Ducking and Diving
Renee O’Connor towels herself off to give Kate Barker a quick update on the progress of her submerged scene in the episode The Haunting of Amphipolis.
Official Xena Magazine: Issue 13
Over the last six years, Renee O’Connor has found herself in some very daunting situations in her role as Gabrielle. She's been placed inside a wooden vessel along with Lucy Lawless, assorted convicts and several floating cabbages [Tsunami]; tied to a cross crucifixion-style [Bitter Suite, Adventures in the Sin Trade, Between the Lines and The Ides of March]; and strung up on a flying rig for an attack by the demon Dahak [The Deliverer].
The horror episode The Haunting of Amphipolis sees O'Connor in another less-than-comfortable situation. This time, she's submerged in a water tank designed to be a pit on the way to Hell. To make matters even more interesting, the plot calls for O'Connor to contend with a number of latex-dressed ghouls, as they attempt to pull her down.
Having just been released from the water-filled tank while the crew resets for the next shot, O’Connor makes out that, for the most part, this sort of scene really isn’t that bad at all. “There’s not a whole lot we have to do,” she says. “It’s fine and very safe. I think anyone could do this, really; you don’t have to have a diver’s licence!”
Of course, O’Connor does indeed have her diver’s licence, which must make a difference in confidence. After all, there are a couple of things about filming underwater that present a problem or two.
“It is difficult filming underwater action,” she admits, “because often you can’t actually figure out where the camera is in relation to you. But the water’s quite warm - it’s just like being in a normal heated pool - so that’s not so bad. The difference is that you’re trying to yell and scream underwater so you lose your breath quite quickly!”
There’s also the matter of being able to see what you're doing. “It’s very murky,” she acknowledges. “I can see the glass of the tank once I hit it!”
O’Connor is not alone in the tank, and she is quite sympathetic to her colleagues - the ghouls in full rubber latex. “I think the stunt men have it the worst,” she remarks, “because they have masks on their faces and they can’t always spit the water out properly if it enters their mouths. So these poor guys are spluttering away. But we do have the safety officer in the tank too. Luckily I can stand up in the water; I was originally told that it was going to be over my head!”
It’s not all submerging and spluttering though. “It’s interesting and funny listening to the conversations in the pool,” O’Connor says of the gaps between filming. “We have our safety officer who’s obviously a diver, and he’s chatting to one of the ghouls about his trip last month to the Whitsundays [a group of islands off Australia]. So, here's this man next to me with a skeleton face, talking about fish and looking for sharks!”
For O'Connor it’s also fun out of the water. “It’s so funny watching all the ghouls walking around wearing those contact lenses,” she grins. “We’ve been doing a lot of horror genre gags: playing with maggots, exorcisms, blood coming out of crevices and stuff like that. It’s such a bizarre episode — it’s Rob’s version of Evil Dead!
“Garth [Maxwell, director of The Haunting Of Amphipolis] and I keep talking about the scream factor,” says O’Connor jovially. “You know, ‘How much screaming is there in this scene?’ ‘Hmm... a Richter scale of about point five...’
“I’ve been trying not to scream in this, actually. I've been trying to find ways to react without being the standard screamer!”