first, right now. We want to see him back on screen, somewhere. He’s got a wonderful career ahead of him. If it’s not this show, there will be something else.
When will you allow your children to see this series?
LAWLESS: When they are 103! My daughter actually works in editing. She’s 22. Not only has she seen the show, but she sees all of our outtakes. Actually, she tends to turn her back in those scenes. They say, “Daisy, turn your back for 20 minutes,” and she goes and works on something else.
Do you feel you have had a role in changing the image of beauty?
LAWLESS: Oh, I would love to have. I never even thought about that, but I would love to think that I did. It’s kind of by default. I was lucky to get the gig. I didn’t do it for that reason, but it’s nice that there’s this wonderful, holistic spin-off.
You can be tough, have definition and be muscular, and still be beautiful.
LAWLESS: Yes, I think zaftig was the word I was saddled with, at the time, and I didn’t like it. Zaftig means great, big Amazonian. I didn’t really like that either because I felt like, “They’re calling me fat!” They certainly meant it as a compliment too, but as a 20-year-old, society’s pushing a different kind of model. You know who I think is actually doing great things for the appearance of women is that Kardashian girl. Kim Kardashian is giving an alternative. I don’t know very much about her and I don’t read articles, but just looking at the pictures you go, “Great! There’s a girl with an ass, and that’s fabulous. On behalf of all girls with asses, thank you.”
What’s next for you?
LAWLESS: I’d like to do something else, but I don’t know. I’ve just become available, really.
Дата: Пятница, 2012-06-22, 8:36 PM | Сообщение # 29
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The Universe Interview: Lucy Lawless
By Gabrielle Stanton & Harry Werksman
Sci Fi Universe Magazine Number 27 September 1997
So, what's so intriguing about Xena? What's not intriguing? Let's face it, it's intriguing, downright amazing, that the series, Xena: Warrior Princess, ever got on the air at all. Who would have guessed that an action/adventure series set in the mythic past with a female protagonist who fights her own battles, with nary a knight in shining armor in sight, would become such an international success?
Few have ever tread where Lucy Lawless and her alter-ego Xena are now taking television audiences. Sure, there was The Bionic Woman, but she was created in a laboratory lull of white, male scientists and had all of modern technology, not to mention Oscar Goldman, at her disposal.
Then there was Lynda Carter's Wonder Woman. Perhaps a truer precursor to Xena, Diana was an Amazon princess but ended up more guardian angel than vigilante. The network saw to it that she spent most of her time bailing that loser, Steve Trevor, out of his trouble du jour.
So, now it's the 90s, we've got Xena, and television will never be the same. Lucy Lawless and her character, Xena, have single-handedly raised the bar for all women on television. But a television series, even a syndicated one, does not live by politically correct viewers alone. Xena's fans are almost as intriguing as the character of Xena herself: Adults, teens, men, women, heterosexuals and homosexuals have all found a hero. Her fan base is as wide and varied as the fanciful landscape Xena travels through each week. So, why are we all so damned intrigued?
The character of Xena first appeared in Renaissance Pictures syndicated series Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. Xena was the evil leader of a rampaging army out to kill Hercules. By the end of the episode, she is made to see the mistakes she has made and the humanity she has lost. She becomes Hercules' ally and leaves her army to begin a journey of self-discovery.
Her story might have ended there, but Robert Tapert had other ideas. Tapert and Sam Raimi, the filmmakers who brought you the wickedly funny Evil Dead trilogy and the eerie, but short lived, CBS series American Gothic, sold MCA on the idea, giving Xena her own show. Xena: Warrior Princess premiered in September of 1995, and delightfully, they didn't dilute her complex character one iota. They did, however, give her a sidekick: the once naive, now not so much, bard-to-be Gabrielle. Throughout the series, Xena wrestles with her dark past, trying not to slip back into her former evil ways and always struggling for some kind of redemption.
The series is set in a universe (now known as the "Xena-verse") that takes great liberties with history. A land where Xena might just as easily encounter Mongol hordes, Odysseus, Julius Caesar, Jesus Christ or a tribe of Jews protecting the Ark of the Covenant. A place where Xena's male counterparts don't find the notion of a female warrior that unusual, where Amazons battle Centaurs and Aphrodite is a "valley girl."
We spoke to Lucy Lawless about Xena's past and future, her fans, her action figures and the woman inside the leather corset. Along the way, we found out that the woman who plays Xena is just as intriguing as Xena herself. Twenty-nine-year-old Lucy Lawless was born the fifth of seven children in Mount Albert, a suburb of Auckland, New Zealand. She studied languages and opera at Auckland University for a year before beginning a Xena-esque walkabout of her own. She traveled through Germany, Switzerland and Greece, even dug for gold in Australia, before ending up back in New Zealand in 1987, married to her high school sweetheart and pregnant with daughter Daisy, now eight. She began acting and, in 1994, came to the attention of the producers of Hercules.
Intriguing Fact #1: Lucy Lawless was not the original choice to play Xena. That year, Lucy was cast as a renegade Amazon lieutenant on Hercules. She then made a second appearance on the show as a villianess who seduces him. When the role of Xena was cast, Vanessa Angel (of Weird Science fame...or infamy) got the nod but fell sick at the last moment and in stepped Lucy. Her ash-blonde hair was dyed black, hair extensions from Spain were added, some body bronzer to darken her fair skin, and quicker than her chakram can slice your head off, Xena was born.
We connected with Lucy at 9 a.m. New Zealand time. She apologized for having the remnants of a bad head cold, and we could hear her daughter, Daisy, playing in the background. Lucy's soft-spoken New Zealand accent comes as something of a surprise, and we were also struck by how genuinely nice and unaffected she seems by her new cult icon status. So, we jumped right in, wondering how Lawless is dealing with Xena's international success, and cult status.
"I'm a million miles away, so when you say that [about being a cult figure], it makes me laugh," says Lawless. "I'm sitting here, a soft gray rain is falling, my daughter's playing with her Xena action figure at the table, I'm reading the paper and making a cup of tea. There's no razzamatazz down here."
Shooting the series half a world away in New Zealand helps keep Lucy out of the spotlight, and thus far, she has managed to keep her personal life, well, personal. So what makes her such an intriguing character?
"Mystery," suggests the actress. "People don't know me. I'm not generally hanging around at the parties [or] on the magazines pages over there, usually, unless something weird happens. And Xena's rather mysterious because she's an unknown quantity, multilayered."
Lucy describes her character as a "...bad ass kickass, preMycenaean girl who traverses the time lines." With her heroic stature, the ability to snag arrows out of midair and hurl men through the air like rag dolls, she is definitely a woman not to be trifled with.
Intriguing Fact #2: A role model is defined by Webster's Dictionary as, "a person whose behavior in a particular role is imitated by others."
Last year a cover article in MS Magazine called Xena a role model for women everywhere. Pretty heavy-duty, and we would think, a bit intimidating. So just how does a person respond to that, we wondered? "I'm only really aware of it when I'm out in public," she says. The only way it really impacts on me personally is that I have to behave. I really do. I mean, I don't smoke full stop, and this is part of the reason. I don't want to be seen that way. I'm cognizant of fact that people are looking at me and in particular young people. But I don't think anybody really wants to be Xena."
Intriguing Fact #3: Actually Lucy, they do. The San Francisco Chronicle reported recently on a survey in which children were asked who they most wished they could be. First daughter Chelsea Clinton was number one, and Tiger Woods second, followed by Xena, Darth Vader and Michael Jordan.
So, why does the character of Xena and the show appeal to so many different and divergent groups of people? "I think there's something in it [the series] for everyone," speculates Lawless. "We try to appeal to the highest common denominator, not the lowest. The physical aspect of the show is there, and we don't apologize for it, if you can call that the lowest [common denominator]. What the writers, producers, crew and cast aim for is for people to feel something. I think the show appeals to people on a visceral level. I hope it does become the next great TV phenomena. I think it has caught a wave, a need of some kind for a stronger female hero."
Xena's appeal isn't limited to the United States either. It appears that Xena is poised for world conquest, and you won't believe where she's landed already. "Last year, I passed through London, and now they really want us back because the show's really taking off there as well. Xena's a huge hit in Turkey. It even shows in Iran. One of the writers came back and said in Iran, they blow it up, every image, so you only get close-ups of the faces and don't get any cleavage or costumes. It's very bizarre." Iran, huh? Boy, they don't know what they're missing!
Intriguing Fact #4: It is a well-known that TV executives believe women will watch a show about men, but men won't watch one about women.
But what's truly amazing about the series is that both children and adults watch the show. We wondered who Lucy felt the show spoke to the most? "I am very aware that the demographic is incredibly wide. Men of 60 are writing in, women of all ages and kids too. The audience I'm most pleased about is young boys and young men. Because, whether they know it or not, they are getting to see women in a different role that they haven't before, [this is] apart from any conditioning they're growing up around. They haven't got a history oi living through the 50s when women had a certain, prescribed role. They're more open and they're seeing women in a new way, in a new role, which is a really positive one for both men and women. Even though most of the people Xena beats up are male, she's not a male basher. It's simply defense for her." Getting some of the more philosophical questions out of the way, we moved on to the subject of fans. Most actors want them. She's got 'em. But what does she think about them?
"The fans just leapt on me and the show from the very beginning, those who clicked onto the show. In fact, they were responsible for getting me on the talk shows by bombarding the producers of these shows with demands to see their hero. The media thing was a little hard to get used to at times. But by in large, people are very good and very intelligent, and I've been quite heartened by the way TV programs have treated me and the show. They've actually been very kind and at times chivalrous. Fancy that."
Having just bought a ten-inch Xena action figure (impossible to find in a regular toy store and heavily marked up at specialty stores, but that's a different article), we had to know what it was like to see yourself in plastic. (Harry wanted to ask if she ever played with herself, but I reminded him this was a family magazine.) "Who would ever think that one would be an action figure?"
(Was that giggling we heard?) "Seriously, I gave one to my daughter."
There's a brief pause, as Lucy turns away from the phone to ask Daisy what she thinks of "the action doll."
"Which action doll?" Daisy wonders.
"The Xena one."
Daisy's reply is muffled, but Lucy returns to the phone laughing.
