From Warrior Princess to Disco Diva
by Sharon Delaney
The Chakram Newsletter: Issue 05
This was one happy lady I was talking to. I didn’t know why Lucy was so happy since the last few months of filming Xena had been particularly stressful - something about the death of Gabrielle and New Zealand deciding it wanted to set the Guinness World Record for “Most Rainy Days When Lucy Lawless Was Filming Outdoors,” but her good humor was contagious. And I was just chock full o’ secrets as the phone began to ring down in New Zealand.
“Am I speaking to the future host of Saturday Nite Live?” I whispered into the phone. There was frantic shushing on the other end of the line.
“It’s okay. The newsletter will be shipped after the announcement is made about you hosting the show on October 17,” I reassured Lucy.
“I’m so excited about that, man, I am totally psyched!” I don’t know about Lucy, but her voice was jumping up and down like a little kid.
I asked if she knew about the early days of giant bumblebees and Jim Belushi as the Samurai.
“We don’t get it down here, so I’ve only seen snippers, but I know what it is. I understand the phenomena of it and I’m really excited to work out with those amazing people,” she replied. “Did you hear about the Emmys?”
“Rumor has it a certain New Zealand housewife from suburbia is going to be there,” I said, mischievously.
“Yeah! Renee and I are going together. It doesn’t happen often to see me and Renee together,” she laughed. I told her people were beginning to think they were the same person like Michael and Janet Jackson. Lucy and Renee never show up at the same time in the same place. And I hoped photographers would be there to catch this momentous occasion.
“We’re putting on our finest dresses and we’re going to fly the flag of syndicated television,” she crowed. “Renee and I are so excited.”
It was time for girl talk. “You’ve got a dress picked out?” I asked.
“I sent over a couple of my frocks just for backups if I can’t find something else. I was saving them, but I’ll wear one of those if I don’t find anything else. I’ve got about twelve hours to shop, but it’ll have to do,” she said, with the air of someone about to set out on a singularly satisfying expedition.
I envisioned Lucy and Renee loose in the mall, trying on dresses, giggling, whispering about who they might see and coming home with a trunk full of shopping bags and… Wait a minute. Let’s not get carried away here. Xena in a shopping mall? Nah, couldn’t happen. Gabrielle on the other hand…
In a recent New Zealand newspaper article, Lucy mentioned the Oxford Word Game. And, as anyone reading the series of articles I’ve been doing can attest to. Lucy’s vocabulary has increased the ownership of dictionaries among Xena fans. No point in reading an article with quotes by Lucy in it without one or you’ll just come away scratching your head. So I asked her what the Oxford Word Game was.
“It’s a board game all about spelling and vocab and such like that,” she replied, laughing
“Is it like Scrabble?” I queried, puzzled that my question had evoked laughter.
“No, it’s not. It’s just about learning newer, crazier vocab and then using it in the wrong context,” she said, still laughing.
“You’re supposed to use the words incorrectly?” I said, astonished. “Are you making this up? I get the feeling you’re pulling my leg.”
“No, no,” she said, “it’s a real board game. Like Trivial Pursuit, but with words.”
I settle for this explanation, but the remnants of giggling that are coming to me over the phone line leave me with the sneaking suspicion that I’ve been the victim of Lucy’s well-documented sense of humor.
Back to Lucy’s vacation plans I head with my dignity only slightly in tatters. “I just told everyone I’m going to ask you about your vacation plans,” I announce, as if she were reading the finished article. “London, Paris, Disneyland?” I asked.
“My big aim is to relax,” she said. “We’ve got seven and a half weeks off. I’m going to the States to do Leno, back to New Zealand for some time with Daisy, home and the dogs; then off to New York for rehearsals of Saturday Nite Live. I just want to feed my well being. And I couldn’t think of a bigger thrill than hosting that show. I’m so very happy not to be doing anything else.
“I’m just now learning the value of kicking back and appreciating my family, my friends and my home. That is a very important part of enjoying your life. Don’t wait to be happy when you get an Academy award or a huge movie.”
“You can go old and gray waiting to be happy,” I responded.
“That sure is the truth.”
