The dancing lady of Lyre, Lyre and nibbling on the god of war
by Sharon Delaney
The Chakram Newsletter: Issue 11
“Renee's engaged!” I was calling Lucy at seven o'clock in the morning, her time, and I thought this would be a great way to wake up a sleepy Kiwi.
“I know!” She sounded so happy for her friend. “I've got such a nice photo of her which really captures her pure jubilation. It was the first time I had seen her after Steve proposed. We looked at each other and yelled, ‘AHHHHHH!!’” Lucy laughed. “I took her picture right at that moment. It's such a great photo.”
Just picturing this scene made me laugh. “One of those ‘girl’ moments,” I said to Lucy.
“Yeah,” she said, with a big grin in her voice.
Lucy and Renee had made a video welcome for the Pasadena convention this past January. In it, Lucy was back wearing her old outfit and she remarked, in the video, that Renee had been a big help to her getting back in shape. Then they looked at each other and laughed. I wondered at the time just what help Renee had been to Lucy. I mentioned the video to her and asked, teasingly, “Was Renee pulling candy bars out of your hand?”
This brought a burst of laughter from Lucy and she said, “Yes.”
“Making you park farther from the sets?” I continued.
“Exactly, that's exactly it,” Lucy laughed even harder. “She's my good buddy. She chivvies me along.”
“Did you do any special exercises?” I queried.
“I had to do stomach exercises,” she explained. “And I'm a fan of Pilates, so I do that. But, really, breastfeeding is what took the weight off. I lost nothing for about three months and then, all of a sudden, as the baby started to eat more and more, it all just fell off! He's twenty-five pounds now and he's only five months old.”
Not only am I babyless, I'm clueless about things like this. So I asked, naively, “Is he big for his age?”
“He's in the top 1% of big babies. He's tall and pretty roly-poly.”
“Well, it's not as if he’s raiding the refrigerator,” I said.
“No,” Lucy laughed. “It’s all good food from me.”
“What is he like?”
Lucy thought about this for a moment. “He's going to be really rambunctious. He's noisy and very single-minded - an incredibly determined kid. Rob and I look at each other and laugh thinking, ‘Oh boy, are we in for it!’ He's got a lot of personality and lets you know he's around. And he's very easy to understand.”
“In terms of what he wants?” I asked.
“Yeah. Whatever he wants, he wants NOW!” Lucy chuckled. '”He's generally very good-natured, but let’s you know if he's unhappy with something. If I have a banana and won't let him hold it or eat it, he's pretty unhappy. And I can’t because he's not ready for solid food yet.”
Having no pride and being thoroughly intrigued with the subject of how babies work, I asked, “If he's never had a banana, how does he know he wants one?” Lucy, very patient with me, explained. “First of all, they want to put everything in their mouths. Second, they can smell food. It's their most sensitive sensory organ at this age and a direct link to their brain. A survival technique, I would guess.”
Smell - how could someone who survives tracking down fudge stores in a mall by their scent forget smell! Luckily, Lucy couldn't see me blushing.
As we were having this discussion, another scent wafted its way toward Lucy and she turned in her chair to welcome Rob who had arrived with a cup of coffee. Said coffee had been intended for himself, but was charmed right out of his hands by the early rising Kiwi lass who had put my interview ahead of her breakfast.
“You've got a lot on your plate right now,” I said, "with Julius and the show.”
“We did night shooting for a wonderful episode, ‘Antony and Cleopatra,’ and went away to film a sea battle up the coast. That was incredibly unsettling. Rob was away at the time and Julius and I both got horribly sick. It took him a couple weeks to get back to normal which coincided with the time Rob returned. So Rob thinks it's because he wasn't there,” Lucy laughed.
She continued. “Parenting, in general, is the hardest job in the world. Being a solo parent is a very difficult road to hoe. You need another parent around or incredible support. When Rob's away, life gets a whole lot more difficult because there’s nobody to hand the baby to.”
“You have a nanny, yes?” I asked.