"Daisy says, 'yeah it's okay, but it needs to be browner. She's very pragmatic. Oh, and the chakram needs to be smaller."
What is so appealing about the series is that each episode, on a certain level, has a heart, a moral center, hiding within the bone-breaking action. Is this a mandate of the series we wondered or just a happy side effect.
"I'm not in the creative process at the level that they are [the writers and producers] at. If the writers write something, I'm only going to see it on the level of my character, from my characters point of view and that might not necessarily be from the moral standpoint. My character might be wrong. My character is allowed to be wrong, she is not allowed to be stupid. That's my only maxim. She has a dark past, which opens up a lot of possibilities; it gives her character a lot of depth. The audience knows that the devil is right there on her shoulder."
This struggle between her past and present lives gives Xena a compelling internal dynamic. Each week the audience watches as Xena wrestles with her need for redemption and healing while her very palpable fear and hatred remains only nominally in check. Executive producer and creator of Xena, Rob Tapert, says that hope is the common bond of the series and adds, "This year we're really going to challenge the characters, and it's going to come down to hope and love. And not in a very touchy-feely way, though." Daisy had her own ideas about the upcoming season. She thinks, "Xena should fly a UFO." We say, why not? Intriguing Fact #5: Typecasting is a reality. Certain actors once cast in a successful role can never break free of it. As Leonard Nimoy once succinctly put it, "I am not Spock." But come on, deep down, we all know he really is.
So, is Lawless concerned about typecasting after Xena? "The more people ask, the more I say, 'should I be afraid of this?' But I'm not. I get to play an awful lot of roles on the show. But who knows? Maybe after Xena I'll pack it all in and go off somewhere and have kids."
Maybe, but she doesn't seem ready to slow down just yet. We asked her how she spends her all too brief hiatus (9 1/2 weeks), and we were exhausted just listening to her. "I'm going off to do this Broadway thing that's going to be a broadening [experience]. I was invited to play Rizzo in Grease. You know how they wheel in the latest celebrity? And I thought why the heck not? This will be a new kind of experience. My daughter is coming over to New York with me, so I'll be living in New York for a while. There isn't really any room for other projects. The smartest thing for me to do would be to have a small but pivotal, juicy part in someone's blockbuster because I don't want to work all the way through my hiatus. It's too tiring, I want to spend time with my girl and relax a bit."
And even with her hectic life, Lawless has few regrets. "No, I'm totally fulfilled every week with what I do. In fact, there is some really grueling stuff coming up. Emotionally, it's going to really shake up her world somewhat. We have to do it when you get a great idea, it's a risky idea, but we're going to roll with it and hope the audience hangs in there. It's going to be a bumpy night. Really horrifying."
She couldn't tell us anything more, but we were frantic. How could she leave us hanging like that? We needed answers, and if there is a man behind the woman, that man would have to be Rob Tapert.
As executive producer of both Hercules and Xena, he knows exactly how the universe he helped create operates. We went to Rob for his take on the Xena phenomena and for some dirt on what we can expect new season. For instance, are there a dos and don'ts list for the series.
"Every 'never' you ever say eventually gets violated," says Tapert. "Something we are good at in both Hercules and Xena is protecting our heroes and making them look good. They don't do stupid things, they solve problems themselves and don't rely on other people to help them solve their problems. Hercules is never wrong, and Xena this year is going to be a little wrong at times but for the wrong reason. It makes the studio a bit nervous, but it has the writing staff giggling."
Intriguing Fact #6: Star Trek, in one form or another, has been king of the syndicated drama for the past ten years. But this year Xena changed all that, dethroning the formidable Star Trek.
The king is dead! Long live the Warrior Princess! But why? How did Xena manage this Herculean task! Lucy was pretty straightforward about the issue, she had no idea because, "I never, ever watch Star Trek." Well, maybe the producer knows.
"Star Trek is a very good show and has excellent writers but has over 30 years of tradition," says Tapert. "There's been so many imitators over the years that it lacks a fresh and new feeling. Hercules first and then Xena had a very different , look and feel as you went channel surfing. There was nothing else like it on TV at that time and so people sampled it, and because we were telling, when we do it right, interesting stories, people grew to like it. Hercules and Xena are different from any other show on the air, in that they are true single hero shows. They have their sidekicks, but they are really sidekicks. I think most other shows are much more ensembles. Ours are single-hero driven stories, and that's a plus."
Xena has something else going for it that Star Trek seems to lack: a master plan. Each week Xena takes another step along her path toward redemption. But will she ever find the redemption she seeks? Suggests Lawless, "Yes, but you'll have to watch. It will all be fulfilled in the last episode. There is a master plan. The master is at work."
But in the interim, according to both Tapert and Lawless, viewers can expect some "horrifying" developments this coming season. "I can tell you this. Xena makes a decision coming from a wrong spot. She decides to battle an old foe rather than bring help, and as a result, Gabrielle gets in trouble," reveals Tapert. "Gabrielle lies to Xena about something extremely important, and it costs Xena dearly. At the same time, Xena tells a lie to Gabrielle, and in order to keep all these lies intact, they have to spin an ever increasing web of dishonesty. We're going to challenge the bonds between the two lead characters over [the course of] six episodes, then there's a reconciliation. We're trying some real-life drama. We're also playing something on Xena that's not really on Hercules. This is a time of the decline of the Greek gods; How is that void filled?"
But wait, this is all well and good, but this article is about Xena, the woman, the intriguing woman. It's only fair she gets the last word, so we asked her, how does Lucy Lawless (known in fan circles as Flawless) sum up the intriguing appeal of Xena, the Warrior Princess?
"Our show has a lot of fun and a lot of irony, and people like to escape," she explains. "We try not to be didactic, we try not to shove some moral down people's throats through our stories. Our characters are always making moral, ethical judgments, and we try to let our audience see that and decide for themselves. We don't want to preach to them about all manner of subjects. Our show is kind of low maintenance, and it doesn't demand a moral imperative. It's bloody straight out fun."
Дата: Пятница, 2012-06-22, 9:32 PM | Сообщение # 30
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A Day Out With | Lucy Lawless The Happy Warrior
WEST HOLLYWOOD, Calif.
“IS my slave here?” Lucy Lawless asked a publicist while crossing the lobby of the London Hotel here. Ms. Lawless wore stiletto sandals that brought her frame above six feet. She glanced over her shoulder as the publicist took two paces for each of her strides. Hotel clerks and guests looked up or swiveled in their chairs to watch her pass.
“Ever since I cut my bangs again, people have been like, ‘Oh! Xena!’ ” she said, referring to “Xena: Warrior Princess,” the TV series in which she starred — with bangs — as an Amazonian vixen. With her skimpy armor and high-pitched battle cry, she kicked and karate-chopped her way to sci-fi cult status.
Near the elevators, the two women were intercepted by another publicist holding a bag of workout clothes and shoes for the actress, who promptly went to change into them.
Ms. Lawless was in town to promote “Spartacus: Blood and Sand,” a series on the Starz network where she — once again — plays a fearsome dominatrix from yesteryear. The show had its debut Jan. 22, and its production is very much a family affair: her husband, Robert Tapert, is an executive producer (as he was for “Xena,” where the couple met), and her daughter from her first marriage, Daisy, who is 21, works in the sound department.
Ms. Lawless, who is 41, also has two young children with Mr. Tapert, and the family has moved back to her native New Zealand from Los Angeles for the series. “Xena” was also filmed there.
Since that show wrapped in 2001, Ms. Lawless has done turns on “Battlestar Galactica” and “The X-Files” and has been raising her children, she said.
Like “Xena,” “Spartacus” is set deep in history and coated in fantasy. This time, Ms. Lawless plays Lucretia, a social climber in ancient Rome who favors orgies, back-stabbing and hot gladiators.
On the roof of the hotel, Ms. Lawless met up with several other Spandex-clad “Spartacus” cast members, including Andy Whitfield, who plays the title character, and Peter Mensah, who plays a gladiator trainer. They were there for a group workout.
Lesley-Ann Brandt, who plays Lucretia’s head slave, greeted Ms. Lawless with a hug. They danced together — pumping their arms and wiggling their hips — without music near a poolside cabana to keep warm.
Sure, a hard-bodied temptress must work out to stay fit but, as it turns out, only up to a certain point.
“It’s all in the costumes,” Ms. Lawless said. “For Xena, there was padding in the right places,” she said, gripping her bicep and shoulder to illustrate. “For Lucretia, she can be a bit softer. So, I can sneak a doughnut once in a while.”
Bev Ratcliff, the fitness instructor, arranged free weights on a slab of artificial turf, got on all fours and started yelling instructions. Ms. Lawless shot a worried glance over her shoulder. “I’m not sure why I’m here,” she said. “It’s not like Roman women wanted to have washboard abs.”
Had she done research into ancient Roman society ahead of the shoot? Ms. Lawless grinned at the question. “Someone did,” she said.
All in all, this was a highly enjoyable interview. Lucy was relaxed, and Rosie and she seem to share a common silliness. Rosie's attempts to emulate Lucy's Xena yell are hysterical! One of the better Lucy interviews I've seen. Light years above the nightmare that is Howard Stern.
A transcript of the interview follows, interspersed with pictures. Click on each picture thumbnail to view the larger image. Eventually I hope to have sound bytes here as well. Check back periodically for those.
