Elsa Lancaster meet Lucy Lawless
by Sharon Delaney
The Chakram Newsletter: Issue 24
I thought I'd do an interview with a latex-covered, 80-year-old hag. Instead, I decided to do one with Lucy Lawless. Oh, my goodness, it's the same person! More on that in the middle of the article, but beware the spoilers for Boogeyman!
Meanwhile, down in New Zealand, “The Entertainer” is merrily chirping away in my ear. I'm on hold while Lucy changes rooms for our phone interview and I wonder if I should point out that this is the same “hold” music I heard 6 years ago when we started these interviews. Or maybe I should just send her a new tape for Christmas - anonymously (grin).
“I hear you jumped off Auckland Sky Tower,” I begin.
“My idea was only to throw my 14-year-old daughter off,” Lucy chuckles with motherly glee. “Daisy's keen on that sort of thing. And I was so sick with the flu. Then you get there and they inveigle you into doing what you don't want to. But it was fine, it was good!”
Knowing that Lucy had bungee jumped out of a helicopter. I was surprised she hadn't done the Sky Tower leap before.
“I hadn’t gotten around to that,” she explained. “It's quite sedate actually. I've done very challenging things and this was a very controlled mechanism they send you down on. So it wasn't a big mental challenge for me to do it. I was just going to put it off to a day where I felt a little better. I wasn’t afraid of it, per say.”
And then she paused and added, “Actually. I shouldn’t say that. There was a moment of, ‘Okay, now, you're sure this rig is good enough for my daughter? It might be good enough for me, but is it good enough for my daughter?’ It was fabulous,” she stated, sounding a bit faraway and I got the feeling, at that moment, she was reliving the journey down the side of the building and nodding her head with satisfaction that she’d put the flu bug aside and gone for it.
“It was really good,” she reiterated, “and, hopefully, it helped raise money for Puawaitahi, the child abuse center Starship helped set up. Sky Tower was donating a portion of the admission price for everyone who did the jump.”
“A photo of you, taken on the way down during the jump, was making the rounds of online Xena fandom,” I chuckled as I remembered Lucy's grinning face in the picture.
“It's amazing to me there are still Xena fans,” Lucy said, contemplating the fact that the show ended its run two years ago. “It's a testament to the strength of the show and what people drew from it - the friendship between Xena and Gabrielle. It just amazes me there's continued interest.”
“The relationship made people feel good and the Xena character was empowering,” I told her, thinking back on all the mail I'd read since the show started.
“Incredible. It's amazing, isn't it?” she mused. And then, in an excited voice, added, “I saw Renee recently. Which was really great. She was down in New Zealand.”
“Did you get her to jump off the Tower?” I teased.
“No, she wasn’t there at that time, but…” she broke off as I burst into laughter.
“That lil Texan's got good timing,” I joked. “How did she manage to time her visit so well?”
Lucy realized what I was getting at and a loud guffaw rang over the phone line. “Yeah, neither of us had any intention of doing it. Things just happen to ya.”
“So you got to see her?” I said.
“Yeah, it was really lovely. She and her husband and child and her in-laws came over to the house for breakfast. We had a lovely morning with them,” Lucy said with a smile in her voice.
“You know she's a blonde again?” I tossed in nonchalantly, knowing it happened after Renee left New Zealand.
There was stunned silence on the other end of the line.
“She did it for the movie Extreme Reality,” I explained. “It's a mockumentary about a reality dating TV show.”
“Oh, that’s excellent!” Lucy exclaimed, her kiwi accent landing with a pounce on her “e”s. She was bubbling over with excitement for Renee. “Oh, she’ll be so good at that! She'll be so funny!”
“She was at a convention and photos of her with her new ‘do’ were posted on the web,” I continued.
“Does she look fabulous?” Lucy asked. “Oh good. Hey, that’s really exciting! I'm glad she's doing it. That's awesome! Oh my God! I've gotta call her,” Lucy exclaimed giddily, her words tumbling over themselves in her excitement.
“She looked great,” I confirmed. Speaking of hair, the last time I saw Lucy was right after the convention in February. We had auctioned off for charity some huge banners on the wall and they needed to be signed by Lucy and Renee. I made arrangements with Lucy to meet in a parking lot where we laid out the banners in the back of our van and she crawled around finding just the right place to sign them.
The parking lot was part of a small shopping mall and there was a beauty supply store right in front of us. After she finished with the banners, Lucy and I went into the store to buy a hair dryer. One of those big metal houses you sit under and stick your head into. They did have a floor model of one of those monsters, but none for sale so she settled for one with a plastic hat. You know, those pink things with the crimped edges? She wanted to learn how to curl her own hair. I decided to see how that venture was coming along. Had she been able to make cosmetological improvements in her life?
