“It was purely a scientific question”
by Sharon Delaney
The Chakram Newsletter: Issue 28
Ya know, there are just some things America should not import. And, for me, it’s our reality TV. However, it seems we managed to do something good for New Zealand by sending them American Idol. At least, that’s how Lucy sees it.
“We have to start off with the thing that America is most focused on right now, American Idol,” I said. “And it seems it’s made the trip overseas. I’ve heard New Zealand has their own version and you were a judge?”
“I was a guest judge for one night,” Lucy said perking up. “It was the second to last episode which is on tonight.”
“How did you wind up doing that?” I asked, thinking I’d get an insight into the smoke-filled, back room machinations of judge selection.
“Oh, they just asked me,” Lucy said blithly. “If you come back into the country, everybody knows about it and, before long, you’ve completely booked up on all sorts of things. It was fun. There’s a couple great singers. They’re all very strong in different areas. They’re all going to have careers after this. I like what it’s doing for the spirit of New Zealand. These kids are going out there and they’re not afraid to be Tall Poppys. In New Zealand, you know, we have a long tradition of cutting people down to size. Making sure that everybody’s at level. You’re not too prominent, not too successful. So that you don’t make everybody else feel bad by comparison. Obviously that’s just a tired, old approach to life and we all hope we’re growing out of it. But I think these kids are the first of a generation who doesn’t need to be hamstring quite so much by that way of life, that…”
“Philosophy?” I suggested.
“Right, philosophy,” Lucy agreed.
“In the US, we make stars out of even the runner-ups and some of the people who get kicked out early,” I began. “I wondered if that was the first time that type of show was done in New Zealand. A show that focused on a winner outside of sports, which I know is a big thing. That’s the first thing I thought of, the Tall Poppy Syndrome. I thought, what’s going to happen to the winners?”
“People were disappointed I wasn’t mean enough,” Lucy laughed. “They wanted me to be incredibly critical. I just thought, at that stage, it was so close to the end, it wasn’t about who’s the best singer or even the best entertainer. It’s about who is the most popular with the age bracket that votes. The demographic of kids who use their text machines are 14- to 16-year old girls.”
“How old are your contestants? We had a young boy here who was only 16,” I told her.
“We have one 17-year-old. He’s probably going to win,” Lucy stated. “The other two are 25 and 27. But, they’ve already won, being in the last three. They’re very strong performers in different ways. They’ve all got record contracts. They’re all gonna be fine.”
“If you’d been picked to be a permanent judge would you be Simon or Paula?” I teased.
“I’d be Randy,” Lucy shot back at me. “Because I’m actively wanting to squelch that Tall Poppy Syndrome. My daughter went to a school where the maxim was, ‘Tall Poppies grow here.’ I love that. Let’s encourage excellence and significance, personal excellence, that is. What the hell is wrong with that! So I wouldn’t be Simon cause that’s sort of a, that’s a very English trait that goes through our culture and Australia, that Tall Poppy thing. We have no need of it anymore.”
“It can stifle, if you’re always looking around and thinking, ‘I’ve got a good idea, but maybe I shouldn’t say anything cuz it might make the other person look bad,’” I said.
“Yeah. ‘They’ll feel bad if I’m too successful,’” Lucy added. “We need to combat that. I know it happens everywhere, but it’s just not a national trait in other countries. The trick is to succeed so wildly, right out of the box, that they get over it really quickly,” she laughed. “If you’re just a little more successful than they are, within the scope of their dreams, they may continue to be envious. But if you succeed out of all proportion, they simply drop the competition.”
“You’ve been here and haven’t been out in public in New Zealand for quite some time. How are you treated these days?” I asked.
“Oh, good!” she said enthusiastically. “I think people are starting to see a new side of Lucy. They’ve only seen the Xena persona on screen or the charity campaigner/mother Lucy, because I’ve been pregnant the last few years. So I was in a different head space. I’m probably done having babies and the real me is starting to emerge. And it’s fun! I’m really enjoying just being myself at the moment.”