Rosie: Please welcome Lucy Lawless! (Lucy comes onstage) Rosie: They love you! Lucy: Yay them! Rosie: The people love you. Lucy: Well... (audience member): We love you Xena! Rosie: See? They love you. (audience cheers) Lucy: As if to prove it. Rosie: First of all, congratulations on your Broadway debut. Lucy: Thank you very much! (audience cheers) Rosie: You're welcome. Grease at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre. Lucy: Mm-hmm. Rosie: I understand that we played a small part in your getting the role. Lucy: Rosie cast me in, um, the show, I came on eight months ago, something, and, I sang a song. The producers happened to be watching, and you said you could do Broadway and I said, ho ho, you know, really do you think so, and um, and they were watching and, and, you know and, they made the offer and I just jumped at it. Rosie: And you're doing it for seven weeks. Lucy: I'm doing, just for seven weeks, that's all the time I have off. Rosie: Which is, which is, just the perfect amount of time because you won't get, into the routine. How was opening night for you? Lucy: Opening night was great. I have no memory of it whatsoever except waking up the next morning with, like pillow face going, "oh my God you're..." (laughs) I have to play that episode all over again, you know, just, I'm used to a continual flow of new material and, and, always working under the gun, so, to do the same thing, uh, night after night is a real challenge, and now that I'm getting more comfortable it's a whole lot more fun. Rosie: Now, are you nervous with the singing? Lucy: Uhhh...singing I was nervous with at first, initially, dancing I was terrified of, now, my acting's gone to hell you know and... (Rosie and audience laugh) Lucy: I'm thinking so much (does a little "hand jive"), I'm doing this that where I'm, now I'm starting to say things like fluff-flak , and, (Porky Pig noises), I'm doing Porky Pig routines and going "oh my God I can't get the words out straight" but um, fortunately the audience is sort of um, hanging in there in fact, part of the reason I took the job was that it was kind of therapy for me you see I've been terrified to sing for about, ten years. Rosie: Really... Lucy: Yeah, and uh, so I took it and, you're all having to sit through my therapy thank you very much. (audience laughs) Rosie: Yes, but you're a very good singer I remember you from last time. Lucy: That was, because I was so relaxed, you know, but, for to stand me up, something in my throat just kinda closes up quite often often so, um, I didn't tell the producers that of course, that would have terrified them, and uh, and uh, here I am and I'm doing it I'm just loving it. Rosie: Well, I'm so happy for you. I on the other hand cannot sing, a note on key, and I would sing loudly, and proudly anywhere I go and, the produ- it's funny, when I auditioned, the producers Fran Weisther, who is, the funny, (impersonating producer) darling, angel, who are you, no idea, I said oh I'd been in a couple movies, maybe you know, (again) darling, I've never heard of you, and basically, you don't sing well. (audience laughs) Rosie: And, but they gave me the part anyway, so, I had fun. Lucy: Yeah you're good. Rosie: Oh has your daughter been to see you? Lucy: She hasn't, she, I'm missing her terribly, she's um, she's still in New Zealand... Rosie: She is... Lucy: And she's coming over in a coupla, uh, in a week, and uh, I just can't wait, you know, I'm, I'm l- I love the people I'm with I'm having, some of them are here today, and, um, but I've just got that, you know that aching for... Rosie: Yeah, she's, she's 9? Lucy: Yeah. Rosie: 9 years old? Lucy: Yeah and obsessed with, with Tamaguchi at the moment you know those little, these awful little (laughs) digital pet... Rosie: Oh, I know... Lucy: They keep dying, they, doesn't matter how much attention they get, you know they, overfeed them, and overcare for them and these things keep carking it. Rosie: No, do you know how to do it? Do you know how to do it? Lucy: I did not know, I've had to set up these awful things time and time again, but uh, they won't just die and stay dead you know, you.. (laughs) Rosie: They're horrible. My niece said to me, "I'm going to my friend Marissa's party, take care of it!" Lucy: Yeah! Rosie: The stress! You have to feed the thing and then, change the diaper, and it beeps, and ugh...and they sold millions of them. Lucy: Do you know though, the other day, I was sitting in, in, Central Park in a restaraunt, and there was a woman with a, ghastly little, matching poodle, matching her own hairdo, you know. Rosie: Yeah. Lucy: In, in her handbag, of course, later I get up to go to the loo, and, I walk in, and, underneath a cubicle where you ought to see somebody's shoes is this little dog, doing his business on a nappy liner, and I (laughs) New York, you're outta hand! Rosie: You're not kiddin' we are outta hand here! Don't go away more Lucy Lawless after this break we'll be right back. (station break) Rosie: Back with Lucy Lawless, Xena, can you give me a little Xena yell? Lucy: Ayiyiyiyi! You've got... (audience cheers) Rosie: Yeah, we have it, here it is. (A tape is played of a Xena yell) Lucy: Perfect pitch, listen to that. Rosie: Here we go do it again. (The tape is played again and Lucy joins in) Rosie: Lemme try. Lucy: Oh, stereo! Rosie: Where'd you get it? Where'd you get that? Lucy: Uhhh...Rob Tapert, our Producer, and, my partner, you know, um.... Rosie: In life? Lucy: Yeah. Rosie: Oh, your boyfriend! Lucy: Yeah, my boyfriend! Uh, he actually, they were looking for he was looking for some sort of a gimmick like, a Tarzan, call or something, and, uh, the Arabic women do, make, a similar noise. They ululate, all over the place everytime they protest or there's a funeral or they're happy you know, I dunno it's a multi-purpose cry. Rosie: Really? I never heard of that. Lucy: Yeah. And I couldn't quite do it so I bastardized it and made it, made it my own and, just exploited the Hell out of it. Rosie: Ubluhbluhbluhbluhbluhbluh! (audience laughs) Lucy: You got it! Rosie: But you don't use your tongue like that you just uhluhluhluhluh. Do it again. Lucy: Ayiyiyi! Rosie: Oh you see but you keep your tongue in your mouth. Uhriririri! (audience laughs) Lucy: Very pretty. Rosie: Thank you. Rururururururu! (audience cheers) Rosie: Alright now since you brought this up... Lucy: Yeah. Rosie: Was he your boyfriend before he was the Producer or, he was, just working together you... Lucy: Uh, just working together. Rosie: Alright, I don't wanna pry I just, was curious it was going through my head while I was doing the yell. Lucy: Yeah. Oh it's no secret. Rosie: You're on in 80 countries. Lucy: How bout that? Rosie: Hard to believe. Lucy: I'm on in Saudi Arabia. Rosie: Saudi Arabia? (audience cheers) Lucy: Yeah. I had uh, a friend came back from uh, doing some oil, rig gig, in, in, Saudi Arabia and they had seen Xena, but, all the action scenes have to be blown up, they're huge grainy close-ups so they don't show any cleavage or leg. And uh, I don't know how they manage it . But uh, it's a big hit in Saudi Arabia. Rosie: Really...alililililili! (audience laughs and cheers) Lucy: Yeah. And like that's probably what it is, it's just the sound you know. Rosie: It's the yell, they go, she's one of us! Blilili! (audience laughs) Rosie: Well how long, um, you're gonna do that show for years I suppose, it's so popular. Lucy: For, for a few years, yeah. Rosie: For a few years, yeah. Lucy: Yeah. Rosie: You gonna do anymore musicals, you think? Lucy: Eheeheehee! (nervous laugh) (audience laughs) Lucy: Well uh, if they'll, if they'll have me back we'll see I don't know that um, I could do something for, a, a year I know that you did it for a year... Rosie: Did it for a year. Lucy: It's, and it's incredibly hard work too I thought, it can't be any harder than, than the work I do, everyday and, and, it is extremely strenuous in a different way. Rosie: It is. And you only have one day off a week and it's very tiring. Lucy: Yeah. Rosie: Have you gotten to see any, any of the shows or, with your schedule you really, don't have time... Lucy: I saw Chicago yesterday. That's amazing. Rosie: Isn't that amazing? Lucy: God... Rosie: And Marilu Henner is in it now. Lucy: Yeah. Rosie: Brilliant, isn't she a great dancer? Lucy: Mm-hmm. Rosie: She is. Surprising? Lucy: Yeah and, and Bebe Newearth is, a dancing machine. Rosie: She is. It's a great show have you seen (actress' name I can't make out)? Lucy: Yeah but she's like Betty Boop on steroids, you know (laughs) Rosie: I love the way you say that, Betty Boop. Lucy: Betty Boop. Rosie: Betty Boop on steroids. Lucy: Yeah. Rosie: Yeah. Lucy: George... Rosie: She's, she's really wonderful, have you seen Titantic yet?? Lucy: I haven't. Is that good? Rosie: I loved it. Lucy: Yeah, ok that's another one to see before... Rosie: Really good Christo-...did you see Rent? Lucy: Not yet. Rosie: (singing) Five-hundred-sixty-five-thousand-three-hundred-mi-inutes. How do you measure, a co-mercial break? (audience laughs) Rosie: Say we'll be right back after this. Lucy: We'll be right back, after......this. (station break) Rosie: Hey go see Lucy Lawless on Broadway in Grease. Now Luce, who's on tommorow? Lucy: Ahhh, Barbara Walters! Rosie: Kimberly Williams. Lucy: And Cynthia Cooper. Rosie: Exactly. Hit the target Xena. Buh-bye! (Lucy starts flinging kooshes)
Дата: Пятница, 2012-06-22, 11:39 PM | Сообщение # 31
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Lucy Lawless on Rosie O'Donnell October 17, 2000
The Transcript
RO: Our next guest just started her sixth season as the fearless "Xena: Warrior Princess." Take a look...
(fight scene from Heart of Darkness)
RO: She's a tough chick. Please welcome Lucy Lawless!
(Lucy enters, they embrace. Reading their lips, Lucy says "You're my hero.", Rosie says "I got four kids..." and the rest is unintelligible)
RO: Hi Lucy Lawless. How are you?
LL: Hello Rosie O'Donnell.
RO: Very good to see you.
LL: Better than you.
RO: Yes, better than me. I'm a little sleepy. You have one baby.
LL: I have one baby, who just turned one yesterday.
RO: Excellent, and how's he sleeping?
LL: Oh, he's sleeping, he's sleeping good now, but it took 5 months, and then he started sleeping through. RO: That's good though.
LL: But yeah, there's profound fatigue when you have a new baby, and I hear you asking for recommendations from the audience...
RO: Do you have any?
LL: Well I can't tell this woman anything, no, because your baby has very specific needs and experiences.
RO: I got something for your baby, do you have these? I knew it was the first birthday. (brings out a set of picture frames, tied with a bow) See they're frames, numbered each year, one, two, three, four, five, six...
LL: Oh, they're beautiful!
RO: ...and you take a picture, like, with the birthday cake each year, and then you put them up on the wall, and it shows their growth.
(Rosie presents the frames to Lucy)
LL: Oh thank you. Aw, do you know what? (Lucy looks chagrined.) He has nothing. He didn't get a present.
RO: Really?
LL: We took him to FAO Schwartz and bought absolutely nothing.
RO: How come?
LL: Because a one year old baby only wants to pick things up and slime all over them, and...
RO: That's true.