“How's your haircurler working out?” I asked casually.
“I came out looking like Elsa Lancaster in The Bride of Frankenstein,” Lucy said sadly. “My session with the curling iron turned into fright night.”
“Was that the perfect hairdo for Boogeyman?” I queried seguing right into Lucy's new movie.
“Well, funnily enough, they didn't go for it,” Lucy giggled. “They quite liked the wild look though and they put a very fancy wig on me which is gray in color. Very salt and pepper. It's a really expensive one meaning it's handmade with lace at the front.”
“Lace,” I echoed, puzzled.
“Yeah, that's how people hide the fact it's a wig,” she explained. “They have a lace front where the hair has been carefully knotted on so it looks natural. Like the hairs are sprouting out of nothing, you know? It doesn’t have the heavy line that looks wiggy.
“As for the curling iron, I just gave up,” she laughed. “I'm a hopeless case. I'm just not a hair person. Actually, on Boogeyman they're turning my hair red!”
“They're turning you red?” I exclaimed.
“Yeah, tomorrow,” Lucy said and then added, “I did a role in Prague recently where they tried to turn me blonde and it was just a horrible disaster despite having flown some girl in from London to do it.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“It was some horrible mustardy weird color. Perhaps we were doing it in too much of a hurry or they didn't have the right equipment. I don't know what happened. But it looked really bad. So they turned it red instead and now it’s kind of washed out - sort of my own color. But for Boogeyman they're making my hair red and slightly shorter. So I’m gonna get a new ‘do’ is what I'm trying to tell you,” Lucy laughed. “Somebody else is responsible for changing my hair. But I wanna try going blonde sometime. That would be fun!” She chortled wickedly.
“Back to Boogyman,” I said, steering us back to the subject at hand, “First they made you gray?”
“They made me gray,” Lucy explained. “They were going halfway between Elsa Lancaster and my normal scruffy do to age me up. And they covered me in latex makeup on my hands, feet and all over my face to make me look about 80 years old. It was really, really uncomfortable, physically and mentally, to catch yourself looking that old. And nobody wanted to look at me for long. I had trouble maintaining eye contact with people.
“I would forget I had it on," she laughed. “And all my old friends - there were lots of them on the crew who were from Xena or other jobs I've done - it was hard to find somebody who could relate to me as the Lucy they've always known, you know?”
“Not used to seeing you as an 80-year-old,” I nodded, sympathizing with the crew so long used to the fair-haired Irish lassie.
“Funnily enough, you don't quite see it that way on film. I look like a glamorous older woman,” she said in amazement.
“Okaaay,” I said sceptically.
“I look dreadful,” she admitted. “But even though they've got scum and blood squirting out my eyes - I thought I looked kinda good actually,” Lucy laughed gleefully. “I thought I looked kinda glam!”
“Sophia Loren,” I guessed, trying to picture a glamorous older woman.
“No, no. I looked like… Germaine Greer! That's who I looked like,” Lucy stated unequivocally.
“Germaine Greer!” I gawped.
“It was kinda nice,” Lucy said dreamily, “I thought, 'You know, if I look this good when I'm fifty, I'll be so happy.’ Picture Germaine Greer with blood squirting out her eyes,” she murmured ghoulishly.
“Okay, I'm working on that visual,” I said, trying very hard not to do just that. “I'll go to the library and take out one of her books and look at the picture on the back cover.”
Lucy giggled.
“I can just imagine looking down and seeing an 80-year-old hand. That would freak me out,” I said.
“Yeah, it does freak you out cuz you realize, ‘Wow, I really am gonna look like that,’” she agreed. “But they didn't cover up the veins and I'm quite a veiny person anyway cuz my skin's thin and my blood's pumping. I looked like my grandmother,” she added softly.
I had talked to someone the day before the interview and he had been looking at the dailies from the first day of Boogeyman. He told me to ask Lucy a specific question. So I did, wondering what the answer would be.
“Did you spend your first day on set in a kind of unusual container?” I queried.
“I spent my first day on set in the most comfortable position. It was my dream position on Xena,” Lucy answered.
“Yesss,” I said in a coaching tone of voice wanting to know more.
“I was in a modern casket - a coffin. And they're very comfortable. Let me tell you,” she said in her best salesperson voice.
“Really!” I spluttered.
“They’re lovely,” she stated, sounding like a brochure again. Then she lost it and said, laughing, “I was just lying there in all this ghastly makeup and everybody was off doing their business and not paying any attention to me. I was blissed out because it was the position I always dreamed of being in in Xena. Except in Xena when you were lying down you were inevitably in a puddle covered with blood in the middle of winter. Or on a nasty rock surface. But this coffin was delightful.”
The press releases for Boogeyman had started to appear online and I was aware Barry Watson played a boy named Tim. Lucy took it from there.