“You feel different?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she responded with a lilt in her voice. “Developing. I’m reading a lot. I’ve woken up to the world. It’s really nice.”
“I may finally be getting that dog I’ve been telling everyone for years I want,” I said, jumping on her “let’s get moving in the world” bandwagon.
Lucy giggled. “I would like to get a dog.”
“I was thinking of fostering one first,” I added.
“You look after it for a time and then you have to give it up?” she asked.
“Yep,” I answered.
“Ooo, how will you find that?” she said a bit worriedly.
“I don’t know. I’ll find out the first time I do it,” I laughed. “And I went parading, sold baked goods and bought a bumpersticker - all for John Kerr. I’m going to sign up to drive people to the polls.”
“Good for you. It’s a great thing to do to be able to improve the quality of a life, you know. A dog or a person or whatever. You are honoring nature and God and all stuff, all that’s good about this planet. You’re doing some really major stuff. You’ve gotten political, you’re choosing love,” Lucy said warmly.
I was stunned for a minute. I sold cupcakes and said I’d take in a dog. That’s what I love about Lucy - her view of the world. She can really make you feel good about yourself.
Now we’re off to the Women in Film and Television Summit which was held in Auckland in April. Lucy was a sponsor of the event. In an email during the four-day event, Lucy had said she was having a great time.
“How did that go? What did you do?” I asked.
She started to respond and then chirped. “Oh, my goodness! Hey, it was brought to my attention – the works of William Wyler! An amazing director! I met his daughter, Catherine Wyler, at WIFT and she have me a video she’d made which was a documentary on her dad with interviews from Bette Davis, Barbra Streisand, all these people going on how much they loved him.”
“Have you seen any of his movies?” I queried, trying to keep William Wyler and Billy Wilder straight in my head.
“I haven’t but I’m dying to! Now there’s a great, great artist,” she said. “He worked a long time. He worked for 50 years making movies. He had a great eye and a great ear for dialogue and naturalism. And the second he felt he’d finished, he retired. I think Funny Girl was his last picture.”
Second to last, I found out when I looked him up online. And then wrote out a list of movies for Lucy to watch including: Jezebel, Wuthering Heights, The Little Foxes, Mrs. Miniver, The Best Years of Our Lives, The Heiress, Roman Holiday, Friendly Persuasion, Ben-Hur (he directed that?!), The Collector, How to Steal a Million, Liberation of L.B. Jones and The Children’s Hour. That should keep her out of trouble for a day or two. By the way, you can see the documentary Lucy’s talking about, Directed By William Wyler, on the DVD of his movie Love Trap.
Back to WIFT. “It was fantastic. It was very enlivening to be in the company of so many terrific, motivated, intelligent, passionate women,” Lucy said bubbling over. “Contrary to popular belief, women really like one another’s company. And it really re-energized me to meet people who I could see such honor in what they do. It reminded me there was honor in what I do.”
“Your work?” I asked.
“Yeah. I’d kind of forgotten that. I got to a point of feeling that it wasn’t very important, what I do,” she said a bit wistfully. “It’s not that I don’t think I’m important in life cuz I have kids and people who would be very sad if something happened to me, but I didn’t feel my work was very important. Which will surprise people, especially the Xena fans, because they’ve been very expressive about how much it means to them. And you can hear it, but you can’t feel it.”
“You can’t be on the other side of the TV screen and know what they felt watching that character, those stories,” I said to her.
“Right! Right! It has far more reality for them than for me,” she agreed.
“What did you do at the seminar?” I queried.
“I went there most days. I gave a speech at the opening,” she said, thinking back. “I attended some of the lectures. They had Ngila Dickson and Philipa Boyens, writer of the first Lord of the Rings movie. They were giving a talk about women behind the scenes dealing with technology and their jobs as costume designer and writer. Rob participated and did a talk on funding. It was just great! It was a wonderful way to get new skills and new information from experts in the field and to get inspired by their stories and their struggles. And mostly it was a great way not to feel alone.