LL: ...and then drop them again. So, we let him do that.
RO: Well, that's really more a present for the mommy.
LL: I love this, thank you very much.
RO: I love it, my son's five now and I'm almost done with the series.
LL: Aww..
RO: Now what's going on, you're leaving the show I hear, the show's going away next season.
LL: Yeah, the show's leaving me.
RO: Yeah. But that's ok, right, that was a good run.
LL: Oh, a really good run, and it strikes me now how unusual, how unbelievable it is to go so long. You know, you sit down, you have a cry, and then you just get back on that horse. You know I've actually got another ten episodes to go, and though it doesn't sound like a lot, it's ... it's a lot of work, and another ten so I'm going to go back there and carry on the good fight.
RO: And you really have to be physically fit for that role, you know.
LL: Yeah
RO: I mean, really, in a way that no other show would demand of you.
LL: I've done hundreds of stunt fights, and for somebody who's not particularly athletic, it was a big ask, you know, so I just intend to love every moment of what's left.
RO: How did you get by when you were pregnant? How did they do that, with all the fighting, and the...
LL: Oh, they cut me some slack.
RO: Oh they did?
LL: Yeah, they let me out of that corset (laughs), finally, after 5 months, boom! (laughs) Um, out came the lat...not the latex, um, the spandex, right, and they gave me a coat to wear, so I wouldn't be cold, but sixth season, it all went away again.
RO: Oh yeah, back to the corset and the metal, right. You have some devoted, devoted fans. Now we, before you were ever on the show, before you were on the first time, literally we were besieged with people, "Get Xena, get Lucy Lawless!" The fans are like fanatical.
LL: Yeah, well they've been amazingly faithful too, and hung in there, and yeah, I just thank them. Sometimes we go and do conventions, um, not very often because we're not often available, but you get to feel like a rock star for a few seconds. It's amazing to feel that once or twice in your life. It's a huge privilege.
RO: Now were you in New Zealand, during the Olympics, over in Australia, close by?
LL: Yes, but we escaped, we went over to Hawaii after the season ended.
RO: You did.
LL: Yeah.
RO: Did you watch them? It was great.
LL: Yes, and we got it in real time, so we didn't have to wait until 2 o'clock in the morning, which we're accustomed to doing in the southern hemisphere.
RO: Yeah, for you guys, that was the first time you got to watch it, as it happened.
LL: Yeah.
RO: It was bad for us, we had the delay.
LL: (in New York accent) I know, I'm sorry.
RO: (in New York accent) That's all right. (in normal voice) Now how about Broadway, you gonna go back?
LL: You know, I'd like to, though when Xena ends...I think I'm going to take an open-ended holiday.
RO: A vacation.
LL: Yeah, for the first time...we'll just see. If they'll have me back, you know?
RO: Yeah, I'm sure they will. Did you have a good time?
LL: I had such an amazing time, and I made some terrific friends who I'm still in close contact with.
RO: Was it tough on you to do, eight shows a week, 'cause it was tough for me.
LL: Yes, it demanded a different kind of fitness than Xena.
RO: And your vocal cords, did you have any problems, because I sure did.
LL: No, I have now, though.
RO: You have a little polyp, or..?
LL: When I do...yeah probably several, when I do looping , there's such a lot of fighting and grunting and carrying on, that I've just ripped my throat to shreds, so um, that's a little problem. So singing's a bit out for me these days.
RO: Yeah, 'cause we were going to do a big number, remember last time you were here..
LL: I know, I know...(looks chagrined)
RO: ...(in NY accent) we were gonna do a big numbah, what happened, Lucy? (in normal voice) Now, you're feeling all better from when you were injured on the Jay Leno show when you got on the horse, since, you've all...
LL: Yeah.
RO: Yeah, 'cause you hurt your collar bone, right?
LL: Yeah, I mean, I've got uh...no, my pelvis.
RO: Oh, your pelvis.
LL: Even better. Yeah, well, it's been put through its paces, had a baby, passed a baby through it.
RO: So it's still working, knock wood, right.
LL: (grins) Yeah, still working. Mustn't grumble.
RO: And I know that you're doing a lot with breast cancer in New Zealand as well as child abuse.
LL: Yes, October is a global breast cancer awareness month, and I did an ad for them. I agreed to do the breast cancer one on behalf of some of my friends who have been dealing with breast cancer (leans over to knock on Rosie's desktop), and knock wood that I won't have to deal with it myself. I went and had a mammogram, actually, and I fainted. I fell, and I was held up only by my boob in a ringer (she laughs).
RO: Your boob went in the vice and you fell over?
LL: Fortunately, though, I was held up by my bosom.
RO: And you fainted because of stress, or just...?
LL: I'm just squeamish.
RO: Are you really?
LL: (teasing and grinning) Don't tell anyone. Just between you and me.
RO: I could have a mammogram every day, it didn't bother me. They were smushing, she said "I'm going to put it tighter," I said "Go 'head, go 'head." She's like "You're good!" I'm like, "I have boobs of steel!"
LL: Well that's great!
RO: Yeah!
(audience laughs)
LL: I see that. (Lucy leans over to Rosie and holds her hands in the air making boob squeezing motions) Wah, wah!
RO: Yes, there they are, wah wah! But then what about the child abuse, how did you get involved with that stuff?
LL: Uh, you know there are a lot of graphic accounts, I think very courageously reported in the local newspapers in New Zealand, and you know the first one you read you go "Oh, can't read that, it's going to ruin my day," and the second one...eventually, enough of them are reported where you say "I've got to do something, which in most cases...they need money, so I offer my profile, my energy to the experts. I'm not running off and doing this on my own, of course. My energy and my profile...we found an action group, and we're making huge headway. We're trying to get multiagency centers set up so a child doesn't get taken to, say, the police or a child care agency and they send them back, possibly to the perpetrators before they can get on the next step in their recovery.
RO: Exactly.
LL: So that's our aim at this stage.
RO: Well that's very very important. We need that here in the United States as well. It's lovely to see you.
LL: Well thank you.
RO: Great, great run with the show, congratulations. Lucy Lawless, we'll be right back after this break, don't go away...
Дата: Пятница, 2012-06-22, 11:52 PM | Сообщение # 32
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The Ballad of Lucy Lawless
From the dubious distinction of representing her country 10 years ago in Las Vegas as Mrs. New Zealand, Lucy Lawless aka Xena, Warrior Princess, has moved on to centre stage as the star of the television show which today is right up there with Star Trek and the X-Files in pop-cultism. She's rated one of the world's 50 most beautiful women and ranks third only behind Chelsea Clinton and Tiger Woods as the person American kids most want to have over to play. This month, she tells Tom Hyde, she will realise a life long ambition when she debuts in Broadway in the musical Grease.
August 1997 Metro Magaxine (NZ)
"Hi!"Lucy says,"remember me?" "What? Wait a second," I say, "isn't it supposed to be the other way around?"
I meant that she is the star and the subject of this piece; I'm just another reporter appearing on the set to research it, to listen to her story a story she's told a thousand times (okay, 50 times) since she became Xena, the Warrior Princess who doesn't take shit from anybody. Give her any lip and she'll give you the "Xena touch", that two-fingered pinch on the neck, Dracula-esque, that seems to have the power of a hypnotic spell.
Do I remember her?
Lucy Lawless is one of People magazine's 50 Most Beautiful People In The World and ranks third only to Chelsea Clinton and Tiger Woods as the person American kids would most like to have come over to their house to play. She's appeared on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Late Night With David Letterman and The Rosie O'Donnell Show. The only ones missing are Oprah and Howard Stern.
Do I remember her?
What she was referring to was the Crummer Road days, a time we shared, however brief, at a flat in Grey Lynn nearly 10 years ago. It should have been me asking her: do you remember me? I was, after all, only an extra in that scene. The key roles were played by her and Garth Lawless, her husband at the time and the father of her daughter and only child, Daisy, who turned nine last month.
Supporting roles were played by Garth's sister Debbie (now in Wanganui), former New Zealand basketball star Warwick Meehl and his wife, Denise, and national trampoline coach and trainer John Docherty.
"Doc" owned the house. He lived in one room; Lucy, Garth and Daisy in another. Debbie slept in a room at the back. The place was kept warm that winter, a winter of discontent, by an open fire and Van Morrison. Some of us, not Lucy as I recall, smoked "green".
For me, Crummer Road was a stopover in my own journey through time and Grey Lynn in the 80s. We were all restless and uncertain and so was Lucy, despite the fact that in later years she emerged as more certain than others. She wanted to pursue an acting career at whatever cost; she was certain that being married-with-children didn't have to stop that and it didn't. She was talking about those days when she told me: "I'm not motivated by money; never was, even when we were on the bones of our arse."
In that way she hasn't changed. It has been speculated that she earns $US 28,000 a week playing Xena. That may sound extreme but think about it: Jerry Seinfeld, whose half-hour show hovers around number five in the national US ratings, gets $US I,000,000 a week. Lawless, as all Xenaphiles know works a one-hour weekly show that hovers around number nine. If Seinfeld is worth a million, Lucy Lawless must certainly be worth whatever she's getting. "Like Star Trek and The X Files," wrote Mike Flaherty in Entertainment Weekly, "Xena is speeding toward that most oxymoronic of distinctions, mainstream cultdom.
"Evidence includes the first official convention (in Burbank), numerous Xena-fests (organised by fans), Xena-themed apparel, trading cards, fanzines, action figures, CD-ROMS and a Web presence of more than 60 sites and counting. Perhaps more indicative of Xena's popculture infiltration are the increasing homages on network television: Both Roseanne and Something So Right have featured Xena doppelgangers."
Yet for Lucy, money is not the aim of the exercise. For all her fame, at least in the United States where the Hollywood public relations machine has made her into an icon, she doesn't play the celebrity game. She doesn't have the time; but even when she does, she doesn't ask for money, for example, when approached by a glossy magazine for an interview. There are times when she is on the set six days a week, 12 hours a day. Sunday is strictly offlimits; it's her time to be with Daisy. Her time for interviews is extremely limited, but if she consents to an interview it's understood to be part of her job and it's the work that matters most, not the money.
Right now, she is Xena, but when that show runs its course, expect her to appear in feature films, perhaps with Susan Sarandon, one of her most admired actors and someone she'd like to emulate. The attraction to Sarandon? Lawless describes it as "hot energy".
