An anthropologist among the Lion Park tribe of New Zealand
by Sharon Delaney
The Chakram Newsletter: Issue 15
This interview with Renee took place over the course of two weeks and four phone calls. And noting the breaks in the conversation will give you a much better idea of what life on the set is like as the show is going into the filming of the final two episodes.
We began on March 1, 2001 - I’d been told Renee would have a late call to the set and I would be calling her at noon my time, 8 AM New Zealand time. I dial, the phone rings with its distinctive NZ sound.
“Hi,” Renee answers cheerfully, “they have moved up my call time so I need to get into the car. Can you call me back on my cell phone?”
“Sure,” I said, “you're gonna plug in right? Not drive with one hand? I don't want to be responsible for Gabrielle finishing the series on crutches.”
Renee chuckles, “Yes, Sharon, I promise.”
I hang up and stare at the clock for five minutes then pick up the phone and dial in again hoping that either Renee's garage is close by or she's a fast runner.
“Are we set to go?” I ask cautiously.
“Yeah,” Renee says, still cheerful even though she's lost her morning off.
This interview is about Renee directing her second episode of Xena, “Dangerous Prey.” Her first was a clip show called “Deja Vu All Over Again.” But I decide to set the stage by inquiring which episode they are filming today.
“‘Many Happy Returns,’” Renee answers. “It was originally called ‘Two Bags Full.’”
“Hey, that's a line from a nursery rhyme,” I chirped. (I really did chirp as the rhyme began to sing in my head and my voice rose an octave under the influence of a childhood flashback.)
“You know, I have to say I don't know that many nursery rhymes,” Renee laughed. “The episode's a comedy which is lovely because we're all having a ball and everyone's relaxed. Alex Tydings is in it and another young woman who's come over from Los Angeles. She’s only about 16 years old and new to the show.”
“Did she know about Xena before she got the part?” I asked. “I wonder if she was excited to be on the show?”
“That's a very good question,” Renee chuckled. “You'll have to ask her that. I don't think she realizes she's part of an epic adventure that's been on for a while. And that this is the end of several relationships.”
“Can you give me a thumbnail of the plot?”
Renee thought for a moment, then said, “It's similar to ‘A Day In The Life.’ They had to put it together very fast because it replaced the musical that was cancelled.”
I figured Renee was safely out of the driveway and on her way at this point, so I dived into the subject of her directing. “You were originally set to direct ‘Send In The Clones,’ a clip show?”
“I did hear that rumor,” Renee responded. “Then I remember Rob (Tapert) saying he wasn’t going to give me a clip show again which was wonderful of him.”
“You wanted to do an action/adventure episode?” I asked.
“Oh, absolutely,” she said enthusiastically. “I wanted to do a real Xena episode just to get into the style of the show a bit more than I did before.”
“When the director first receives the script,” I began, “what do you do first?”
“For me,” Renee said, “it’s all about the story. Trying to make sure the characters make sense and they all have an objective that takes them through the entire episode. You work on the structure with whoever's writing it. In my case, since I was out here in New Zealand and the writer was in Los Angeles, I worked with Rob by sending notes on the beat sheets.”
“I didn't know the director saw a script in the beat sheet stage,” I commented. “Is that normal or because you work on the show?”
“I'm not sure,” she said. “I think most directors do see the beat sheet if Rob has a relationship with them. For instance, Mark Beesley or Garth Maxwell.”
Bringing up one of the viewers' favorite subjects, I said, “This show had heaps of Amazons in it! Do you know which tribe they were?”
Renee gave a mischievous laugh. “The Lion Park tribe of New Zealand,” she said, making a reference to one of the outdoor location sites of the show.
“Catchy name,” I chuckled back at her. “How did you see the relationship between Xena and Varia?”
“They wanted Xena to teach Varia lessons in order for her to become an honorable queen of the Amazons,” she said. “I just had to make sure we made poor Tsianina (Joelson - the actress who played Varia) look heroic after she endured so many different comedic situations that put her in jeopardy. I tried to use as many stunt gags (‘a gag’ is a stunt routine) as I could with her so that, at the end, the audience roots for her and believes she's paid her dues and deserves to be queen.
“Tsianina’s wonderful,” Renee continued. “She's a tough young woman. It’s nice to have someone who's strong and flexible and can be tough enough to endure harness work. She's also capable of learning a fight in a matter of minutes.”