“There’s such strength in coming together. To remind one another that female-driven stories and the female perspective is still largely unexplored and is important! We’ve lost our lineage. We’ve lost women’s history. And, in my speech, I cited how in doing the Warrior Women series, some of these stories were incredibly hard to research because powerful women were written out of history in the last 2,000 years.
“Matriarchal societies have been broken down and reinvented. We’ve lost our power and we’ve lost our sense of lineage. Nobody knows their great-great-great-great-great-great-grandmother’s name. And her name was only her father’s name anyway. Some part of me is absolutely outraged about that! How we have lost our name. So I’m all for people changing their names and reinventing themselves in the way that they feel God intended them to be,” she stated decisively.
“When you said change their name, do you mean women keeping their maiden names?” I asked curiously.
“No, call yourself what you darn well like,” she proclaimed. “I went to school with a girl, Valerie Code, and she had told me, at about 13 years old, that she wanted to change her name. Everybody was aghast when she changed her name to Zoe Mollot. Mollot was her mother’s French Canadian name and Zoe is who she felt she was. And I said that’s a fantastic thing to do! If you feel your name is an expression of self, claim it! Just like if you feel you’re born in the wrong-gendered body, claim it!” she laughed. “Be true to an inner knowing.”
“Just to make sure I’m hearing this through the static, she went from Valerie to Zoe?” I confirmed.
“Valerie to Zoe,” Lucy said, and I could see her mentally nodding her head in approval. “And all our friends would say, ‘Oo, why’d she do that? Valerie’s such a nice name,’” Lucy said, mimicking their snooty voices. “I was the only person who could remember that Valerie had told me in Form 3 she wanted to be Zoe.”
“How old was she when she changed her name?” I wondered.
“She might have been 18 or 19 which is quite young to make that decision, but it had been brewing a long time,” Lucy explained. “She’s an artist now. A very unique, wonderful human being.”
“Were men allowed at WIFT?” I asked.
“Oh, yes, men are allowed to join WIFT,” Lucy said, laughing as she pronounced it like a bit of bird feather on the wind. “Generally they don’t, but there were plenty of men there. A lot of women don’t think they’re entitled to apply even though they work in film and TV. But just the fact that you’re a woman working in the industry is enough and you should join up. It’s very empowering. Very encouraging. And really re-invigorated my aims in life.”
“And turned them toward?” I prompted.
“Where I want to be artistically. So I’m firing on all cylinders,” she stated.
“A studio will tell you that a woman’s film won’t sell tickets because not enough women will come to see it,” I began. “Was there a discussion about women not going to see women-generated films or TV shows? Why are Xena and Gabrielle the first female couple since Cagney and Lacey in a drama?”
“People have to be courageous and they have to cast correctly. Write the thing and find someone who has appeal across the board and not just go with some old bit of chicken. A better piece of chicken,” Lucy laughed. “That doesn’t make the heart of the show. Neither Renee nor I would fit into the mold they’re going for at the moment. You have to have people with real cojones, like Rob, to say, ‘These people are the best people for the role.’ People like him are few and far between.”
“It does seem like women don’t support women as much as they should be going to movies and watching TV shows that deal with women’s lives,” I said.
“Yeah,” Lucy sighed. “I’m talking about enlightened women - real women. I’m not talking about mealy-mouthed, low-reaching beings. But people that have evolved out of the cave.”
“The image that popped into my mind when you said mealy-mouthed women was the suburban woman of the fifties who was totally led to believe they had to please their man, had to be jealous of every other woman on the block because they might steal your man, so how on earth could they bond with other women when they were put into a situation that the whole world was threatening to them? Did I say that right?” I asked her, wondering if I’d made any sense. “Maybe that’s what we need to grow out of, maybe that’s what we’re starting to grow out of.”
“I hope so. You know, it’s about evolved spirits,” Lucy explained. “I hate to get all mystical on you, but I’m really interested in this these days. There are different levels of evolution. Some people are primitive. There’s many degrees. You go from being absolutely spongelike, single cell - I’m talking metaphorically about truly stupid, primitive, cruel people who live at a really base level and who are very competitive, who are threatened by everybody and have no capacity to, oh shit, what am I trying to say?” Lucy began laughing.