I’d heard that Lucy found herself laughing on the set recently and jokingly told the crew, “This is what I was like before ‘Sin Trade.’” “Adventures in The Sin Trade” is the Xena two-part season opener that picks up with the death of Gabrielle. As I’d learned in my interview with Co-Executive Producer Eric Gruendemann, this was one of the most physically and emotionally demanding episodes that had ever been done on Xena - and Lucy had been alone in the eye of the hurricane without her costar by her side.
“So you’re in the 12-Step Recovery Program from ‘Sin Trade?’” I gently queried.
“I seem to have reached Stage 12. I feel fantastic!” she responded. “The last episode of the batch we just filmed was a pure joy. I loved it. I think ‘Sin Trade’ coincided with a time when I really was looking for the purpose of life. Here I had everything I thought I wanted and I was exhausted, freezing and miserable. I realized I needed to change my inner life, to get a new attitude, because there was nothing on the outside that was wrong. My inner landscape is what needed changing. So I did that. I bought some self-help tapes and have really just changed the way I look at the world. I’m so much happier.”
I wondered who she’d turned to.
“Tony Robbins who led me to Deepak Chopra. Those guys are now on my list of heroes along with Judge Judy and Susan Sarandon,” she laughed.
Wait, let me get a grip on the reality of this. An image of Xena and Judge Judy walking off into the sunset, twirling sword and gavel respectively, evildoers scurrying for cover and Gabrielle running behind mumbling, “I can play the ‘bailiff.’ I invented Charades! This will be easy. Damn, where’s my scroll encyclopedia? What the heck is ‘television.’ And how will this woman increase our ratings?”
“I’ve never heard you mention her,” I said, surprised.
“I LOVE JUDGE JUDY!” she proclaimed, laughing. “She’s divine. She’s everything you want to be. She is a real life Xena, man.”
I pause for a moment of silence as I take this in - Lucy, Xena and Judge Judy. Okay, I’m okay with this. The world which had tilted slightly at the mention of the unorthodox judge’s name righted itself and it all seemed to make sense. I wondered if The Judge is a Xena fan. After all, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright is. Xena truly is infiltrating American culture.
Her mention of Susan Surandon reminded me that I had just seen Thelma and Louise for the first time and no one ever spoiled the ending for me. (By the way, if you’ve not yet seen this movie, you might want to skip the next few paragraphs.)
“That’s an amazing movie, isn’t it?” Lucy said
“I don’t know what to take from the ending,” I told her. “I was totally caught off guard. Considering what they were doing, they seemed so happy.”
“I guess it was relief? They took sovereignty of their own lives. They ended it jubilantly, didn’t they. But I don’t think the purpose of life is to end it,” she said, thoughtfully.
She continued. “The other night, we had a hiatus bash two days before we finished filming. I was driving to the party in my car, which is very well soundproofed and had the radio on. I was wearing a great big Afro wig because I was going dressed Seventies. As I pulled up to a set of lights, there was a big van next to me. We were both about to turn in the same direction at a “T” intersection.
“The light turned green. I pulled out, but the van stayed there. As I pulled away, it was revealed to me there was a fire engine coming screaming down the road with its siren going, and I didn’t hear a thing. I nearly got wiped out! I know that if I had hesitated for a second. I would have been at least hit side on in the car, possibly dead. I also realized that God has some purpose for me other than being hit by a truck,” she concluded.
“It was pretty horrifying. And I realized how quickly it happens. You feel nothing. Princess Diana felt nothing. It’s the people afterwards that feel all the pain,” Lucy said.
“I’ve come to a new understanding of my life. I thought if there’s any time I was gonna die, it would be now. I’ve never been happier, never so consistently happy. And at peace with everything. But it was not my time. I realized I have not fulfilled my purpose yet.”
This episode was over and done for Lucy, but her recitation of it would give palpitations to anyone who cared for her.
“You are dodging so many bullets!” I said, heaving a big sigh that this story had a happy ending. “But you’re Irish and with the Irish God on one shoulder and Deepak Chopra on the others, it seems like someone is watching over you. Been kissing the Blarney Stone lately?” I teased.
“I guess,” she laughed. “Or someone’s kissed it for me. I’m thrilled I’m through a difficult period as most people have at some time in their lives.”