“In the temple fight scene between Xena and Varia, I think Tsianina did a cartwheel while Lucy was holding one of her arms,” I commented.
“Yeah,” Renee said. “She did a front walkover without any hands. Lucy just took her arm and tried to fling her a bit and Tsianina whipped into this front walkover without any problem at all. Lucy was a bit nervous,” she chuckled. “She was afraid she would break Tsianina. Lucy was just there as a spotter while Tsianina flipped herself over. It was amazing! I think Lucy was saying to herself, ‘I'd better get out of the way before I hurt you.’” Renee laughed in obvious sympathy with Lucy’s concern.
In fight scenes on Xena, Lucy and Renee will usually fight with the guest actor's stunt double when the camera is on their face. And then their stunt doubles will fight with the guest actor. As most guest actors aren't experienced in stage fighting, it is much safer this way. However, I noticed in the fight scenes between Xena and Varia in this episode and between Gabrielle and Varia in “Path Of Vengeance,” it seemed as if the stunt doubles were hardly used at all. Renee confirmed what I was seeing.
“Definitely in ‘Path of Vengeance,’” Renee said. “Tsianina and I did the entire fight ourselves. Because it was a standard fight with kicks and punches, we could both do it quite safely with each other. And the same with Lucy in ‘Dangerous Prey.’ They did everything together. Because Tsianina is a controlled actress who can sell a fight and make it look strong.
“It’s quite difficult, especially for women. You have some actresses come on and their bodies are weak. So they find it difficult to look formidable with a weapon. Or, you have the other extreme with some men who come on and they get too much into character. You rehearse with them and everything's fine. Suddenly the cameras start rolling and they're out of control.
“Tsianina and I had a great time in our fight. It was quite funny because we were giggling between takes,” Renee laughed.
“It seemed you got to do more of your kickboxing. It was an amazing fight,” I said in awe as I pictured it in my mind.
“Thank you,” Renee said, seeming pleased with my obvious admiration of her skills. “I thought it was well choreographed and I was pleased to be able to work with Tsianina.”
I had received stills from that scene and I proceeded to describe something to Renee that had puzzled me. “At the end of that fight, you're all bloody and Xena's holding you in her arms. There are some stills where Xena and Gabrielle are in the same position, but you have no blood on your face and it looks like you're holding your stomach with laughter. What was going on?”
Renee roared with laughter. “I was laughing my head off. Lucy and I were so far back in the shot and the camera was on her back. I started making faces at her and got the giggles. She was moaning and throwing back her head in exaggerated agony knowing the camera wouldn't be catching this. It's amazing we functioned at all in that scene. Luckily, all we had to do was sit there.”
I didn't ask this question when I talked with her about “Deja Vu,” but I had tucked it aside for future reference. “When you knew you were going to be directing an episode, did you go back and look at earlier Xena episodes with a director's eye?”
“Hmm,” Renee murmured. “I'm trying to remember. No. I didn't. But I remember when ‘Dangerous Prey’ was being written, Rob said he needed a fight that would take up most of the fourth act. He sent me a pile of excerpts from fights in Hong Kong movies to watch to try and find something that would be spectacular enough to hold an entire act. I spent weeks and weeks rediscovering the Hong Kong movie industry and saw how beautifully they're shot. That’s when I found the fight on the tower of logs. I thought that looked fantastic.”
“Was it a challenge filming on that tower?” I queried.
“Yeah,” she said, “that was a huge piece of the show that we had to prep. I had such a great team. I was so lucky to have Carmen, the first assistant director, who has over ten years experience prepping shows. She was compulsive about making sure everything was completely structured and we knew exactly what we were going to do. I really appreciated that later when we went in and everything went smoothly.
“I went home with this little Lego miniature of the log tower and marked out every beat I wanted to see Xena doing as well as Morloch. Then I met with Aaron Morton, the director of photography. He had great ideas for different angles the second unit could do because he'd be working with me on main unit and then go back and work with Paul Grinder, the second unit director. Aaron and I met with a storyboard artist and went through each shot. We had over a hundred little pictures of every angle we wanted to capture.”
“You storyboarded the tower fight?” I said, surprised.
“The whole thing,” Renee said with satisfaction. “That let us know which shots we could get with Lucy and which we would send to second unit - they must have worked over a week with everyone in harnesses. It proved to be much more difficult than we expected with the landing on the tower and trying to rotate up to different parts of the platform. It was quite exciting.”
“Was there a tall version of the tower and a short one?”