She began again. “They’re ungenerous in every way. And it’s not about intelligence either. It’s really not. Then there are people like Gandhi on the top, who are incredibly unselfish and always seeking the light.”
“Are you reading about stuff like this or talking to other people who are interested in it?” I asked.
“Yeah, I’ve had a few experiences lately which have really led me in a whole different direction in life. I’m quite interested in all sorts of things these days. Anyway, I’m not interested in propagating this stuff,” she laughed. “People will find things in their own way in their own time.”
As Lucy found the Naked Samoans and their new animated TV show called bro’Town.
“Naked Samoans is a theatre troup about growing up in Auckland in Grey Lynn. When I was growing up, there were a lot of Polynesians living there,” Lucy explained. “These days it’s very white and gentrified. It used to be quite a Polynesian stronghold and I went to school with a lot of these boys. So I know them very well. They’re the guys who make it - the characters who are portrayed in this TV show. Anyway, I love them. I totally get it!”
“Is it a comedy?” I asked. “The title made it sound funny.”
“Yeah, it’s The Simpsons, but Down Under.” She paused. “Not Simpsons, it’s Fat Albert,” she laughed.
“You did a voiceover for a character,” I queried.
“I was guesting as myself at their school, I think,” Lucy said, rummaging through her mind. I got the feeling she did the bit some time ago. It takes months for animated shows to be produced.
On March 12 - 14, Lucy performed at the S.T.A.G.E. benefit for AIDS Project LA. It was Andrew Lloyd Webber night and she sang “Love Changes Everything” from Aspects of Love.
“People were wondering how you got involved in the S.T.A.G.E. benefit?” I asked.
“Through my singing teacher, Eric Vetro, and Marissa Jaret Winokur,” she said. “They just said, ‘Come and do it!’ and, of course, that’s a great cause and I love to help and it’s good to have a goal when you’re doing lessons of any sort.”
That’s right. Lucy has been taking singing lessons. “Good point. I hadn’t thought about that. Something to work toward,” I agreed.
“And it’s so wonderful to surround yourself with creative human beings,” she added.
The production was enormous. There were almost fifty performers in the three-hour show and the director deserves major kudos for getting them on and off stage without a hitch. First thing I noticed was that no one stopped to take a bow. When your song was done, there was a short time for applause, you walked off and the next performer walked out.
“What was it like with all these people?” I asked, trying to picture the mob scene backstage.
Lucy laughed. “That’s the thing, nobody comes and calls you or anything. They know ‘my thing’s coming up.’ It’s so low-key behind the scenes.”
“Are you sitting anywhere where you can see the other performances?” I queried.
“Oh yeah, there are TV screens. You’re right down in the bowels of the building,” she chuckled. “Everybody’s walking around. There’s a green room, showers, dressing rooms. There are about three floors below the stage. It’s terrific. Everybody takes care of their own business. Everybody puts their own makeup on and changes and talks in the dressing room. You’re all sitting together. Sean McDermott was there. He played Danny with me in Grease. So we hung out. Oh, I just love where he’s gone as a performer. I think he’s magnificent as Jesus doing the ‘Gethsemane’ number from Jesus Christ Superstar!” she said in awe.
“Some people were newcomers, a lot were old-timers, having done the benefit more than once. How was it being one of the new kids on the block?” I asked.
“Very lovely. They’re totally welcoming. You know, it’s a benefit. There’s a great feeling of love and inclusion,” she said. “Actually, that’s a very Broadway thing, too. That community is not at all bitchy and mean at the level I’ve experienced it. They’re incredibly welcoming. And ‘what’s good for the community is good for the individual’ is how they seem to feel. Yeah, I was blown away by that. But I really just enjoyed being in the company of all those performers. It’s a wonderful thing they do.”
