Just William
Paul Simpson and Ruth Thomas catch up with actor William Gregory Lee, whose recurring role as Joxer’s son Virgil in Xena’s fifth and sixth seasons endeared him to Xena fans the world over.
Official Xena Magazine: Issue 21
It was shortly after playing sex goddess Bo Derek’s on-screen son in the short-lived US drama series Winds on Water that William Gregory auditioned to appear in Xena: Warrior Princess.
“I went in for a one-episode guest-starring role,” recalls the actor, who is currently in Vancouver filming the last episodes of the first season of James Cameron’s hit series Dark Angel.
“The producers seemed to really like what I was doing, but I had no clue at the time that it had the potential to be long-term. But once I got over to New Zealand, it had all changed, and before I knew it I was playing Ted Raimi’s son. According to the material I had read for the audition, I was going to play a Roman warrior in one episode. But all of a sudden I was Joxer’s son!
“Virgil’s original name was Jerrick,” Lee reveals. “But Lucy didn’t really care for the name, so the writers changed it and came up with his entire back-story. They said, ‘We’ll name him Vigil based on the writer Virgil, and we’re going to make him a bard like Gabrielle is.’
“So I finished my first episode and they asked if I’d like to stick around and do a second… I was like, ‘Oh yeah!’ And before I knew it, they were calling me left, right and centre and asking me to come back. It was such an exciting experience and so much fun!”
Lee remembers in particular that series stars Lucy Lawless and Renee O’Connor made him feel very welcome on set. “As soon as I got over to New Zealand, Lucy treated me so well,” he says. “She and Renee were very kind. I didn’t have a ton of knowledge about the show when I got over there. I knew it was a huge hit, but I didn’t know how they ran their project, because every new set is a different experience.
“They showed me the ropes very quickly,” he recalls, “and they embraced me. They showed me a lot of love. They didn’t treat me like an outsider at all. They let me in right away. That was just a great feeling, especially considering I was going back and forth to another country. You’re always unsure at first how people are going to treat you and if you’ll get along with them, and from the very first day on Xena, I was with Lucy, Renee and Ted Raimi, and they just couldn’t have been nicer. They stayed that way the entire time I was on the show, which was an amazing experience.”
Lee admits that he would have loved to have had the chance to share more of the Xena experiences. “It would have been so cool to have been around since the beginning of the show,” he muses. “I don’t think anybody had a clue it was going to be as big as it was when it started. Look what it turned out to be! This is a show that for years to come will still be talked about and still be shown. I don’t know how many countries around the world it’s shown in, but it’s an amazing amount.”
Talking of the early days of the series reminds Lee of a chance encounter on a plane from Vancouver to Los Angeles. “I was sitting next to Kevin Sorbo,” he says. “It was really cool to talk to him for about two and a half hours. I told him about the entire Xena experience, and he was amazed! I don’t think even he realised back at the start how big a success Hercules was going to be. The fans are so loyal and great. Not only was the show of a high quality, but it then got this cult following that really changed the cast’s lives.”
Lee admits that some of his own character traits are recognisable in Virgil. “There’s a little bit of my personality in him,” he says. “He’s got a tender side. He’s got a personality and a sense of humour, but at the same time he shows emotion when things go wrong.”
One particularly emotional scene in Eve saw Ted Raimi’s character Joxer die at the hands of Adrienne Wilkinson’s Livia. Lee recalls that the atmosphere on the set of that episode was darker than normal. “I think people were caught into the atmosphere of what was going on,” he remarks. “All of a sudden, somebody who had been over there so much and had been so much a part of the show wasn’t going to be back.
“I think it was sad for Ted too because the production becomes like a family to you. You’re spending 12-14 hours a day, five days a week, with these people. You see them more than you do your own family! Then all of a sudden it’s over. I think Ted was excited about the challenges that lay ahead with his career, but at the same time he was walking away from something that had been so good to him and had made him this big star.”
Lee particularly enjoyed his scenes with Raimi. “He’s absolutely one of the funniest guys I’ve ever met,” he enthuses. “Some days on set it was so hard to work with him because he would make everything so funny, and you had to keep a straight face. It would get very difficult.
“What I like about Ted is that he takes his job very seriously, but at the same time he knows how to enjoy it. He’s not one of those highly strung people by any means. He’s very enjoyable to be around. And he’s a great actor as well.”