During the Crummer Road days she was crowned Mrs New Zealand. The local contest was held at the Tamaki Yacht Club. Winning meant flying off to a world final in where else? Las Vegas. Lucy would have been an odds-on favourite. She and Garth stayed at the Flamingo Hotel where they met Baron Hilton. Of course, the Baron met as many contestants as he could. Mrs Peru won.
It's not a memory she wants to dwell on today but she remembers: "My mother was busily sewing something together as we drove out to the airport. I wore this sparkly blue number that I later made into a Super Daisy cape." Today, when she's not in Xena gear, Lawless is more likely to be found in sweat pants, a Tshirt and a comfortable pair of slippers borrowed from... where was it? The Four Seasons Hotel in Chicago? The Hilton in New York? The South Coast Plaza in LA?
Lucy and Garth were on holiday, camping, when she received the offer of the part of Xena. It sounds romantic enough, from bush to Broadway, from the Hollyford to Hollywood, but in fact it wasn't a happy time for her. Her marriage was failing. She had met Garth Lawless at Club Mirage where they both worked. He was the bartender, she looked after tables. They were only 18. Lucy went to Europe and he followed soon after. They travelled together briefly before running out of money and decided to head back this way and work in the Australian goldfields. The American media make quite a big deal of that.
"They have seized on it," Lucy acknowledges. Ms magazine, Entertainment Weekly and Playboy all mention this fact because it paints a picture of Xena as a warrior woman in real life, taking on a man's world. Some stories project an image of the two of them on the wild Australian frontier, panning for gold.
It's an image which suits a romantic American narrative and feminism, but it's overstated. "There was no pan," she says, "only a caravan. We lived in a caravan for two weeks at a time taking measurements and doing surveys." If anything, she came away from that experience sensitised to the brutality of land stripped bare.
The couple were married in 1988 in the Australian outback in a registry office and only after they discovered Lucy was pregnant. Reality would catch up and finally overtake their youthful naivete. Her early success landing work as a host of Air New Zealand Holiday didn't help either. As a "television star" she was the target of some resentment by her old friends, but more than that, the work took her away from home which put stress on the marriage: "I'd come home from doing one of those shows and walk back in and they'd look up as if to say, 'How dare you waltz back in and expect us to be here for you; we don't need you.' The work never did pay well enough to compensate for that."
When asked by TV Guide to identify a time in her life when she was called on to be heroic, she noted her divorce. She elaborates for Metro: "Going through a divorce calls for a kind of heroism because you have to try to be fair, no matter how bad you feel, fairer than you want to be; if you have children, you have to put their needs before your own, no matter how much it hurts. I could have also said that being a working parent is also heroic. You suffer guilt for not always being there when you're needed and your kids don't understand that."
To suggest that Lucy's success as Xena brought about the breakup of their marriage is to oversimplify the situation. The marriage had ended before she became Xena; she remembers that pre-Xena camping trip as "the worst Christmas ever for everybody".
The woman originally cast as Xena had become ill and alternatives back in California were offered the job but turned it down. Lucy was known to the show's producers because she had appeared in Hercules.
"It was an amazing series of circumstances," she says, looking back. Had she not turned down $60,000 to do a tampon commercial in Australia (I'm just reporting what she said), she never would be where she is today.
The story goes like this: Rather than go back to Australia, where she was married, where she became pregnant, where the money was good, Lucy took charge and, in a Xena-like way led the family from Crummer Road to Vancouver so she could study drama.
They may have been on the bones of their buttocks but she wanted formal training and she was going to get it. "When you come from a big family," she says, "you learn how to get what you want."
A woman she had met while travelling in Europe two years earlier had told her about the William Davis Centre for Actors Study in Vancouver. She was adventurous and it was the only drama school she knew about, so they went. Her one-year course did not result in any immediate work here the highlight of her career at this stage was cohosting Holiday but she considers William Davis (sometimes seen on The X-Files) one of her most influential teachers.
It's a path-of-life argument. She figures that had she gone to Australia and started working there, she would not have been in the position to take the Xena job when Renaissance Pictures called her back to the big smoke from the smoke of her camp fire.
And she's probably right. Of course she's right. She's Xena! Don't quote me, quote Hercules. Kevin Sorbo has said: "Lucy is Xena." It's the long black hair, the sharp, beautiful face, those white-as-white teeth and those famous laser-blue eyes. Who else but a mythical warrior woman would look like that?
After two years it's hard to imagine anyone else playing the part. Lucy has become Xena. A nervous passenger in a speedy car at the best of times, I felt comfortable riding in her Alpha Romeo as she steered us through a storm into the city from the Xena set on Henderson Valley Road. It was the Monday of Queen's Birthday Weekend, the first truly miserable day of winter if you recall, and only the middle of the afternoon but with dark clouds and a dark sky, wipers going full bore, holiday traffic building up, our car swooshing and splashing between lanes to gain an advantage. Yet there was nothing to fear, because Xena was at the wheel!
Lucy Lawless was born in Auckland 29 years ago, the first daughter after four sons of Frank and Julie Ryan. Frank Ryan was the mayor of Mount Albert and today is an Auckland City councillor. The Ryans were a large Catholic family of five boys and two girls; Lucy is number five and the eldest girl. Playboy asked her in a recent interview about her Catholic upbringing and she described herself as a "recovering Catholic". No explanation was given.
Over a cup of tea at her Auckland home, a modest and unpretentious looking house on the outside, with a recently renovated interior, she told me: "As a child, certain dogma really affected me. It was the mortality issue, you know, 'Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.' I'd have to say that it was the thought of dying, I suppose, that frightened me. I don't blame my schooling for that. It was something in me that latched on to the death aspect, and for a six-year-old to realise one's mortality is a pretty intense discovery. Other girls had the same experience and never reacted as fearfully as I did."
Lucy was 23 years old before she gave up Catholicism; she doesn't attend church now. "I've put the scary monsters to bed," she says, "and I should also say that the discipline of those school years help make me what I am today. I didn't screw around. I worked hard and I still work hard. I've always been a hard worker and I think it goes back to my early school days."
Her father was supportive but it was her mother, Julie, who arguably had more to do with developing Lucy's interest in performance. "As the mayoress, my mother had senior citizens to entertain every week," she remembers, "so she would rope a friend and I into helping her out. I was 10 years old when I discovered I wanted to be an actor, but that was at Marist Primary when I had a part in the parable of the Prodigal Son. What I thought would be scary turned out to be quite a lot of fun."
Her mother bought the opera records Lucy listened to and when Lucy was 15 they went off together on an opera tour of Europe (compliments of Dad). Back in Auckland, she performed in school musicals at Marist Sisters College in Mount Albert where she was also the head girl, and although she appears to be athletic, she wasn't sporty. Her father told NZ Women's Weekly "She had a fine singing voice but all she wanted to do was to get into film and television." Or as her mother told People magazine: "She used to get up on the coffee table with a seashell for a microphone and sing away."
Next month, one of Lucy Lawless' childhood fantasies comes true when she debuts on Broadway. She'll spend the two-months' break from the shooting of Xena playing the part of Rizzo in Grease. It's an opportunity which developed from an appearance she made on The Rosie O'Donnell Show, one of the leading talk shows on American television. Rosie had herself played a part in Grease and the producers of the long-running Broadway musical saw Lucy on her show that night and one thing led to another. "I'm a little frightened of the prospect," she admits, "but I'm also very excited."
Lucy's appearance on Rosie O'Donnell has lifted her career but the same couldn't be said after her appearance on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno last October. While rehearsing for the show, Lucy's horse fell and she was thrown onto the concrete outside the studio, fracturing her pelvis in four places. "I was trying to ride a western horse English-style on shiny, painted concrete. I had to bring the horse in on a trot around a corner but the set was tense, everyone was in such a rush, the horse was tense, and I didn't have the guts to stop it and say to them, 'You're not listening to me.' I thought, 'Oh, just be a trooper and get on with it.' So we did two takes that were okay and I agreed to a third and final take. It was as if someone pulled a tablecloth out from under us. We rounded the corner and the horse slipped and went down. I was thrown clear and [was] lucky in a way not to have been caught underneath."
By any account, Lucy is a star in America. In Auckland and on the set of Xena she's also the star, but you'd never know it by the way she interacts with the rest of the cast and crew. The hours are long, made longer by the attention to detail required by all involved, from Oley Sassone, one of the three directors of the series, to Donny Duncan, the director of photography, to the lighting and sound crew and the rest of the cast: about 400 in all for both Hercules and Xena.
Yet for all the demands, complicated at times by the weather, the making of Xena is fun. A big budget helps (no figures revealed) but it's also the story. Anyone who takes Xena seriously is missing the point.
"In Xena," reports Entertainment Weekly, "history is bunk. Characters spout Shakespearean platitudes one minute, Brooklynese wisecracks the next. Plotlines don't so much careen across eras as co-mingle them, creating a milieu that's primeval, classical, medieval, and surfer dude all at once. One episode finds our heroine plunked into the middle of the Trojan War (turns out Helen was an old acquaintance); in another she's visiting 1940s Macedonia. Somehow, hilariously, it works."
For Lucy, the show's star, it's especially important she not take herself and her role too seriously. "It's true," she says, "that the lead actors are the mood-setters on a set because everybody is looking at you all the time. If you're diffficult, if you whine and moan, it makes everybody's life more difficult. You have to respect other people for the work they do; they work just as hard as you do and they're not getting paid as much."
It's been two years since the divorce. Garth tells me "we're friends again", while Lucy tells me "Daisy is happier than she's ever been and so am I".
She's now in a relationship with one of the show's producers, Rob Tapert. Tapert is originally from Detroit and an avid fan of the Detroit Red Wings, thus the connection that led to Lucy singing "The Star Spangled Banner" at a Detroit-Anaheim National Hockey League playoff game in Los Angeles earlier this year. She sang the American national anthem well, by all accounts, but when she waved to the crowd, her red, white and blue top slipped, exposing a breast. She told People magazine: "Obviously I was mortified. It was quite a bit more exposure than I want." She told Metro: "Some people thought it was a publicity stunt, but as adventurous as people think I am, I'm also an extremely private person, certainly not the type to show off my body parts in that way. I've never done a nude scene and I doubt I ever will."