“Only at work, not at home,” she said.
I remembered Lucy talking about how hard it was in the beginning to give the baby over to the nanny. I wondered if she was finding it any easier.
“Well, I’ve found someone who understands that this is MY baby,” Lucy laughed. “Who gives me absolute sovereignty over my home, my space, my car, my everything. I think that’s important to everyone that their home is their castle.”
“I never really thought about that,” I commented, “but the nanny's job is to be who the parent is. I remember Renee talking about your body double and how she has to be aware of the sanctity of your characterization of Xena. She can't act Xena as she might portray her, but as you play her. The nanny can’t raise the child the way she might raise her own child.”
“Right,” Lucy agreed. “My nanny and I absolutely agree that babies are raised with all gentleness - you cannot spoil a baby. It’s impossible to give it too much love. There's no point disciplining a child under two in any way. Their brains are not capable of learning anything except comfort or pain. It's absolutely binary.
“And if you teach them pain, it's going to stunt them in unimaginable ways. Just give them all the love and cuddles you can. As a young mother, I remember discovering with Daisy when she was a baby, when you are so frustrated you want to scream because this baby just won't stop crying, just cuddle them. Don't think, don’t do anything, just cuddle. And the moment will pass and you'll be back to a loving place. Or make the baby safe and walk away for ten minutes. Get some space and you'll be able to go back.”
“When you think about it,” I said, “most parents get no training, no classes, they just dive right in and it's amazing…”
“...so many kids turn out so well,” Lucy laughed, reading my mind.
“God Fearing Child” was filmed a few weeks after the birth of Lucy's own child. “Did that have an effect on you? Do you think you acted differently than you would have if you hadn't just had Julius?”
“Yeah,” she acknowledged. “It was good to have that fresh in my mind. They wanted to film that episode before I had the baby and for two reasons I didn't want to. One was that I hadn't done it for so long, I could hardly remember what it was like,” she laughed. “And the other was that I didn't want the baby within to hear me making those kinds of noises. It felt wrong to do that. I felt it would be distressing.”
“Julius would have gone through childbirth twice?” I queried.
“Yeah. I didn't want him to hear that any more than he had to.”
“This was also the return of Hercules,” I said.
“It was good for the fans to see Kevin,” Lucy stated. “And I do miss having the Hercules unit filming with us. I love going to work in the morning and seeing people from one of the other shows - Cleo or Jack. It makes the day even better.”
“Like running into a sibling?” I chuckled.
“Yeah,” Lucy said warmly.
As most people are aware, filming time for infants is very restricted. The extras casting director in New Zealand had told me a bit about how they went about finding babies to play Xena's daughter, Eve, on the show. They had decided to use lookalikes rather than twins. And, as the baby was in quite a lot of scenes, they needed lots of them. She mentioned going to supermarkets and walking up to women with babies and asking if they'd like to be on Xena. That must have raised a few eyebrows.
“I gather you've been the mother of heaps of babies on the show?” I teased.
“If you watch any one scene, you'll see there's a baby with hair, baby with no hair, pretty baby, ugly baby,” Lucy laughed. “No, they were all very cute, actually. But it was freaky for the older babies. When I'm trying to do exits out of frame, where Xena would jump up and go into a flip, I couldn't do the jump with a real baby on my back. The babies are always crying and you've got to redo all the dialogue. We were all wishing Eve would hurry up and grow up, so we did something about it.”
And all you folks reading this newsletter will probably already know just what they did!
“Have you seen any of the slides from ‘Antony and Cleopatra’ yet?” Lucy asked excitedly.
“No. Is it good?”
“Oh, it’s great! A fantastic episode,” Lucy said enthusiastically. “Michael Hurst directed it and did a beautiful job.”
“I heard Xena reads Gabrielle's scrolls in ‘Kindred Spirits,’” I said happily to Lucy. “Remember the prison scene with Gabrielle holding the wounded Xena in ‘Ides Of March’?”
“‘...I wish I hadda read your scrolls,’” we both said at the same time.