Lee is realistic about any actor’s life expectancy on a science fiction or fantasy show. “I think going into sci-fi you realise that anything can happen at any time and you have to be prepared for that,” he says. “Once I’d started working regularly on Xena, I was constantly wondering if they were going to kill me off? And when it didn’t happen, it was still something I kept thinking about, because it’s just the way that sci-fi goes. But at the same time, you know they can always bring you back and do other things with you.”
Unfortunately, fans aren’t going to see a resolution for Virgin’s character arc, at least not in the final season of Xena. “The Abyss was the last episode I did,” he says regretfully. “The producers asked me to come back, and we thought I was going to be able to return.” However, Lee’s commitment to play Zack on Dark Angel intervened. “It became a conflict,” he explains.
“I was going to be up here in Vancouver when they needed me to go back to New Zealand. I was disappointed about not being able to go back, because I never got a real chance to say goodbye to Lucy or Renee. I’ve talked to them, but not face-to-face. Everybody, including the crew, was just so amazing to me, like a little family. When you have to leave something like that, you just want to be able to say your goodbyes. I felt for sure I’d be able to get back over there before the show finished, but it takes a little bit longer to film an episode of Dark Angel than it does an episode of Xena, so we never managed to tie it up.
“I’ve had a lot of fans at conventions ask me what’s going to happen,” Lee adds. “Unfortunately there’s really no answer to that because the show’s finished now and I wasn’t able to go back. I guess I was one of the few main characters that never got killed! But, as Lucy said, ‘Even if you get killed, you’ll probably come back anyway, because everybody gets killed and comes back on the show!’”
One of Lee’s favourite episodes was Heart of Darkness, in which Virgil participates in an orgy organised by Xena and Lucifer. “We had a lot of fun with that one,” he recalls. “They had me in several different scenes with my shirt off! I was standing there, and everyone else had all their clothes on. In episodes like that a lot of teasing goes on, and I think the overall mindset on the set is a little bit lighter and a little more laid-back than usual. It’s not as tense as a huge battle scene would be. We all had a lot of fun with that particular episode.”
In the episode, Virgil and Gabrielle get rather intimate. “It’s always difficult to do any kind of kissing with a co-star,” Lee says of the scene, “because it’s a job. A lot of people don’t see that. Here’s somebody you’re friends with, and all of a sudden the director is saying, ‘We want you to lay down here and kiss, and we want you to do this and that’, and you’re thinking, ‘Wow! I never thought about that before’. Then when you’re on set, and you go into a kiss, they’re like, ‘Would you turn your head a little bit more to the right?’ It’s so technical. People think you just jump down and start kissing and making out, but it’s not like that at all! There’s a lot of technical stuff such as lighting the scene. You can’t move too much to the left or the right. And there are 150 people standing around filming it! It’s definitely fun, but it’s still complicated and technical at the same time. It’s still work.”
Lee names Who’s Gurkhan? as his favorite ever Xena for two reasons. “Michael Hurst directed it, and they wanted a little bit of Joxer to come out in Virgil,” he explains. “Michael is not only an amazing actor, but an amazing director as well. He wanted to incorporate a little bit of Joxer’s personality into Virgil. It was more playful than the serious sword-fighting stuff or when I’m crying over my father’s deathbed. Some of the things that we did on set got quite goofy, and although I know that the episode was dark towards the latter half, the first part, when I play Superlius the pirate, was great fun. To be able to play something that’s a bit lighter and has more comedy to it is just such fun.
Episodes which involve more battle scenes, on the other hand, require a lot more concentration. “Because it’s television it requires a lot of rehearsal beforehand,” he explains. “You get there and the stunt coordinators will explain everything exactly, but it’s still fun. As a little boy I used to run around playing war, and now I’m getting paid to do it! It’s like the most exciting thing in the world when you get a huge sword fight. It’s like a huge dance.”
Lee’s focus is currently on his role as Zack, who couldn’t be more different from Virgil. “The writers really can’t incorporate any of my personality into Zack,” he says of the Dark Angel creators. “They might use little things that I do, but not the overall person. I consider myself a fun-loving guy, and Zack is about as far from that as you can possibly imagine!”
Lee enjoys working on science fiction and fantasy shows. “I’ve learned more about the sci-fi world over the past two years than I thought could ever possibly even exist,” he says. “I just didn’t know there was such a world out there. The other day on set, James Cameron asked me if I was a huge sci-fi fan, and it made me realise I wasn’t compared to a lot of people out there. But I love the entire sci-fi world. It’s surreal, but you make it real. That’s what the beauty of fantasy is. You take unimaginable circumstances and make them seem so real.
“In Xena, there are so many things that happen that you think aren’t possible when you read about them on paper. But when you actually do it, you make it possible.”