“He plays a young man who has psychological disorders,” she began. “He's paranoid about a boogeyman chasing him. When he was a boy, his father vanished and his mother went crazy and gave up custody of him. So he has big abandonment issues. In flashbacks you get to see his mother - who's the one with the red hair,” Lucy said with a verbal wink toward her role as Tim's redheaded mother. “Stoned and drug-addled, she can't put up with this troublesome kid any longer and sends him away with his uncle. The kid’s always going on about the boogeyman. He's afraid someone's under his bed and in his closet.”
“Well,” I said, “the movie is called Boogeyman.”
Lucy laughed. “Yeah, it is.”
“There may very well be someone under the bed,” I added cautiously.
She laughed again. “This poor paranoid young man is cuddling up to his girlfriend in her parents' house and she rolls over and, lo and behold,” (she pauses) - “IT'S HIS MOTHER!!” Lucy cackles fiendishly and my blood freezes. Lucy has perfect timing. She must be wonderful telling ghost stories.
“Oh, my God!” I shiver at the image she's just painted.
“It's his horrible, crusty old mother!” she chortles gleefully.
FOR THE SPOILER-PHOBIC, YOU CAN BEGIN READING FROM HERE, BUT DON’T GLANCE UP. MAYBE YOU CAN HAVE A FRIEND PUT A POST-IT OVER THE SECTION ABOVE SO YOU'RE NOT TEMPTED.
“I’ll bet you had fun playing the stoned, drug-addled scenes,” I teased.
“I haven't shot that bit of it yet, but I certainly intend to,” she stated with conviction. “The director's a good actor's director. I was quite surprised and pleased and, in fact, proud when I came home from doing the scary stuff. It was really fun and just wonderful. I loved being on set. Aside from being with my kids it's the only thing I'm good at. It's somewhere I feel I really, really belong.I feel a comfort on set I don't find anywhere else.”
“Comfortable, productive, successful,” I chimed in.
“Yeah! I understand the milieu,” Lucy said.
“How was it working with Barry Watson (the oldest son on 7th Heaven)?” I asked. “He had a bout with Hodgkins Disease and it's so good to see him back at work.”
“He's lovely,” Lucy said warmly. “I'm sure he was always lovely, but I would imagine what he's been through has given him an extra appreciation or humility. And he's a really good actor. Always prepared, very professional. It's been such a pleasure to meet him. They're all really lovely, actually. I enjoy it so much when the people on a movie all turn out to be just good, solid, wonderful human beings.”
“You must just have to hope for the best when you sign on. You never know what the other people you're going to be working with will be like,” I said.
Lucy thought for a moment. “Yeah, you don't know going in,” she admitted, “but it's very seldom that you come across someone who isn't a real human being. Maybe in Hollywood it’s different. But I really haven't met too many people who aren't good human beings doing the best they can with what they've got. You know what I mean? There's some honor in that to me. Just being a regular person.”
“How did you wind up playing this role?” I asked.
“Oh. Rob asked me over breakfast,” Lucy said nonchalantly. “I nearly vomited in my coffee.” She laughed, then added, still chuckling, “He asked me if I wanted to be the drug-addled, messed up mother who gives away her child and, of course, I can't resist that sort of part. And then, as always happens with me, I have buyer's remorse, ‘Oh no! What have I done? My agents would say this role is too small.’ But, in the end, work breeds more work. Sometimes people can discourage you from doing things that are ultimately really good for you. Just to be in the swim. Don't be too proud. Do small jobs, do any job. Just get out there.”
“Do something that intrigues you,” I added.
“Yeah! Yeah!” she said enthusiastically. “You never know, you might come away feeling really proud. And I did. I’ve got about four more days to do. And really, it is a small part, but it's what I've been looking for. Small, fascinating, scene-stealing roles.”
“Little juicy bits that you can sink your teeth into,” I said.
“This is one of those roles," Lucy agreed. “I always want to play the character where people say, ‘Oh my God, remember that? She played the mother!’ Rather than, ‘Wasn't she the wife?’ Often the wife role is boring and tragic and a waste of film. People never write wives as if they are interesting, full human beings. But mothers are always interesting on film.”
I'd set up the questions for Lucy so that I was tracing her recent journeys backward in time. “Before beginning work on Boogeyman, you had just come back from ...” I began.
“Prague,” Lucy said, finishing my sentence, “where I did a juicy little cameo in a Dreamworks movie, produced by Ivan Rehman, which I believe will be entitled Ugly Americans, but nobody was sure at that stage. It's about four American kids traveling across Europe in search of love, romance and, really, wanting to get laid - as teenagers often do,” Lucy laughed. “I play crazy Madam Van der Sexx who runs an Amsterdam brothel where one of the young boys finds his way into a very compromising situation which prevents him from sitting down for two weeks.
