Good To Be Bad
In the second part of our exclusive interview, Hudson Leick tells Paul Simpson and Ruth Thomas about her varied roles a world away from Callisto…
Official Xena Magazine: Issue 15
Callisto wasn’t Hudson Leick’s only role in the Hercules/Xena universe. In two episodes of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, the actress appeared as a character named Liz Friedmann. The name was familiar to fans who pay attention to the credits, since the real Liz Friedmann was one of the producers on the series, but Leick is quick to explain that the genuine article is not at all like the chain-smoking, hard-swearing character she portrayed on screen.
“I know Liz,” she explains. “She’s a lovely woman. It’s just a caricature, obviously. The staff are not really like that!” Leick can’t recall the exact details of how she was invited to join the cast of Yes Virginia, There is a Hercules, which combined clips from previous episodes of Hercules and Xena with segments of Young Hercules and even the animated Hercules and Xena movie. “I just remember they said they were going to be doing this modern-day thing, and I was going to be playing Liz,” she remembers, “and Liz was very happy that I was going to be playing her.”
To ply Friedmann, Leick decided to adopt a change in appearance. “I begged for a dark-haired wig, because I really wanted to wear a wig; I wanted something a little different,” she explains. “I think Rob Tapert’s view on that was nobody would know who I was - they wouldn’t recognise me if I wore a wig. I never actually asked if people recognised me, but they seemed to know that it was me anyway.”
So did the production staff who were being caricatured visit the set and inspire the cast during the filming of Yes, Virginia? “They didn’t come down and watch, because we filmed in New Zealand,” Leick says somewhat regretfully. “Unfortunately, most of the people who we played work in Los Angeles. I think it would been much more fun if they had been there; we could’ve studied them in even more depth and found out what little quirks they had.”
Yes, Virginia, There is a Hercules was so popular that the staff characters were revisited in the later episode For Those of You Just Joining Us, Hercules’ final season. However, Leick doesn’t think the premise is likely to make a comeback in Xena’s final season. “That was very typical of Hercules,” she points out.
In between starring as Calliisto on Xena, Leick also played a character who was a complete turn-around from the vengeful mortal: the angel Celeste in the long-running series Touched by an Angel. To say the actress was surprised to be cast in the role would be an understatement. “I remember getting the job and talking to the casting person and saying, ‘Now, you know I always play evil. You know that, right?’” she says, the incredulity still in her voice three years later. “And he said, ‘Yes, I’ve seen you play evil.’ I said, ‘You’re taking a big chance on me playing something good.’ And he’s like, ‘I think you’re a brilliant actress and I think you can do it.’ What am I going to say to that? ‘No? Take your money and get out?’ Do you think I’m insane?!”
So how did she feel about being literally on the side of good for once? “It was really odd,” Leick confesses. “I just relate to villains easier - or at least I did back then. I don’t know if I feel that way now, but it’s very easy for me to play a villain. It’s easy to feel hatred - or at least it was at that time. I have to keep saying that because I’m not the same person I was several years ago. It was difficult and it was strange.
“The hardest thing about it was that they’re both extremes. Both Celeste and Callisto are such caricatures: one is an angel and one is basically a psychopath. They’re not really in the realm of normal human beings. In that sense they’re similar, because I haven’t had to play a regular human being. But in other ways, playing somebody who’s all good - where do you go from there? How do you make something that is all good interesting? I think that was the hardest part about that: if I had to play a part like that - either all good or all bad - again, I don’t think I’d play it that bland. I think I’d give them more colours.”
Leick certainly enjoyed the experience of playing Celeste. “It was fun,” she enthuses. “The best part of being an actress is you get to play all these different characters. You get to play and have fun. That’s what it’s all about. It’s about being a little kid and being able to be free and to play. That’s when it’s really good. It’s corny, but I just want to have fun while I’m alive. I want to be free, I want to play, and I want to be able to love - and not just love as in romantic love, because there’s so much more than that. In our society right now, it’s romantic love that’s important; you’ve got to have your partner and that’s it.
“But we’re a bunch of human beings who’ve never met before, and that’s fun. We can play like we did when we were kids. When you’re a kid, you’re like, ‘Hi, what’s your name? I’m Hudson, you wanna play?’ And the other kids would say, ‘Yeah,’ and you’d play and have fun and you’d get over yourself. Then you become an adult, and you’re like, ‘How do I look? Am I looking good? Am I sounding good? Do I impress you?’ Well, this is my head, and I’m not talking for anyone else, but there’s this locked-in craziness. Screw that, I’m done with that. I don’t want to do that anymore.”