“Good!” Lucy said gleefully.
“When Rob told me it was part of the episode, I choked up. He has a habit of doing that to me,” I laughed. “The fans have been waiting a long time for that scene.
“And speaking of beautiful moments, how about that dancing lady at the end of ‘Lyre, Lyre’?” I said cheekily.
“Hey!” Lucy tossed right back at me. And I could just see the big grin on her face.
For those who haven't seen the episode yet or couldn’t tell what was going on under the closing credits, a very pregnant Lucy, wearing Gabrielle's go-go dancer outfit, came dancing down the stage while Jace, Joxer's brother, and his backup singers were doing a production number to “Dancing In The Moonlight.”
“You've just got to tell me how that came about,” I said.
Lucy began to explain. “I had been wrapped.”
Puzzled, I interrupted her. “Finished filming ‘wrapped’?” I asked. “Or wrapped up?”
“Finished filming,” she laughed as she was picturing herself wrapped up, then continued. “I was hanging around because it was the last day for John Cavill, the director of photography on that show. I wanted to give a little speech and say goodbye to a few people who were leaving. With about ten minutes to go, I said, ‘Oh, I really want to be in that scene!’ I loved Renee in the go-go outfit. I ran into the costume bus, eight months pregnant, and said, ‘Give me Renee's double's costume.’ Her double is bigger and taller. I squeezed into the suit, they put the shiny boots on me and I went and surprised them coming out as they were filming the number.”
“It looked like you came from the back of the stage,” I commented.
“I did,” she said. “I think I winked at the camera operator so he could pull focus, but nobody else knew I was coming. Ted didn't know why everyone was laughing and cheering as this enormous balloon of a woman burst through his dancers in her go-go outfit.”
Lucy was in stitches telling this story. She obviously had a great time putting one over on everyone.
“The look on Ted’s face must have been priceless,” I laughed along with her. “And the viewers loved it.”
“Did they?” Lucy asked.
“They commented on your bravery, not being ashamed of your body, your sense of humor and having the guts to go ahead and do it!” I told her.
“I think the bravery comes from the way Renee and I and all the crew see our work as such a family atmosphere,” Lucy said warmly. “We love coming to work, hanging out and kidding one another. I wasn't thinking particularly of the finished product. We were just having a good time. I wasn't trying to make a statement. Just feeling really good about myself and not being ashamed.”
“You were among family and friends,” I said.
“Yeah. We'd been working with the dancers. We had a week off where we rehearsed the dances every day. It was extremely difficult for Ted and I in particular,” Lucy said.
“Renee is so good at dancing,” I commented enviously. “I'm so jealous. I Love to dance, but I have no natural talent for it at all.”
“Renee's a killer,” Lucy said proudly. “But for Ted and I, we found it really hard to be acting, dancing and hitting marks all at the same time. Thinking about technically where the camera needs you to be and remembering the words to the songs. Being pregnant. I was also tired and a bit spacey.
“On the first day, when we were filming the ‘War’ piece, you can see Ted and I sometimes a bit out of step. We were on the sides laughing in despair and dismay at how hopeless we were,” Lucy laughed. “Just really screwing up a lot of takes. It was truly a humbling experience.
"Ted was over last night and we were telling people about how bad we were. It's been a long time since I completely stunk at something,” Lucy said with wonder in her voice.
I was getting the feeling she enjoyed the challenge and also the feeling of not having been perfect and the world didn't end. There's a sense of relief and freedom in being allowed to fail at something and not being kicked off the planet. Although, perhaps these are just my own feelings listening to her tell this story.
“By the way,” Lucy added. “Ted's a fantastic swing dancer.”
“Jace was a very endearing character,” I told Lucy. “The fans liked him a lot. He had a lot of dignity.”
“I'm glad,” Lucy said. “I know when people meet Ted at conventions, they find out how different he is from Joxer.”
“Joxer,” I sighed. “By the time this newsletter comes out, Joxer will be dead!”