She is "for women" without making an issue of it, which may be why she has never appeared at the New York lesbian nightclub Meow Mix, where "Xena nights" are famous, where every time she kick-boxes a male culprit into oblivion, the standing-room only crowd goes crazy. "Can you imagine," she says, "me walking into that club and introducing my boyfriend?"
She told Bill Zwecker of the Chicago Sun-Times that her toughest day on the set of Xena was shooting an episode in rain and hail but that she got through it because she knew it wouldn't last forever. In a philosophical way she acknowledged that "all things end".
So where will it end for Lucy Lawless? She feels three more years of Xena will be enough and declares she'll never do a television series like it again, because it takes her away from her daughter for too long and it gives her little or no time to enjoy life. She'd like to move on to feature films...not a Xena film.
"I'm just having a rich life," she said. "I've done all these crazy, geeky, dangerous and sometimes slightly embarrassing things and I just think I'll be so glad when I'm an old woman and I can look back and say I've lived a life... put myself in some spooky situations others would not have. The payoff will be that when I'm on my deathbed I'll be going, 'Hooray, I went for it.' "
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Zoë Bell by Leonard Pierce March 18, 2009
Zoë Bell was still a teenager when she got her first job as a stuntwoman, and she went on to make a living—and suffer a number of debilitating injuries—working as a stunt double in Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and Xena: Warrior Princess, two popular syndicated action shows filmed in her native New Zealand. Her biggest opportunity came in 2003, when she landed the role of Uma Thurman’s stunt double in Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill—a process intensely followed in the riveting 2004 documentary Double Dare. The film was a revelation to those who weren’t aware of the physically and psychologically painful ordeals women face in this dangerous profession. Since then, Bell has begun to pursue an acting career: Tarantino gave her a leading role in Death Proof, and in her latest project, the web-only action series Angel Of Death, she’s playing an assassin who suddenly develops a conscience—a role that celebrated comics author Ed Brubaker created with her specifically in mind. Recently, Bell spoke to The A.V. Club about making the transition from stunts to acting, the demands of working with a legendary director, and what really scares one of the bravest women in the business.
The A.V. Club: You’ve come a long way, career-wise, since Double Dare. Is it difficult for you to watch it now? Do you feel you’re a different person than the one who appears in the documentary?
Zoë Bell: No. Actually, it’s become easier and easier for me to love that movie. At first—I always loved it, but when it’s a documentary about you, it’s hard to go “Hey, this movie, it’s all about me. It’s fantastic. You should go watch it.” You can’t help but seem a bit arrogant. But over the years, as I get further away from it, it’s easier to think about it objectively. It’s the sort of thing you want to be able to show your kids, you know? And I’ve had enough people come up to me and say that it moved them in a way that’s important to them that it’s hard to not appreciate the influence it’s had. It’s not as if I feel I’m a different person in the movie; obviously, I recognize myself even though I’m now a bit older and hopefully a bit wiser. I don’t know. I can’t possibly say if I’m still that person. You’d have to ask friends of mine. Hey, guys… [Laughs.] I’m in a car with some friends, and they’re all making fun of me.
AVC: Just in the time since you’ve been doing stunt work, since 1998, have there been any major changes in the way it’s done? Has the increased use of CGI affected the way you do your job?
ZB: Yeah, there have been some shifts, but if I were to take you through the timeline of stunt work since the beginning, there have always been shifts. In the early years, when Westerns were popular, there was a lot of horse work, and women weren’t allowed to do stunts. Later on, you had martial arts come along, which was a major shift in the industry. Horses and car chases and martial arts and wire work—they’re all just shifts you had to learn to work around, and CGI is just the next step. There are some things about CGI that are great, because you can avoid using a real person and maybe save a life, but at the same time, you may be putting a stunt person out of a job. Sometimes CGI can enhance a great action scene, and sometimes it takes away from it. CGI is at the point now where the way people use it is amazing, but I still don’t think it can replace humans. I think the audience is too smart. Humans sort of instinctively respond negatively to something that’s not true, that’s not real. I really think that’s part of what made the car sequence in Death Proof so effective—we had great people working on it behind the camera, we had great drivers, but whether or not they knew it was me, they knew that it was a real person on there, taking the risks. And it’s nothing that they’re really thinking through—just instinctively, seeing a real person in a situation like that is frightening to an audience.
AVC: Ed Brubaker has said that he wrote Angel Of Death intentionally for you to play the lead role. Were you familiar with his work when you got the script?
ZB: No, I’d never heard of him before. I wasn’t really into comic books or anything—they’re pretty cool, but they’re not really something I grew up with. It was interesting when I started working with him and first realized who he was—I met him, he told me he’d written the role for me, and I got along with him, but it wasn’t until we went to [San Diego] Comic-Con that I realized, “Oh, I’ve got a god writing a script for me! That’s pretty special.” I liked it when I got the synopsis, and then when I met everybody and got to know who they were, I knew I definitely wanted to be a part of it.
AVC: Did you know from the outset that it was going to be a web-only series?
ZB: It was always planned to be that way—that’s how it was created, as a way of sort of exploring the possibility of doing these types of shows on the Internet. I came into it knowing it was an Internet-only thing, and I was fine with that. I was interested in seeing how to branch out and sort of use the Internet more as a way of making and promoting movies. There’s no real difference in making it successful—it’s all down to the dedication of the people involved to make it a success.
AVC: Is there any difference in terms of scheduling, or the actual process of filmmaking, when you’re creating something like this for the web as opposed to television or film?
ZB: Well, obviously, on the Internet, the budget is smaller. We shot it like a movie; I always think of it as a feature, and refer to it as a movie all the time, but the schedule and the turnaround is more like shooting TV. When you looked at the schedule, you started to realize, “Well, there’ll be no screwing this up—you have one chance and one chance only to get it right.” But the way I approached it—the way all of us approached it—was very professional. We didn’t really think “Well, this is just going to be on the Internet.” For us, it was the same as any other job, so everybody gave it their best effort. as if we were on any other kind of a set.
AVC: Angel Of Death is also a reunion with Lucy Lawless for you. How does it feel acting opposite her, as opposed to doing her stunt work?
ZB: Our relationship hasn’t changed at all. I mean, it’s obviously a change, acting opposite her, and it’s interesting to be doing things with her instead of for her—but the relationship we have is still pretty good. What she had to offer me is that she was there supporting me as a fellow actor. [Laughs.] I can’t believe I said that. But it was really fun; it was the first time we’ve both been in front of the camera at the same time. Usually I’d just wait for her to say her lines, and then we’d switch out so I could get beat up.
AVC: You laugh when describing yourself as an actor—it’s like you aren’t used to the idea yet. How have you approached making that transition from doing stunt work to acting?
ZB: [Sighs.] I don’t want to make it sound as if I’m putting my ego up or anything—I mean, acting or stunts, doing my job means doing my job, and I’m loving it. It’s fun to put my face in front of the camera; I’m really enjoying the process. But at this point, it’s still just not too easy to go around describing myself as an actor. It took me a good long while to get to where I could do it not only without laughing, but without trembling a little bit, which is terrible, but… I mean, I was really hesitant to 100 percent walk down that path, to expose myself to that. There were times when I got fucking scared. It’s a very intimidating career path to take. Being an actress in Hollywood, and leaving a career that I’m pretty solid at and that’s treated me really well, that’s always had my back—not that I need to completely walk away from stunts, but you’re starting down that road by acting. I had a bunch of acting coaching when I first came to Los Angeles, as sort of a way to make it official that I was committed to doing the job, and I actually really enjoyed that part of the process. And what I’ve really enjoyed about Angel Of Death is the working of the script, the creation of the character, coming up with a backstory for her, making up her memories—all the things that go in before you even have a chance to do any acting.
AVC: It’s funny that you’re intimidated by getting into acting, since you were moving into it from a career where you would literally put your life in peril on a daily basis.
ZB: [Laughs.] I know, I know, I know! But the way you have to look at it is, when you’re doing stunt work, there’s a lot of physical fear involved, but acting’s got a lot more of your own life involved in it. In stunt work, I could beat guys up and jump off buildings or whatever, but no one would really know what was going on inside my head. With acting, you’re putting it all out on the table for people to watch. It’s a very different fear.
AVC: Quentin Tarantino encouraged you to act in Death Proof, and—
ZB: Oh, no, I think you’ve got it the wrong way ’round there. There was no encouraging me. He doesn’t do that. He just laid the script in front of me and said “I’ve written Death Proof, and you’re in it.” AVC: Has there been any downside to starting your acting career with such a legendary director?
ZB: I was really psyched when I got Kill Bill. I’d been doing Xena, which was pretty successful, so I’d been working for several years, but working with Quentin was really exciting, and we became pretty close pretty quick. I see him enough that I don’t miss him, and in terms of his directing style, it’s not that it’s spoiled me for other directors or anything, but I really appreciate it when it’s not there. As far as acting goes, I’m still trying to build up a résumé. Death Proof was pretty much it for a while, so I didn’t have much to compare it to. But I’ve learned so much from him—there’s things I don’t even realize I’ve learned until I’m on set utilizing them.
AVC: Do you feel you’re at the point where you want to stretch? Have you thought about getting away from action and doing drama, or comedy?
ZB: Oh, definitely. I’d love to do both dramatic and comedic roles. I understand that it might be a while before people are willing to see me in anything but action roles, and I enjoy doing action roles—they play to my strengths, so it’s something I really get into. But part of the joy I’m discovering in acting is the fact that it’s uncomfortable to me, that it’s challenging, and the possibilities of always being able to improve on something, of always being able to try something new, it’s intriguing and exciting. Ed and I have talked about the possibility of doing a comedy together, of putting together this script about a cat burglar that would be a lot more comic, so there’s definitely talk of all that stuff, and I’m looking forward to that. But right now, I’m just interested in anything that tickles my fancy—you get a lot of scripts, and so many of them look like everything else out there, so if I get something comedic or dramatic that looks really different, and the people behind it have enough faith in me that they want me involved, then I want to do it.
AVC: Well, anybody who can play the last five minutes of an episode of Angel Of Death with a knife sticking out of the top of her head probably won’t have too much of a problem with comedy.