“We had two different versions,” she explained. “One that was actual size and we used scaffolding to put Lucy on it safely so she could fight. We used that scaffolding to control the different heights of where they would be fighting. Then we had a miniature version of the very top where Varia was strapped to the pole. That was used on the ground.
“I found the whole thing fascinating because I knew what the fight needed to look like. I met with the art department to explain what pieces moved and what the effect would be when they did. Seeing the hydraulic tower they created that moved on its own was just fantastic.”
“Although the tower looked like it was going to tumble down any moment,” I said, “I know that was an illusion.”
“I commend Rob Field in his editing and Paul for that,” Renee said. “Both of them helped it seem fast-paced, exciting and much more precarious than the tower actually was. Paul did as much as he could to make it look like it was about to topple over when, indeed, we couldn't safely have a tower that would fall with people on it. It was all about cheating and creating an illusion. Rob Field was just amazing. What he could do with editing also helped give the impression the tower was going to fall. I didn't know how much of an effect this would have on the scene. I learned a lot.”
This was a perfect lead-in to my next question. “You didn’t get to work directly with the editor last time,” I stated. “What did you learn as a director, what did you take away from seeing the editing process that would help you in the future as a director?”
“I learned an editor can completely save the ass of the director,” Renee laughed. “They can fix holes that you've created. For instance, we had to reshoot a bit of the scene where Varia falls down the crevice in the temple during her fight with Xena. We had to change that story a bit and I did the reshoot. We didn't have a whole lot of time to get all the shots I thought I needed to make the story meld. I was amazed to see what Rob took from what we shot, cheated a couple things and made it all flow together. I didn't make it easy for him.”
While I was looking down at the next question, Renee chimed in. “I heard that some folks on the internet recognized that symbol I used on one of the trees,” she said. “We were supposed to use it in a previous episode. The art department did all the research and found this wonderful symbol that looked like the sign for 'woman' and I don't think anyone had used it before. I told them I wanted to come off a symbol into this shot of Xena and Gabrielle riding in and they told me about this prop. I said, ‘Oh, God, you have to use it! It's perfect.’”
I did remember reading comments by fans about the prop on the tree when they were writing about this episode and told her it had been noticed. She was quite pleased.
I remembered a scene of Xena and Gabrielle riding into a clearing where the camera passed behind some bushes before zooming in to the characters. I felt kind of silly asking Renee how a director decides to let a bush pass in front of the camera, but I wanted to know. And, who knows where the answer might take us. Renee didn't laugh.
She responded. “I did a lot of reading before this episode trying to catch on to different techniques I could use. One of the things I picked up was the idea of ‘where's your circle of action?’ Is the camera outside of it or inside? At times, I wanted to be outside as a voyeur - meaning, behind the bushes or eavesdropping in on the conversation in order to feel as if people are being watched.
“Is that where the unusual effect during the fight scenes came from?” I asked.
“Yes,” she answered. “You control how much light you allow into the camera. Both of us brainstormed and tried to find ways to incorporate that into the episode. We used it in the catacombs and I wanted to use a water effect on the walls to create a film noir feeling.
“This was Aaron's first time as director of photography. He's been on the show since the very beginning working his way up through the camera department.”
“You sound like two kids let loose in a toy store,” I said, smiling, responding to her enthusiasm.
“Literally. In fact, we had a lecture from the office before we started. They said, ‘You know, his is an ambitious episode even for experienced directors.’ Aaron replied, ‘As opposed to the kid team, right?’” Renee laughed heartily at the recollection. “We had a great time.”
Then she added, “Thanks for sending me copies of the photos of me directing. I laughed at the one where you can see me holding a piece of paper with all these stick figures on it.”
“I noticed that,” I told her. “What was that about?”
“For every scene, I went through and made my own little storyboard,” she explained. “They had the most gruesome round little faces with round bodies - little scarecrows. This was so I could visualize what I wanted to shoot for the day. I picked that up from Rick Jacobson. He used to do that on the back of his script on every page for every scene. It was his shot list. I decided to borrow that from him. They're really hilarious.”
“Could I have a page of them to put in the newsletter?” I asked hopefully.
“A page of my stick figures!” she asked incredulously.
“Yeah,” I said. “The fans would love that - honest.”
“If I can find them,” she remarked ruefully.
As it turned out, Renee was already starting to pack things up in boxes and wasn't able to find the pages. But she said she'd look for them in the future and maybe we’ll see “Renee's Little Stick Figures” in a future newsletter.