“We're really going to miss him,” Lucy said sadly. “We shot his death scene the other day and it was very poignant. But he comes back as a spook in the episode after that, so he's hanging around for a few more days. Which is great because we want to give him a proper send-off. He's touched a lot of members of the family.”
“Death in the Xenaverse, in Hollywood, in television,” I mused. “Just how permanent can it be? You could bring Jace back?”
“Yeah, but he would be so old and that would mean wearing prosthetics which is a miserable experience,” Lucy sighed. “Ted's just spent two weeks being old. It's such a cruel thing to ask of someone.”
“That's right,” I exclaimed. “You're jumping twenty-five years into the future. Are you ready for that?”
“No, I'm not,” Lucy said. “If I play Meg or any of the other Xena lookalikes, it'll be my turn to wear the makeup. Of course, Meg and Joxer were together, so I think we're going to have to go back and tell Meg that Joxer's dead.”
“Joxer marries Meg!” I said, liking this idea.
“Yeah,” Lucy chuckled. “They end up together. I already did one day in prosthetics playing Meg. She and Joxer have a whole series of children just like in Monty Python's The Meaning of Life. Meg's got a thousand brats and is just as mean as a snake and a crazy old woman.”
As Lucy was telling me about Meg and Joxer, I was remembering a bit of news I’d been told about an upcoming episode and who one of Joxer's kids turns out to be. Only in the Xenaverse could Virgil be Joxer's son and Livia is actually Xena’s daughter. I love it when they do stuff like that. Okay, folks, everyone off to the library to look up these two people. Bet Xena isn't even mentioned in their lineage. Oh well, what do historians know.
Did you hear the one about the Warrior Princess and the Pie? No? Well, I'll let Lucy tell it.
“How did you manage not to get hit during the pie fight in ’Punchlines'?” I asked.
“I was standing off camera biffing pies with the art department,” Lucy laughed. “They were the ones doing the throwing. I wasn’t supposed to get hit until the very end of the show, so, of course, I'm mucking with all the others just trying desperately hard to get Renee and Ted. But the pies were a bit rough.”
“I thought they used something soft like whipped cream,” I told her.
“The problem with that is you can't wash it off. You can't do multiple takes,” Lucy explained. “It doesn't wash out of your hair, starts to smell and the floor gets greasy and dangerous.
“The man from E! Entertainment, Greg Agnew, was visiting the set that day and I said. ‘Oh, I'm gonna pie you during the filming.’ He was a good sport and said okay. So I smashed him in the face with this pie that was made of potato flakes that had been sitting around all day. It was as hard as a rock. He got a black eye! So did Renee.
“Phil Ivey, our art director, was the one who got me at the end of the episode,” Lucy laughed.
One of the most touching moments recently was Xena singing a lullaby to Eve while she was breastfeeding.
“Breastfeeding,” Lucy said proudly. “That's something new for television.”
“Who wrote the song?” I asked her.
“Joe LoDuca made up that song,” Lucy told me. “I had to go into the studio to loop it because of a footstep on the soundtrack caused by someone stepping on a twig in the bushes. The footstep wasn't out of place because there was a bad guy creeping through the trees.
“The first time I sang it, I was very relaxed and sang it really nicely. Then I had to go back in late on a Friday night and do it again and I was so tired. You just can’t sing when you've been fighting and working hard all day and I did a tired, awful version of the song.
“Later, when I heard it, I was furious. I said, ‘How could you people let that go through? Don't you ever let me go out having done substandard work because I'm too tired to judge myself!’ And they hemmed and hawed and tried to make excuses, but it went through a lot of people's headphones and nobody pulled me up on it.
“We reached a new understanding that day. If I give a substandard performance, they have to say something to me. None of this being polite or she's the star or coddle her ego. I can't stand that. It just makes me furious.”
“Being afraid of hurting your feelings doesn't help you do your best work,” I said.
“Doesn't help me at all,” Lucy agreed.