ZB: [Laughs.] Yeah, we really toed the line between action and comedy on that one.
Источник: www.avclub.com/articles/zoe-bell,25274/
***
Zoe Bell talks Death Proof with RT The Kiwi stuntwoman gives us the scoop on Tarantino's latest. by Joe Utichi | Sunday, Sep. 23 2007
Zoe Bell is, by all accounts, something of a legend within the stunt community. One of the two subjects of 2004 documentary Double Dare, she doubled for Lucy Lawless on Xena, Sharon Stone on Catwoman and has performed stunts in movies like Poseidon and The Kingdom.
Her big-screen break came in 2003, when Quentin Tarantino bought Bell onto Kill Bill to double for Uma Thurman. Befriending the director lead to her first talking role as a self-named lead character in Death Proof, Tarantino's half of Grindhouse and a film paying particular homage to the stunt community.
RT caught up with Bell in Edinburgh to find out more about her role and her experience as a bona-fide Tarantino character.
What was it like to have Quentin say, "Come and be in my movie"?
Zoe Bell: Shocking. Shocking good, but shocking. At first I thought he wanted me to play a little cameo role and I was kind-of excited. Just even to work with Quentin again, I was like, "Yay! Be on set with Quentin again, that'll be fun! And he's playing a little bit of homage to the stunt community, and that's cool." I was thinking I could get to do some cool action - that'd be choice - you know. But when he brought me the script I realised I was quite mistaken and that, in fact, there was a bunch of line learning I was going to have to do, not to mention dialogue delivery. I went from just being incredulous, like, "What were you thinking? Are you mental?" Because the truth was, I could have been terrible. For all I knew, I could have been really bad at it. Of course the second part after that, I was pretty touched. Not that he was doing it as a favour to me by any means, but it was a bit of an honour, really, not just that he wanted me to star in the movie but that he wanted me as a character in the movie. That's cool; it means that I'm like a cool Quentin Tarantino character!
You're a walking Tarantino creation, that's unique!
ZB: Yeah, I know! And it took me a little while to get my head around that to be honest with you. And I think oftentimes I forget that Quentin is Quentin Tarantino, you know. I was definitely nervous about letting him down. More than just embarrassing myself in front of the masses, which occurred to me a little bit later, I was like, "God, I don't want to be the person to fuck up a Tarantino movie." I didn't want to be anything less than what Tarantino's standard is and I didn't know if I had that.
He basically turned to me and was like, "Zoe, I'm Quentin Tarantino. I don't make bad decisions and you're my decision, so get over it." Umm... Fair call. What are you going to do, fight Quentin Tarantino on moviemaking?
Had you ever delivered dialogue before?
ZB: No. Well, I did two lines on a TV show called Cleopatra 2525 really badly with an American accent; it was terrible! [laughs] I was maybe 20 or something.
To go from that to not only delivering dialogue, but delivering dialogue as a lead character, and then delivering Quentin Tarantino dialogue as a lead character... That's got to fuck you up a bit!
ZB: I know! It's like modern-day Shakespeare!
When you're in Quentin's hands and you've got three brilliant actresses with you, does that settle the nerves on set?
ZB: Definitely. I did so much line-reading with the girls beforehand that I just didn't even think about my words when the camera was rolling, you know, I didn't have to. And just being around Quentin again was so easy and normal for me because it had been that way before. As a team I felt really supported from all angles. And not just from a, "You can do it! High Five!" type stuff, but they just expected no less of me. There wasn't that sense of, "Oh, I reckon you'll be OK at it. Don't worry, you'll be fine." It was more, "Well come on, let's do it. Let's act. Let's go!" And I respond well to that. My, "Oh, fuck, OK," instinct takes over!
And we had so much fun. It sounds really clichéd to say that but we had so much fun on and off that set. The whole crew was incredible.
And presumably you got to do all your own stunts.
ZB: Yes. Absolutely! That was like a stipulation! I never had to convince Quentin, he said, "That's part of the reason I'm casting you. I want that." I think there was a while there where it looked a little dodgy as to whether insurance companies would allow that to happen. I don't think anyone told either me or Quentin about it in detail because there would have been uproar.
As far as I was concerned there was going no other way, and who knows about the future but as far as I'm concerned I would always like to do my own stunts because I love doing them. I think what's so brilliant about having an actor who does her own stunts, or a stuntwoman who does her own acting - depending on which way you want to look at it - is there's a genuineness to it that when you're watching it there's a gut reaction, a sense of reality. It's beyond just being aware there's a stunt double in the scene.
Plus, not to mention, one of the things that was so exciting to me was having that stunt sequence not be limited by the fact that you had to shoot around my face. You could shoot at whatever angle looked the fucking coolest. I think that's priceless. Is it also a good thing for your career, going forward, that you can say you've done a lead acting role and can do your own stunts?
ZB: I hope so. I don't want to jinx any potential forward movement but there's a movie coming up next year - it's an untitled project at this stage - and it'll be starring me in a kind of action/adventure sort-of Indiana Jones type genre aimed at young girls for them to have an action hero, basically. Which sounds fucking cool to me. I think the brilliance there is even if there's little roles that require a lot of action the community will be like, "Fuck, yeah, we'll use Zoe, she can talk, she can flip."
It's interesting, though, balancing the two. I don't want to give up stunts, I love doing stunts and I plan to keep doing them. Of course if you're going to become an actor somewhere along the line there's a balance you've got to keep. Because the thing is, if my face becomes familiar and I'm being seen as a featured extra as a stuntwoman, then people may recognise me. But who knows, I don't know of any women, or men really, who've gone from being a stuntperson to being an actor and then mixed it up after that, so I'm kind-of chartering new territory! So fuck the rules, let's just see what we can do with it!
Is there a concern that people are going to hesitate going to you because they think you'll ask for more money than an all-out stuntwoman?
ZB: I have thought that. I would like to make it clear to those guys that I would love to do the work. Maybe it's to do with the money, but I think it'll probably be more about, "Oh, she's an actor now, we can't." And it's been interesting because the last couple of months I haven't been in town - I've been away promoting the movie - and it really doesn't take long to get out of the loop in LA, you know. I rang my friends before I left and said, "Oi, you guys; we're going to hang out, and you're going to hire me on that movie, and we're going to do this..." I want to get back in the loop as soon as I get home just to keep it rolling. Especially if this movie doesn't shoot until next year; I want to get busy. I get bored really easily. If my character is just doing action in whatever form... sweet. Having spoken to stuntmen and women in the past it's often surprising how safe everything is played; every stunt, major and minor, is planned to the last detail. So I'm guessing that Zoe the stuntwoman is not Zoe the character, because she seems decidedly more carefree than most stunt performers I've spoken to...
ZB: More mental? [laughs] Yeah. I'm certainly not a conservative person, and you know personality traits in what you see on screen is definitely me. Whether I would jump out of a car, ride on the bonnet and then chase down a serial killer, I think that's probably the Quentin twist on Zoe Bell.
Life's too short to be super conservative but it's also too short to make it any shorter. I don't plan on dying early, but at the same time I don't plan on playing it so safe that I'll live to ninety. I think when you do that stuff for a living, if I get too nailed, not just my livelihood financially but how I love spending my time is jeopardised. When I was injured after Kill Bill I had a year where I not just couldn't make any money but I couldn't swim, I couldn't surf, I could hardly run, which is insane. I couldn't do gymnastics, martial arts, I could barely crawl on all fours. That was devastating to me.
Suddenly you realise, shit, I'm not invincible, and suddenly you have to find a balance where you can keep doing the shit that you want to do without hindering the way you want to live. But, still avoid massive risk so you can keep doing what you want to do. It's tricky.
What happened on Kill Bill?
ZB: A stunt went wrong, basically. It was one of those human errors that shouldn't have happened, but it did. Basically, they told me that all the bones in my wrist dislocated except one. The ligament that was attaching all of them got bust so I had surgery to mend the ligament. I had pins to immobilise it for three months and so after three months everything had atrophied and it was fucked for a good year before I got Catwoman and even on Catwoman I still couldn't crawl. I was battling with it for a long time; it was miserable.
It was really painful, but more than that it really fucked with my head. That was the hardest part; suddenly not knowing where I stood, or what my identity was, or what I was going to do with my life. All of those big mid-life-crisis things happening at 23 all at once. That was the scary part for me. Not to mention just being in pain all the time which made it worse. Is that where the excitement of the job sometimes comes in, though, that even with the most meticulous planning there's always an element of risk?
ZB: There's a bit of that and the fact that there's always some kind of risk is kind of why we get hired and why we do a lot of stuff actors won't do or can't do or aren't allowed to do or whatever. But, yeah, it's also part of what keeps it fun and exciting. It's like sports; you don't play sports because it's like taking a walk in the park, you play because it's a game, you're competing, you know, there's something about it that's a little bit addictive. I know for me too, there's a lot of enjoyment in the execution. Just getting it right; nailing it. There's always so many different things coming in to play if you're doing a fight and battling six different guys you've got to remember where the camera is, sometimes you've got to hide your face. There's a lot of piecing it all together and making it work that can be really satisfying. It can be really frustrating, but it can be really satisfying and I think that's part of it too.
Is the innovation part of it? It seems there are always people coming up with more and more creative stunts to do.
ZB: Definitely, and it's hard because people always ask what your ideal stunt would be. I feel like I need to think of a really good one, but there are just endless possibilities out there and really it just depends on what the situation is and what the boundaries are that you're given.
I think that's the exciting thing about being able to be the face and the action of a character because it just opens so many more doors when it comes to that sort of stuff. Your way is limitless.
Is there anything you wouldn't do, stunt-wise?
ZB: Not that I know of. And I don't mean I would do anything, but when it comes up that's when I know how I'll feel about it and ultimately I'd like to think I'd have the balls to say no to something if I thought it was going to kill me. For whatever reason, maybe I'm just not the person for the job or maybe the guy that I'm working for or the girl that I'm working for isn't safe. And it often does take more balls to say no. I haven't had to yet - knock wood - but I hope if it does come up I'd have the guts to say that.
How long did the chase sequence take in the movie?
ZB: It took six weeks. That seems very fast considering how long and complex it is...