Does Leick find that this is more the case in the United States? “Oh, I think the English have it as well,” she grins. Talking of differences between the countries prompts a discussion of the difference between British and American Xena fans - the Starfury event in late September at which we’re speaking is the first time Leick has encountered British fans on their home turf. “On a base level it’s not very different at all,” she says. “It’s very similar. People in England are very polite compared to Americans. They raise their hands when they have questions for you. They’re not quite as demanding. They’re not as pushy.”
Leick laughs as she recalls one problem that she did encounter when she was on stage. “I couldn’t understand the Scottish people to save my life!” she admits, embarrassed. “That was a big difference. I loved the accent, but it really was very difficult for me to understand what they were saying. But I hear that’s also very true of English people when they hear Americans from the Deep South.”
Leick’s recent movie, Chill Factor, opened in Britain in June and has just been released in the United States on DVD. Leick plays Vaughn, a mercenary who is on the track of a weapon codenamed Elvis which has devastating powers. Skeet Ulrich and Cuba Gooding jnr are two innocents caught up in the conflict who are desperately trying to get the weapon back to a US Army Base before the mercenaries catch up with them.
Leick thoroughly enjoyed working on the movie, in part because she was virtually the only female involved. There’s only one other female cast member, the owner of a truckstop whose part comes and goes very early in the film, so Leick found herself working amidst a great deal of testosterone.
“Talk about fun!” she laughs. “It was fascinating to work with all men. We were on location - and I was with just men. There were some women on the crew, but other than that I was around these huge, big, bulking guys. They were lovely - they were like big brothers, and I was acting up.”
Leick had an especial fondness for Dwayne Grant, who played one of the soldiers chasing the mercenaries. “He was one of my dearest friends there. If I had a hard time with anything, I’d go to him. I don’t have a big brother, but that’s what it was like.”
Did Leick find that her performance changed because of the company she was in? “I had to step up, surrounded by all these men, because it’s a different energy altogether,” she admits. “It gets really interesting with a bunch of men on location after a period of time, where there aren’t a lot of women around. You get to hear how men really think about women, which is fascinating!”
Leick wasn’t given a great deal of background on her character. “She’s just a supporting team player trying to help get the weapon so it can be sold. We didn’t really go through the background. Where did she come from? What was she doing? No, we weren’t told that at all. That’s all on your own time.”
What kind of acting does Leick enjoy most - film or television? “I found film a little bit more exciting,” she acknowledges, even though she admits that Chill Factor was filmed on a very tight schedule. “I don’t think I’ve done enough of both to be able to give you a straight answer. I’ve enjoyed both. I think I’ve enjoyed the movies better because I like to travel and we’re always travelling. We’re like the tramps; we’re the gypsies. We were all over Utah for Chill Factor.”
Since finishing Chill Factor, Leick has worked on an independent movie, American Lover, from a first-time director and writer, which is hopefully heading for the 2001 independent film festival circuit. She plays the ‘best friend’, but doesn’t want to give too much away about that or any of her other filming commitments: “There are always bits, but nothing I can talk about right now,” she explains. “I’ve taken a while off from acting and just concentrated on yoga. I’m just starting it up again after a long break. It was strange to come back to it, because I suddenly remembered that you have to wait around a lot. It’s boring.”
Yoga has played an increasing part in Leick’s life over the past few months, to the extent that she is contemplating taking up teaching the art. It’s an interest that she has had for a long time, but, as she admits, “after being an actress and being paid really, really well, both are appealing to me. But I would have to let go of the money!”
What are the comparative attractions? “Acting allows me to do a lot of things,” she says. “The yoga just moves me, and I know my body. I know how to stretch it. I can feel the energy coming out of my body and I know how to open that up.”
Leick took a teachers’ training class in yoga, which she describes as “intense”, but her concern isn’t purely with the bodywork. “I learned a lot of physical parts of what to do for it, but we do a lot of energy work as well, which is something I think people just know.”
Appearing at conventions had one unexpected benefit for Leick - at a recent event she met a benefactor who’s paying for her to fly from her West Coast base to New York in order to teach yoga. So does that mean that her future lies away from the silver screen? Leick smiles. “It certainly seems like I’m being pushed in that way - but we’ll see.”