But, true to her new attitude toward life, she couldn’t remain serious for long. There was mischief to commit and friends’ lives to wreak havoc on. You might remember that during my last interview with Lucy, she was mischievously pushing rotting cabbages toward poor, unsuspecting Renee O’Connor during the filming of “Tsunami.” Now, once again, I was about to get a glimpse of that evil spot in Lucy Lawless she seems to be letting me see more and more of.
Lucy laughed. “I really thought how that would have spoiled everybody’s hiatus, you know? To find out they were having a great time at the party where Lucy didn’t show up and then finding out the next morning I’d been killed on the way to it! And they would have had trouble identifying me with that big old wig on.”
“What else were you wearing?” I asked.
“I had my favorite trousers on, the ones I wore to my first and only time on Letterman. The red trousers with red shoes and a white top with the midriff peeking out. With that huge Afro wig and crazy makeup, nobody at the party recognized me at first. It was amazing. I was being very flirtatious with people who know me very well who couldn’t recognize me and thought they were in for a date with this tall new chick. They were very disappointed to find out it was only Lucy.” She couldn’t help chuckling.
I think there’s an element of Superman in Lucy Lawless. She seems to love disguising herself all the while knowing that blue cape and red outfit with the big “S” is hidden underneath. Or is it a big “X”? Or, even more likely, a giant “L”!
I mentioned to Lucy that I’d heard Renee was being director’s observer during the filming of “Sin Trade.”
“Yeah,” she said, brightly. “She was amazing. She showed up every day to work even though she didn’t have; even though she hadn’t seen her partner, Steve, for a long time. And I think that was a very rewarding time for her.”
And then I told a story about what Rob Tapert had done to me recently.
“Rob, that devil, showed me pieces of ‘Caesar Tableau’ that are in ‘Sin Trade’ that are the flash forwards - like the crucifixion bit. And then he hit the stop button! I wanted to throttle him!!” I said. This evoked a very large laugh from Lucy as if such behavior was not foreign to her.
“‘How could you do that to me?’ I said to him. He just smiled that innocent Irish grin and said, ‘Now just go out and talk about it, Sharon. Let everyone know what’s coming. Xena’s gonna see her own death.’ I couldn’t believe it. He wanted me to drop that bombshell on unsuspecting fandom. He’s so clever.”
I think Lucy was falling off the chair at this point, she was laughing so hard. “Oh, that’s funny,” she said.
“So I did. I posted it this morning.”
“Oh, did you? Well, tell the fans to come along and enjoy the ride!”
There was one last thing I wanted to bring up.
“I read in a German magazine recently that you said, ‘No more kissing scenes.’”
“I said that?” She sounded surprised, then thought about it for a minute. “I might have said that on the day, but I don’t say no more of anything to the producers. They just write whatever makes a good story. And, believe me, they don’t often write with my comfort in mind,” she laughed.
“It’s hard enough for them to try and make good stories that hang together. In the past, I’ve begged Rob, when I’ve been at a low ebb, ‘Please just be kind in your writing. Maybe write a bit more of a ‘B’ story. Give me a couple hours off instead of being there from early to late and having broken turnaround and broken sleep.’ And he said, ‘I don’t know how to do that. All we try to do is make good stories.’ And I really respect that. I appreciate how hard they work. It’s very difficult when you’ve only got two characters to explore with no network of people, no other source of energy.
“We just shot an episode with Borias that I so loved. It was just a great episode and Martin Czokas is a delight to work with. He’s funny and naughty and sensitive and - ”
Just as that moment, Renaissance broke into the line and said our time was up. I knew Lucy was heading into a looping session and really needed to stick to the schedule. But I couldn’t resist one last comment to her. “And just as I was going to ask you about Borias and the bearskin rug. But, seeing as you have to go, I guess we can’t cover that. Or give the fans any explanation of why I would be bringing such a subject up,” I said, devilishly.
The boisterous, conspiratorial laugh this elicited let me know we both loved the idea of leaving the readers dangling on the precipice of anticipation.
And so I bid a fond adieu to “Afro Lucy, Disco Diva of New Zealand.”