“Did you have any other guides?” I queried.
“For the catacombs, we literally only had the shape of a 'T' to work with,” Renee said, “and I had to create the entire maze with all these characters running through it. I made a color-coded map of where each character was in every scene and where the flying weapons were. Everyone was laughing at my little purple colored dot of the trail of the chakram going back to an orange Xena dot. But it worked,” she added proudly.
There was a pause in Renee's conversation. I wondered what was going on.
“I’m at work now,” she told me. “They're looking at me through the car window wondering if I’m going to go in to makeup,” she chuckled.
“Would we be able to do a bit more?” I asked.
“Yeah, we should. I'll be getting the schedule for the last episode soon and we’ll set up another call,” Renee said.
“Thanks,” I said gratefully, as I looked down at the list of questions I still hoped to ask. “I'll talk to you then.”
Thirteen days later and I'm wondering where Renee will be when she answers the phone. She picks up.
“Hello - Sharon?” Renee says. I'm trying to guess where she might be from the sounds I hear in the background. “Hi. Is it lunch time?” I ask.
“No, I'm getting my hair color done. That lovely Gabrielle blonde,” she laughs.
“You mean that's not Gabrielle’s natural color?” I tease.
“Yeah, right,” she says drily and then chuckles. “We're trying to use every moment of the day that we can when we’re not actually needed on set.”
“Have you started filming the final episodes?” I ask.
“Yeah, and we’re block shooting the last two episodes at the same time,” she tells me. “It’s a lot of work. Everyone's working so far beyond any state of exhaustion for the love of the show and for Rob.”
I’d heard they might be doing some night shooting.
“We had a couple days from 2:30 in the afternoon to 2:30 in the morning,” Renee explained. “And we've been having some split days lately - 9 to 9. There's two units going at the moment and Lucy and I are going back and forth between the two just trying to get all the scenes shot.”
“Do you and Lucy look at each other and say, ‘It's the last episode’?” I asked softly.
“No. we haven’t done that yet,” she laughed. “Too deep into the work right now. This episode is Rob’s vision and we really want to get it right for him so that's where our focus is at the moment.”
“And,” I said a bit more cheerily, “there’s still two and a half weeks left.”
“I'm sure it will hit us, eventually,” she replied.
There was silence for a moment. I know where my mind was. Then I dived back into the directing questions - much safer ground.
“When last we talked, you were explaining the film noir techniques you were experimenting with in the cave,” I said.
“Was I clear about the effect that’s caused by controlling the light into the camera?” she said a bit worriedly. “I didn't want anyone to imagine there was someone on the side with a strobe light.”
“Didn't want them imagining Disco Xena, huh?” I teased.
“Yeah!” Renee laughed. “That’s what we do.”
I reassured her and asked if she thought about exploring film noir because she knew there was going to be a scene in a cave.
“No,” she said. “Rob wanted to have this scene in the catacombs, but he was hesitant about using the exact same set we used on the Valkyrie episodes - where the rocks fell down and blocked off Gabrielle from the big beast. We had to think of a way to make it look different. That's when I suggested we use water on the walls. I met with Rob Gillies, the set designer, and we walked through the area. I suggested we cut out holes so that it was almost like a cat and mouse game.”
“The lighting was so specific, I never noticed the surroundings,” I told her.
“The lighting was great, it created a completely different mood,” Renee agreed. “I was looking for those little maps with the colored dots I told you about. I found a couple, but I had scribbled all over them readjusting the shots because the lighting took so long. Aaron was so precise about what he wanted and it was great, but I only had time to do half the shots I thought I was going to do. So the maps are a mess. But the scene turned out terrific.”
“Does a director come in and know where they’re going to put the camera before the actors get there?” I asked.
Renee thought a moment. “Because of our situation with the fast turnaround on a television set, we have no choice but to do that,” she finally said. “Most directors come in and they know the set, they know where all the furniture is going to be or where they want it to be. Then they tell us where to go. But once you start working a scene, if something doesn't fit well with the actor’s moves, then the director usually makes adjustments.
“When I did ‘Deja Vu,’ I thought I would let the actors work the scene and then I would figure out where the camera went. I think if you had the time to play like that, it would be ideal. But there's no possible way to get that sort of experimental factor into it with our schedule. Rob's experiencing that at the moment,” she laughed sympathetically. “These episodes are huge and he has great ideas. It looks pretty amazing so far. Everyone's managed to create an exotic look with the resources that we have.”