Speaking of some of Lucy's best work - Xena's love scenes with Ares in “Eternal Bonds” and “Amphipolis Under Siege” raised temperatures as well as eyebrows. I go on record as having received reports of melted television screens across the country. Xena certainly gives 100% to any objective she sets out to conquer and lucky Lucy gets to go right along with her. I think “love scene with Kevin Smith” on my list of activities for the day would surely send me winging off to work with a smile on my face. Twelve hours of kissing Kevin, uh. Ares, nibbling on his chest, running my fingers through his hair - oh God, I think first I'll just ask Lucy about the rather intimate kiss in “Eternal Bonds.”
“I can't remember,” Lucy says, laughing. “Where were we standing?”
“You can't remember!” I said, gawping in astonishment. “The nightmare sequence in the field?”
“Oh. that's right,” Lucy said calmly. “That wasn't as deep a kiss as it looked. You kind of go for it as you're pulling away. It just looks like it.”
“Excellent camera work,” I said, going limp with the memory.
“You know, it's funny, because there's no schwing. Kevin and I have worked together so much and if you have to kiss anyone, let it be Kevin Smith for all sorts of reasons. Not just because he's gorgeous, but he's not confused about it,” Lucy said. “It's totally safe. And then the next episode - what was it called?”
“‘Amphipolis Under Siege,’” I answered.
“We had to do it so long, all day, that it got to be like shaking hands,” Lucy laughed.
I pulled my eyebrows off the ceiling and stuttered, “Like shaking hands!?”
Lucy tried to be serious as she gave me a tutorial on the art of cinematic lovemaking, but just couldn't keep a straight face. She burst out laughing.
“As an actor, when you're going to start nibbling on someone's chest, do you have to ask their permission?” I asked, thinking I had phrased that very professionally. Well - I really wanted to know. And Lucy, over the two years we've been doing these interviews, has always been extremely patient with my sometimes out-of-leftfield questions.
She explained how she, Kevin and the director, Mark Beesley, had worked the scene out. “I was standing up and I said, ‘This feels really boring just kissing around the face. We did that in the last episode.’ Then I said to Mark, ‘What if I’m licking his chest? Is that all right, Kevin?’ Kevin said, ‘Yeah, fine.’ And Mark said, ‘No, bite him!’ ‘Yeah, excellent,’ Kevin and I both said. We knew it needed something different. And then, when the camera's rolling, you just go for it. And because it's all right with both of you. there's nothing uncomfortable about it.”
As we were talking, I was reminded of the fact that Renee told me in her interview she had joined a scene study group. And she mentioned having to do kissing scenes with relative strangers and that she was finding it difficult.
“I said to Renee, you don't just close your eyes and pretend it's someone you care about?” I told Lucy. “And Renee responded, ‘No, I'm very aware of who I'm with.’”
“That's where Renee and I are completely different,” Lucy explained. “We have talked about our acting styles. She's very vulnerable to the person in front of her. She sees who they are all the time and acts off them. Sometimes, if that person is bad, you're vulnerable to their bad performance.
“I work in a different way where I imbue the other actor with things they may or may not have. It makes me a little less vulnerable to a bad performance by them. Generally, unless I just despise someone - which is very rare - I could probably kiss anybody and make it look like I was interested.”
Lucy continued. “I think it also comes with us having brains that operate differently. She's much more mathematical, analytical. She compartmentalizes and is great at organizing a million things. That's what makes her really good at directing. I'm much more organic, less disciplined.”
“Intuitive, emotional?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Lucy said. “I can't even explain what I do whereas Renee can. And she attacks things in a different order than me when she reads a script.
“She was working on one of the scenes for the study group and asked if I would read some lines opposite her. I said, ‘Sure, absolutely.’ Then she said, ‘Now just do it flat with me, all right?’ And I said, very quickly, without even thinking, ‘Flat has no part in my process.’
“Renee laughed and laughed at what I had said and the way I had said it,” Lucy chuckled. “Because she will learn things completely flat and then go with it. Whereas I have to feel what everything means before the words have any sequence. It has to be the feeling and then the words come on top of that. So we work exactly the opposite way around to get to the same point.”