ZB: We got a hell of a lot of footage. The takes we were doing were so long, we would just drive from one end of that road to the other over and over. I know that road backwards with my eyes closed! We would pretty much shoot the whole way. I couldn't hear anything once we started rolling because I'm strapped to the bonnet with wind and stuff. I would rehearse whole sequences and we would just go for three or five minutes straight. Fucking exhausting, mate!
Is it as exciting for Zoe the person as Zoe the character to play ship's mast on the bonnet of the Vanishing Point challenger?
ZB: It's pretty fucking cool out there. Especially where we were in Buellton, because it's so beautiful. We were there while the seasons were changing so it went from really hot to fucking cold in the mornings, and the change in the colour of the fields and the trees, it was just beautiful scenery. When I did get to chill it was cool. It was exhausting - and there were times when it was so ridiculously hot that my tummy started burning on the engine and times when it was Baltic-ly cold that I'd have to get Rosario to push my sweater through the window - but it was just amazing. Aww, I'm getting all nostalgic! [laughs]
Can you tell us more about the Indiana Jones for girls movie?
ZB: I wish I had a title for you, but yeah. Senator Films, who are distributing Death Proof in Germany and who also produced a bunch a movies, they want to produce a movie starring me, at this stage, as a soldier returning from war, which is basically to set up the fact that the character's a bit of a loner and has action abilities. She ends up being paired up with this young girl whose life she saves who she becomes responsible for. So she's running from the bad guys trying to find the good guy who's the girl's dad. It's like an ordinary woman in extraordinary circumstances trying to look after this young girl that she's ended up with and what happens in the relationship between those two and what she learns from the experience.
I'm involved early enough that I'll be working with them on the action sequences and all that stuff. I realise how fortunate I am to be in that position, but it's indicative of the way I'm coming in, because that's about the only way we can do it.
Zoe Bell: A Back Stage Exclusive Actor2Watch presented by Girl2Watch.com By Noah Laracy
February 11, 2010
"I know this sounds ridiculous, but I'm not much of a fighter," says Zoe Bell, despite a mountain of evidence suggesting otherwise.
Born and raised on a small island off the coast of New Zealand, Zoe soon moved to the mainland and then to the U.S. where she's been flying through the air, kicking and punching people, and riding on the tops of cars ever since.
While known for her death-defying stunt work as Lucy Lawless' double on "Xena: Warrior Princess" and later as Uma Thurman's in "Kill Bill," Zoe is now an established actress with roles in Tarantino's "Death Proof," and as Bloody Holly in Drew Barrymore's directorial debut "Whip It" (just released on DVD). Zoe is very down-to-earth in person, someone you could easily spend hours drinking beer and hanging out with.
Actor2Watch: Tell us about when you first met Quentin Tarantino?
Zoe Bell: I first met him because I was traveling to Canada for a holiday to check it out because I didn't think I could work in America.
I didn't have a headshot. I didn't have a resume. I didn't have shit because in New Zealand, there's, like, four stunt women. If you want the tall one that can flip and fight, you call me. If you want the short one... Do you know what I mean?
While I was in San Francisco, Quentin's assistant talked to a friend of hers who was a friend of mine who like," There's auditions on. You should go." I was like, "Sure. Then I can go home and say I auditioned for a Tarantino movie." I had actually no intention of getting the part. The first time I met Quentin was at the audition. I walked in and there was a guy that looked really familiar on the bike, and I sort of smiled at him and he smiled back. I was like, "How do I know someone here?" I kept walking. I was like, "Oh, my God. That was Ethan Hawke. Where the fuck am I right now? I'm in a time warp. What's going on?" I walk in and there's Daryl Hannah pumping iron. I'm like, "Oh, my God. That's 'Splash.' Where am I?"
I did my audition and I saw Quentin there and a bunch of Chinese guys. Everyone was floating around. It was all just a bit surreal really. At the very end, Quentin came up to me and said, "I'm Quentin. Nice to meet you." I was just like, "Hi. You look really familiar. I know you." And the rest is history. It's amazing.
A2W: How did you make the transition from stunt person to actor?
ZB: I'm still doing it. You take a bunch of acting classes. I've taken a bunch at Larry Moss, and I'm also training with a woman called Caitlin Adams.
And that's just purely a confidence thing because I've always been a loudmouth. But I'm accustomed to being the loudmouth behind the scenes because no one's really watching. I'm the little go-engine. Like, "Everybody's in a good mood, and we're happy!" And suddenly, I'm having to remove myself and say, "I need ten minutes to get emotional." And I need to be sexual in front of people, and I need to be emotional in front of people. I need to cry in front of the crew. I'm like, "Wow. That's kind of fucking frightening. It's way more scary than throwing myself off a building."
The hardest transition actually was when people say, "What do you do?" And saying, "I'm an actor." That's been the hardest thing for me. It's just weird. I don't know what that's about, but I'm figuring it out.
A2W: Do you have any advice for other aspiring stunt women?
ZB: Don't ever compromise your relationships with the men in your professional lives by involving so much sex. I mean, if you want to screw someone because you want to screw them, do what you like. But don't be using it as a way to get jobs. Not that I've done it, but I've watched a lot of people do it. I do the opposite. I'm like, "Hi. I'm a guy. Let's drink beer and fart."
I would also say be determined, be gutsy, and be able to say 'yes' to as much as you possibly can. But always have the balls to say 'no' if you know that you're going to get really drilled, or if you can't do the work. I think people say 'yes' to way too many things.
You've just got to know yourself, and know what you're worth, and know where you're going, and know that you can always, always learn more.
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Tuesday, January 8, 2008 [CES 2008] Panel: Science Fiction’s Influence On Technology By Evan Ackerman
There are a bunch of celebrities here at CES, but I’m ignoring most of them, since all they’re good for is stealing my valuable gadget sniffing time on the show floor. I say most, because (besides Bill), I am devoting an hour to one conference session more or less solely because of the celebrity panel, which includes Lucy Lawless (Xena, and Cylon Number Three on Battlestar Galactica), Neal Stephenson (author of Snow Crash), Walt Mossberg (tech columnist for the Wall Street Journal), and Dean Kamen (inventor of the Segway, among many other things). I’ll be liveblogging this in the same way that I did the keynote.
[ UPDATE- Video of the entire thing (an hour long) up at DVICE here ]
Lots of text, and a picture or two, after the jump.
Okay, there they are. Lucy Lawless is (as you’d expect if you’ve seen any recent episodes of Battlestar Galactica) totally hot. Gadzooks. Oh, by the way, this panel is being sponsored by the SciFi Channel and DVICE.com. First question for Lucy: “What’s your greatest influence in scifi?” Answer: “Doctor Who!” Same question for Neal: He’s read all the classics, but Heinlein has been his greatest influence, along with popular science magazines “back when they were good.” Mossberg throws in with Neal, with the additions of Asimov (specifically the Foundation trilogy), as well as Star Trek TNG (as opposed to TOS). “Star Trek tried to use science fiction as a way to deal with human social, political, moral issues.” Now, of course, he’s addicted to Battlestar, which is the only thing he watches on the SciFi channel. Wait, there are other things on the SciFi Channel…?
According to Dave Howe (the panel moderator from SciFi), Stephenson inspired Kindle in his book The Diamond Age. No royalties though, Stephenson jokes. Apparently, pages from The Diamond Age are being used in the Kindle’s instruction materials. Cool.
Someone’s cell phone went just off… Oops, it Lucy’s. She answers it with a huge red telephone handset and, annoyed, yells “just push them out the fracking airlock!”
The panel talks for a bit about how science fiction (in popular culture) often seems to predict science, and as such, can also inspire science. As an example, Mossberg cites Minority Report as inspirations for the iPhone multitouch interface as well as Microsoft Surface. Hollywood scifi visualization, even if it’s not real, can inspire scientists and engineers.
What about things that have NOT been foreseen in scifi? Mossberg: “where’s my jetpack?” He points out that most of this stuff (jetpacks, flying cars, etc) has in fact been invented, but they’re just not practical enough to appeal to a consumer market. Lucy asks Walt to elaborate, and he says that the underlying logistics rarely get visualized at the same time as the new tech. He says that AT&T demoed a videophone at a world’s fair in the 60s, but it took the internet (which had NOT been visualized) to make it logistically possible.
Lucy asks whether it’s possible that something (i.e. computers) may become self conscious, in a bad way? (The cylons are coming!) Kamen says that technology is just a tool, and it amplifies our consciousness as humans. Fire is a good example; it can keep you warm or burn down your house depending on how you use it. Walt accuses him of being a “chickensh*t” (jokingly, jokingly) and not answering Lucy’s question. Stephenson is most worried about biotech (read Zodiac) and its current state of regulation (or lack thereof). He advocates a “global technological immune system,” which he talked about a bit in The Diamond Age (in terms of nanotech). Walt points out that biotech has the most potential for benefiting humanity, too. This is sort of the point that Kamen was making earlier: it’s not the tech, its what we choose to do with it.
How about the “softer” downsides of tech, i.e. people isolating themselves through technology? Lucy isn’t worried, her kids have a Wii and the internet, but she just tosses them outside, rain or shine. It’s an important point, I think: we can’t blame tech for how we decide to use it… That’s our responsibility. Kamen thinks that it’s making it somewhat difficult for kids to be able to separate fact from fiction thanks to the internet, but Lucy says (again) that it’s really up to us (as users or teachers). We’re just about out of time, but a few more comments: Stephenson says that one thing science fiction can be really good at is scaring people, which forces us to think about the potential consequences of new tech.
Looks like the closing question is about how much of a problem it is that the internet (and associated technology) is causing a disconnect between people, especially in younger generations. I’m quite interested in this, because I think it’s exactly why Facebook is such a bad thing: instead of actually talking to your friends, you just Facebook them now. What does it mean to really communicate? Kamen mentions FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology), a program he founded for students to get them interested in collaborative science and technology, which he says is part of the solution: introduction to tech in a healthy and social environment.
And that just about wraps it up. Thunderous applause. I introduce myself to Lucy Lawless, Neal Stephenson signs my dogeared copy of Snow Crash, and I leave happy.
Убедительная пока просьба, учитывая специфику нашего ресурса, а именно тот факт, что он является русскоязычным, размещайте материалы (какими бы интересными они не были) с переводом.