“What this show accomplishes on a television budget is extraordinary,” I agreed.
“That's what I thought was interesting about the catacomb scene,” Renee went on. “It was Rob Gillies' wish to use the same set because that’s how he keeps within his budget. Then it was up to Aaron and I to find a way to make it look fresh.”
This episode also gave Renee her first chance to do big fight scenes. I wondered how she worked with Shane Dawson, the stunt coordinator.
“The fights were already in place in the script and he created the look of each one,” Renee explained. “I worked closely with Shane on each step of the tower fight - what every stuntperson was going to do, what shot we needed. And he just went off. Even the little fights turned into huge 15-piece setups. It was just great.” She chuckled with glee.
Next on my list was the second unit crew. They shoot most of the stunt double work, fight scenes. As Renee mentioned, in a big episode like the finale, they'll work with the lead actors or guest actors in order to double up the filming time. But they also do something I find curiously interesting. For instance, when Xena and Gabrielle were flying the kite in “Fins, Femmes & Gems,” the second unit shot the kite actually flying. If you see just a hand pull a knife out of a watermelon, that hand was probably shot by second unit. And the hand could belong to a body double for Lucy or Renee. They fill in all the bits and pieces of a scene. I wanted to know who decides what they shoot and how does the main unit director, Renee, work with the second unit director?
“Paul Grinder was my second unit director and he is just fantastic,” Renee said warmly. “Paul would call me up at night after we'd both been shooting for the day and he'd say, ‘Now what do you really need, Renee?’ And I'd say, ‘Well, Paul, I’ve gotta have it all!’” Renee laughed. “I realized he goes through this with every director. There's no way I could shoot everything I wanted with main unit so I would make up a shot list of things I wanted Paul to get and it was always way too much. He's stuck in the middle where he's trying to satisfy the director's vision and yet keep to the budget set by the production office. It's up to him to make judicious decisions as to what's the most important of the shots on my list. I think that's one of the hardest parts of being a director. You have to ask yourself what do I really need to tell the story because I can't get it all.
“Paul filmed all of the fire scenes with the men burning in the forest. We were filming in a natural reserve so when we shot Lucy, we had to make sure it was completely controlled by using flame bars. That was daunting enough. We kept worrying that we were going to torch the whole place. But for Paul's scenes, we burned a piece of land over at Lion Park.”
“You were actually allowed to set a fire?” I asked, amazed.
“A very small one,” Renee laughed. “It was hilarious actually. I remember meeting with Ken Drury, the special effects man. He was saying, ‘We're going to use all these dead pine trees, but we’re gonna paint them green so you’ll never know the difference.’ I was thinking, ‘Okayyy.’”
“Doncha love Hollywood?” I chortled.
“Yeah, it just cracked me up,” Renee agreed. “But he was right, it looked great.”
“Does Lucy mind running through fire?” I queried.
“Oh, no. You make sure the actors are completely safe,” she said quickly. “You always find out how comfortable an actor is with heat or any sort of flying embers. And it’s always a safe distance no matter how close it looks on camera. It’s never a problem with us.”
“In a recent Xena episode,” I told Renee, “I remember a scene with Xena and a bad guy. There was a full body shot of Xena turning her head to look at the guy and I wanted a closeup of Lucy’s eyes because she's really good with venom. She can just shoot it out of her eyes.”
Renee started laughing. “Yeah, she does venom. That makes me laugh, that's funny.”
With Renee continuing to chuckle at the image of venom shooting out of Lucy's eyes, I went on with the question. “How would a director have known that he wanted a closeup of her eyes? Do you see things like that in your mind?”
“I do,” she said with conviction. “If you really want to punctuate a certain moment, then you would get that coverage. But, in a television situation, that's another setup of fifteen to twenty minutes just getting that one shot. At the end of the day, you have to think, ‘What can I give up in order to still get the moment but yet not ruin an entire scene that I’ve got to film later in the day?’ It’s a guessing game. You have to figure out what's really important to you. Xena and Gabrielle walking in the distance in the sunset. You've got to pick your battles.”
“Constant tough choices,” I said shaking my head.
“Yeah,” Renee agreed.
“Do you have any input into sound effects?” I asked next, thinking about Marga pulling her hand out of the bear trap.