A week before the show, I was talking with Lucy and she asked if any fans were coming. Singing in public is a scary thing for her and she said if I could tell her Xena fans would be there, she’d feel ever so much more comfortable singing for them. I put out the word and, bless their hearts, heaps of fans showed up. And Lucy came out to meet them all three days.
Before the show, I brought all the emails of support from the fans over to Lucy. Some that were coming and some that just wanted to cheer her on from afar. She started reading them and sat right down to write them a note: “Thanks so much for all your warm thoughts and encouragement. Everybody needs a little help to get up and perform under pressure, so I am going to go out there and channel Xena, the way other people do. Never tried that before - not since the end of the show! It’ll be lovely to have in the audience those of you who can make it. But I’ll be receiving all good vibes sent my way. God Bless, Lucy.”
“Did it mean something to you to have the Xena fans there?” I asked.
“It was great to have the Xena fans there,” she said warmly and then laughed. “I felt I had friends in the audience that would support me if I crashed and burned or if I managed to get through - and I managed to get through. That was very nice, actually.”
I noticed a difference in her performance each night. The first one, she held her own, but looked a bit scared. The second night, there was more of a swing to the song, as if she was getting more comfortable. And on the third night, it was jazzed up and she gave a bit of a wave to the fans in the front rows. “Did it get easier as each night went by? How nervous were you the first night?” I asked.
Lucy paused. “Mmm, did it get easier?” There was a long pause. “Well, you’ve got the comfort of knowing you did actually manage to pull it off once before. I think, on the outside, I looked fairly relaxed, but I would always have a moment of spasm before I went on and you just have to ride through it. I just fall back on technique. It’s like bungee jumping to me,” she laughed. “You just do what the instructor says. Don’t go putting your personal reading on what they said. Just do what they said.”
“Bungee jumping!” I laughed. “That’s fascinating, comparing it to bungee jumping.”
“Yeah, don’t think about it, just do what you were told. Don’t be creative,” Lucy chuckled.
It seems Lucy was out and about in Auckland recently with two of her friends, Danielle Cormack and Madeleine Sami, and they were having an interesting conversation overheard by fellow diners and reported on the next day in the New Zealand Herald.
“The word is out you went to a restaurant with Danielle and Madeleine? And had a conversation about men’s ‘worth?’” I began, delicately. “Did you read that in the paper?”
“No, I didn’t read it, but I did hear something like that. I think somebody else was talking about and we said, ‘Is that true?’” she said quite innocently. “What was the article? What did it say?”
“The article said, ‘Lucy was dining with…’” I began.
“...Madeleine and Dan,” Lucy interrupted me.
I shushed her and kept reading. “‘Apparently, when you’re a 30-something married woman with a couple of kids in tow, you have to rely on your younger compatriots to keep informed on certain bedroom matters.’”
Lucy let out a guffaw. “Oh, we do tend to get a bit rowdy. We were out again last night. We went to see Michael Hurst in Goldie. And then we went out for a drink afterwards and promptly started some other incredibly inappropriate conversation, loudly, in a public place.”
“Do you do that on purpose or does it just come naturally?” I teased.
“When it’s the three of us together, yeah, we’re outta control,” she chuckled.
I continued reading the article. “‘Lucy asked her companions how one would go about measuring a man’s, er, worth, without having to analyse the er, worth, itself.’”
Lucy let out another guffaw.
“‘Is it hands or feet?’” I finished reading. “It sounded so much like you. There’s no way I thought that wasn’t you,” I laughed.
“Well, then, you’re right,” she laughed. “I’m sure I didn’t say ‘worth’ though,” she added mischievously. “That’s not my expression, but, yes, all right, okay, I admit it, it was me. Lucy the role model died. We can’t find her.” And she burst out laughing. “But the thrust of the question…” And she dissolved in giggles again.
“No pun intended,” I shot back. “So,” I said nonchalantly, “did you get the answer to your question?”
“Is that, in fact, a reliable indicator? That’s something that’s plagued female scientists for years. It was purely a scientific question, you see,” Professor Lucy declaimed.