“And when it's put together, you can't tell the difference in the end result. The work you do together is so seamless,” I told her. And that really is the heart and soul of this show - the fortuitous pairing of two characters and two actors.
“I have to learn dance steps one at a time and then I can put it together into the dance. My friend Isabelle's feet seemed to feel the music and she never seemed to have to tell them what to do,” I told Lucy.
“Right, you can feel once you know the steps. That’s it exactly, Sharon,” Lucy said.
Lucy had been scheduled to attend the Feminist Expo 2000, but was unable to make it because of changes in her filming schedule. She had also attended a benefit put on by the Feminist Majority Foundation to raise money to help support and build awareness of what is happening to women in Afghanistan.
“I would have loved to have been there,” Lucy said. “I’m especially interested in their efforts to help the women of Afghanistan. I attended one of their rallies and learned about Physicians for Human Rights - a group doing studies and publicizing what is happening to women in Afghanistan. They are killing women and little girls, their spirits are being crushed,” Lucy exclaimed.
“Social genocide - killing also what women bring to a society,” I said.
“It's called gender apartheid, but that doesn’t seem strong enough to me. Gendercide - maybe that’s it,” Lucy stated. “The women are dying because they can't get medical help for easily solved problems. It's breaking my heart. I feel very bonded to womenfolk around the world.
“I can't imagine a little soul growing up without being instilled with a sense of value. That they can do anything and that being a girl is no obstacle. That really touches me.
“I don’t think Western society realizes how 18 years of war in Afghanistan has impacted on the culture. That beautiful culture has nothing to do with the Taliban regime. They're simply the most militant sect of the Mojahedin who were supported by Western money.
“There are 60,000 widows in the capital, Kabul, alone. There are so few men and yet a woman's not allowed out of her house without a male relative escort. The bottom floor windows have to be blacked out of any house where a woman lives. Little girls are not allowed to own books, radios, mirrors. They're not allowed to see a male doctor. They claim to be Islamic, but there’s no part of Islam which says children may not play with pigeons or wear bells.”
“What’s the matter with playing with bells?” I exclaimed.
“There’s no joy allowed,” Lucy said sadly.
And, as we were talking about the life-affirming aspects women bring to the world when they are allowed to be part of it, Lucy’s own new life and joy was brought into the room, into our conversation and into Lucy’s arms. I heard, for myself, the loquacious Julius Robert Bay Tapert.
“Here comes a hungry baby. Hello bubba!” Lucy said gently. “I heard you yelling downstairs.”
“Time for lunch?” I chuckled.
“Yes,” Lucy said. “Aww, he scratched himself. Poor little man.”
I can hear baby noises.
“He's such a rowdy boy. Oh, oh, he’s spotted the computer. He thinks it's a television. ‘Let me at it, let me at it,’” Lucy laughs.
I tell Lucy what Renee said in our last interview about Lucy calling her up and calmly saying, “We have a son.”
“She’s the first person I rang,” Lucy said wonderingly. “Isn't that funny? In fact, she's the only person I talked to that morning except for my Dad.”
“She was so thrilled,” I told her.
“He's touching the keyboard. Rob!” Lucy called out to her husband. “Trouble,” she laughed. “He’s so like his dad. Can you hear him? God, you should see him. He’s playing the keyboard like a piano.”
I can - and it sounds like he's using all ten fingers! I thought there would be pounding noises, but it's more the sound of a speed typist.
“He sits with his dad when Rob's on the computer sometimes,” Lucy explained, chuckling at the antics of her son.
It's time to let Lucy take care of her son, but there's one more question I want to ask.
“You ready for the sixth season?” I say to her.
“The scripts are looking great!” Lucy says, enthusiastically. “We're all so committed to making this an awesome season. Especially because, in our minds, it’s the last one. The sixth season’s gonna be fantastic!”
And who am I to argue with a Warrior Princess.