Renee started to chuckle. “Rob Field was laughing at me when I was working with him. He would put together a sequence and add his own sound effects. Every now and then I would say, ‘Do you have anything that’s a little more gross?’ or ‘Do you have a louder bang?’ Michael Hurst has been rubbing off on me. Rob thought this was so funny. ‘I didn't realize you were so bizarre,’ he said.” Renee laughed even harder. “I think I've been watching too many horror films.
“Normally, I would prefer to have something like that off screen rather than see it because our imaginations are usually so much stronger than what you can get on camera.”
Speaking of gruesome, “I was reading over the shooting draft of the script and noticed that the message Morloch sent via Marga was originally on a piece of paper. Yet it wound up being engraved on her leg. How did that come about?”
There was a great deal of laughter on the other end of the phone. I think Renee's reputation as a prim and proper Texas girl was slowly biting the dust.
“Why did that come about?” she finally calmed down enough to say. “I think, for me, I didn't really believe she would be holding a scroll or that he would have tucked it into her costume. But then I thought it would be such a great image to have him having written on her body along with the symbol of his family crest carved on her back. To me, that was pretty gross. And I wanted to make him as evil as possible. I thought that tied in together quite well.”
“Carving a message on her does add an element to Morloch without him even being there,” I agreed.
“I wouldn't want someone to carve a message on me!” she laughed. “It's pretty awful, isn't it? You get into this sort of weird fantasyland with science fiction and you try things that scare you and you put that on film.”
Thinking of the cover of the last newsletter, I said, “Xena looked really good in that Amazon outfit. Did you have any input into the costumes?”
“She looked amazing,” Renee said. “The costume was gorgeous. It was Varia's outfit and they made one for Lucy. The only time I had any input was with Morloch's costume. I wanted him to look a little more regal than the normal thug - being a prince and all. He had a hard time with the outfit, that poor man. It was obviously very stiff and hot.”
“Some fans were asking why did Xena take the time to change back into her original outfit before she went into the cave?” I said.
“Yeah, that was a bit of a sticky point,” Renee commented wryly. “I had to change her back eventually and, for me, I really wanted to see the Xena icon image in the catacombs, in the shadows. But Lucy looked so good in that costume, she wanted to wear it the whole time.” Renee chuckled. “But I had to get her back into her leathers at some point and it just seemed like the only time I could do it was while Morloch was hiding out waiting for her in the cave.”
“For five years, we've hardly ever seen Xena's abs. But in the sixth season, both you and Lucy have had quite a few pretty revealing and exotic costumes,” I pointed out.
“She's so cute,” Renee said with a warm smile in her voice. “One of the wardrobe girls showed Lucy a Polaroid they'd taken of her in that costume for continuity. Lucy was actually surprised at how her muscles were rippling in her abs and legs. She was sort of embarrassed.” Renee chuckled.
Some questions probably shouldn’t be asked, but, heck, Renee is always very patient with me. “Xena catapulting Varia through the air in the forest and Morloch having a net ready to pluck her out of the sky.”
“Yeah?” Renee said speculatively.
“Is that something one should just skip over cuz it was just a great Hollywood moment? Or can you explain how he knew that Xena was going to do that and where she would do it?”
Renee laughs. “Rob wanted a catapult. The idea was that Morloch had this defense mechanism that protected his camp and he used it to catch Varia.” She paused. I think she was waiting to see if I would buy this. More laughter.
“Okay, how could he possibly know that Varia was going to fly through the woods?” she said. “It's really not possible. But that's where you suspend your disbelief, I hope, and just go along for the ride.”
“I have to say, I thought it looked cool,” I admitted. “It didn’t occur to me until later that it didn’t make sense. I was just having fun watching her fly through the air.”
“We were hoping no one would pay too much attention to that,” Renee said conspiratorially.
“Someone who surprisingly did get people's attention was Morloch’s lieutenant, Raczar,” I told Renee. “He could have been a non-entity sidekick, but he managed to stand out in the part.”
“I wish I could take the credit, but I can’t,” Renee said. “That's all Craig Hall's doing. I've gotten to know Craig quite well because he was in that acting group I've been doing for the last year or so. I've seen him do some amazing pieces in our scene group. He brings depth to whatever character he's playing. He's really lovely.
“We have these techniques we play around with in class for us to learn and experiment with so that when we're on set, we can have different things to fall back on. When he was on the show, he would finish a take and I'd come up and we would try to work out some of the methods we were using in class. It was hilarious. And sometimes he'd just have to say, ‘Oh, Renee.’