“It was really fun. A classy operation - one of those movies that’s real dumb and real funny. You know what I mean?” she said.
“The script was done by Seinfeld writers?” I asked.
“Yes, and they're brilliant, just brilliant,” she answered. “It really ought to be the next American Pie or Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. They were amazing writers, great director, I was blown away by everything. And shooting in such a marvelous place - Prague's lovely.”
“You described going to Prague on your OE (Overseas Experience) and said you hoped to go back someday,” I said, remembering an earlier interview. “Did you get a chance to wander around?”
“You know what I did? I went busking!” she said excitedly. “The first week I was there just sort of mooching around on my own and I was quite lonely. So I went and found some buskers and said, ‘Could I sing along with you?’ They were dying for somebody to sing Pink Floyd with them. I was wracking my brain trying to remember their songs that were such anthems when I was a teenager.
“So I did that one day. I even toyed with getting a job in a cafe just because I was so incredibly bored and lonely,” she chuckled. “But that was never really in the cards. I was just bored and, of course, Lucy’s mind gets to thinking of all sorts of dumb ways to entertain herself. I didn't go through with that in the end.”
My mind was trying to wrap itself around the image of people in a Prague cafe looking up and there’s Xena, wearing a pink apron, putting silverware down on their table and asking if they’d like their grilled cheese sandwiches on wheat or rye! And speaking Czech. Hey, does Lucy know that language?
“Oh, it's impossible! I just could not fathom that language,” she spluttered. “Those Slavic languages have their roots so long ago and they're not Germanic or Latin, as far as I can tell. They're not like French, German or Italian. It's like trying to learn Chinese or Japanese with a completely other way of looking at things except they use our alphabet. I could not wrap my head around that at all. But they all speak such good English.
“And I didn’t get off the beaten track,” she added. “I was having such a nice time soaking up… And when I say I was so lonely,” she interrupted herself, “I enjoy being lonely. You know, it doesn't happen to me very often. Every actor likes to wallow in whatever they're going through, you know what I mean?” she laughed heartily. “Really feel the emotions so you can use them sometime. It was actually very good for me and I got down to doing some writing and hammered out the outline of a script.”
Aha, she's writing. Have to make a note of that for the future, I thought to myself, as I looked at the clock and realized our time was just about over. I wanted to touch on the Discovery series, “Warrior Women,” which Lucy was just about finished filming.
“China was your first stop on the five-country tour?” I asked.
“That was our first stop. I took Daisy to China with me to do a story on Wang Song'er,” she said.
“I thought the person the series was profiling in China was Mulan?” I said, puzzled.
“That episode is called ‘The Real Mulan.’ Mulan doesn't really exist. Mulan, they think, was a composite character who was mythologized,” Lucy explained. “And then I went to Europe for five weeks. I couldn't take my children with me so I was wracked with pain about that,” she sighed.
“It would have been tough to take them all around Europe,” I said sympathetically. “And you would be working during the day.”
“The trip was supposed to be last year and they put it off which was great for me cuz I certainly couldn't have left my baby, Judah, at that time. He was still nursing,” Lucy said. “And I couldn't take them because it would be miserable for them to be jetlag children. I wouldn't have been able do my job and it would just be a mess.” She sighed again.
“Which countries did you go to?” I queried.
“I went back to New Zealand for about a month and then flew to London and went straight to France, back to London, Wales, did a story on Boudicae in England and then went off to Ireland to do a wonderful Irish piratess called Grace O'Malley who's my favorite. She was amazing,” Lucy said with a touch of pride and awe.
“Ireland's where your roots are, yes, Miss Ryan?” I teased, using her maiden name.
“Yeah, I actually got to go to the town where my great-grandparents are from,” she chirped happily. “Which was very interesting. The series is a romp through history and you get to see unconventional women. Bolshie women,” she added. “You use that word - Bolshie?”
“Sure, Bolshevik, rebel,” I said. “You know, you referred to yourself that way once in an interview for NZ public radio.”
“That I was a Bolshie?” Lucy laughed heartily.
“The interviewer was asking why you weren't on Shortland Street or some such and you said, ‘They consider me too Bolshie,’” I recounted.
Lucy laughed and then was quiet for a moment. “I don't know. I'm reaching a stage now where I realize I have no idea what sort of person I am,” she said thoughtfully. “Or how other people see me. I can say things about myself, but it doesn't mean that…” She paused, obviously working through something in her mind. Then continued, “Other people would be a better judge of who you are, you know? I'm in a state of metamorphosis at the moment. But I like strident women who are unafraid or don’t give in to their fears and just stride through life. That’s what I like. Strident women who stride through life.”