“It was quite bizarre because I didn’t do it with anyone else nor did I need to - like with Lucy or Tsianina. It was just something we were playing with. I don't really know if it was helpful at all.
“What I really learned is that in television, with all the demands on your time of blocking and cameras and talking to everyone, there's no time to experiment with an actor about who their character is and what they're supposed to be doing.”
“But you tried to bring some of your classwork into ‘real’ life?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she sighed. “It was harder than I thought it was going to be. It's much easier in a class when there's no pressure and everyone can add their input.” She laughed ruefully.
“As a director and an actor, do you look forward to making movies where you'd have more time to experiment?” I wondered.
She considered this for a moment. “I don’t know. I think it would be interesting to have the time to workshop a scene. But, on the other hand, I don't know if I'd have the patience to spend an entire day on one scene. We move so fast here, there's no down time for us at all throughout the day and that would take some getting used to.”
“How about working with a director who has two or three weeks rehearsal time before a movie shoots?” I proposed.
“That would be fantastic,” Renee said enthusiastically.
“I was curious how you got that shot when Morloch had his foot straight out in the air and was rotating around measuring the distance to his men,” I asked.
“What I tried to do in each fight was use a different style of camerawork,” Renee explained. “I used a steadycam for the shot you're talking about. Shane, myself and Mark, Morloch's stunt double, were playing around to see if Mark could rotate on his side kick. I was getting their input on how we might do this.
“It’s such a collaborative effort. I don’t care what any director says, they never do it alone,” she stated emphatically. “It’s really wonderful to see Rob, who’s been the inspiration behind the show, be on set and say, ‘Well, what do you think?’ to his DP. To allow their creativity to play in the development of a scene. There’s no ego. And it creates such a beautiful atmosphere. Everyone works to make the show the best it can be under those circumstances.”
“I can't imagine not taking advantage of the people around you,” I said. “If you chose them to work with, they must surely have some knowledge you can benefit from.”
“Yeah,” Renee agreed. “But we've had directors who come on and no one is right except for themselves. I don't think that’s a positive way to tell a story. Mind you, it will be interesting to see what happens when I get away from Xena and start working with other people.”
I could hear someone trying to get Renee's attention. She turned away from the phone for a minute, then came back and said, “Could you call me back in about five minutes? They need to take the color out of my hair before it burns off,” she laughed.
“No problem,” I told her. As I sat and watched the minute hand on its journey around my old-fashioned neon wall clock, I realized they were doing Renee's hair in the middle of the workday because they obviously aren't able to do it any other time. When I placed the call again, I asked Renee, “Is someone paid to keep an eye on your hair? Every day you go in and show them the top of your head and they say, ‘Okay, you're good’ or ‘Time for a refresher.’”
“My makeup person, Barbie, lets me know when it's time. I have darker blonde hair and Gabrielle's hair is so white-blonde, you can see it coming. She tells me when it's starting to look dodgy,” Renee laughed.
“With all the compromises that have to be made and the time constraints, how much of your internal vision of the script do you feel you achieved?” I asked.
“I definitely feel I captured shots that I wanted to see on film thanks to production and a visual style and character development,” she stated positively.
“Will you pursue directing assignments after Xena?” I queried.
“It's funny. I thoroughly enjoyed the whole process, but I had this realization that it's difficult for women to try to have a career as a director and have a family as well,” she said thoughtfully. “I remember my husband, Steve, saying to me when the episode was over, that I was constantly thinking of shots. I might be sitting with him on a Sunday, but my mind was elsewhere.” Renee laughed.
“I would be sitting in the car with him and thinking, ‘Now how can I reshoot that?’ So, I don't know. If I were to direct, I'd have to delegate time for my family. I'd love to do it, it’s just a matter of trying to figure out how,” she said matter-of-factly.
“It's interesting that you said it's hard for a woman to be a director and have a family. What if Steve were the director? Wouldn't he have been sitting there miles away from you?” I pointed out.
“Yes, and he has been actually,” Renee laughed. “The last few years while he’s been finishing his masters in business. But we want to have a family and I want to be able to raise our children. That’s just the way I feel about it. I hope that doesn't sound negative towards men. Because I know Steve is as committed to the idea of family as I am. But there’s just something very maternal about me. To have a career as well is going to be a challenge. That's what women have to deal with, don’t they? But that's just my next adventure,” she said cheerfully.