Trust Me, They’re Not Looking At Your Knees
by Sharon Delaney
The Chakram Newsletter: Issue 14
First I laid the three-foot square of cardboard on top of my snack table and took the questions written on strips of paper and played with them like a pictureless jigsaw puzzle until they seemed to be in some coherent order. Next I changed the batteries in the tape recorder, unwrapped a new audiotape and put the recorder on top of the first question so I'd remember to press the “record” button. I lay my watch in between the questions so I could keep an eye on the time. And then I locked the ex-nun in the bedroom and waited for the phone to ring.
Lucy gave a whispered “hello” when I answered the phone. She had just put Julius down for a nap and was tiptoeing out of the room.
I whispered back, “I was just talking with Renee and she was telling me about this crazed photographer at her wedding.”
Lucy's burst of laughter let me know she was safely in another room. “Oh, me!” she chortled. “I realized afterward I was a very aggressive photographer. That's a tongue in cheek comment, but I just wanted to get some great snaps to give to Renee.”
“She said if she'd known you were going to be that good, she would have cancelled the official photographer,” I chuckled.
“She's being kind,” Lucy said with a smile in her voice. “They were only snapshots and I'm a hopeless photographer. But,” she said, passing along a piece of knew-found knowledge, “Geoff Short, the Xena still photographer, taught me the first rule of photography which is only put as much in the frame as tells the story. I never understood composition before and since he told me that, my photographs have been much better.”
I've always known that Geoff's photos had something special, but that sentence crystalized why they have such a strong impact on fans. Besides having terrific subjects like Lucy and Renee and the effect the intimacy of the storylines creates on the scenes he is shooting, Geoff always seems to catch the heart of each moment and of the characters.
I mentioned this to Lucy and continued, “Other photographers on other shows frequently have a lot of extras or background,” I told her. “Geoff's photos speak to the person looking at them.”
“Fascinating,” Lucy exclaimed. “Well, just telling me that sure has improved my scrapbook and my family album. I'd recommend it.”
“So, I guess it’s safe to say that Renee did get married and you were a guest at the wedding,” I laughed. “I told her I wouldn't say anything until she gave the okay.”
Lucy laughed. “She's the least publicity-minded person in the world. It's just not part of her makeup. She's not that kind of animal. Steve's a wonderful fella. He's the happiest man and he has reason to be.”
“She was getting ready to do her part in the invasion of ‘To Helicon And Back,’” I said.
“Yeah,” Lucy said sadly. “On a Saturday.”
The script for that episode was written by Liz Friedman who had been with Renaissance since the beginning of Xena and is no longer with the show. She did have an opportunity, however, to write another episode (the first was “A Family Affair” with Chris Manheim).
“I miss seeing Liz because I consider her a pal,” Lucy said wistfully. “I know Rob misses her because they were great friends. He trained her up from the very beginning so they have a common language where things don't need to be explained. He really misses that about working with someone like Liz.”
“Didn't she take you to a Passover seder?” I asked.
“My first!” Lucy chuckled.
“They have special foods, don't they?” I inquired.
“Oh yeah,” she said enthusiastically. “We had the works including some kind of beetroot horseradish. Whatever they were eating, I tried - and liked! There were prayers and I got to read a bit. It was interesting. I understood the stories they were talking about because there is a common heritage between Judaism and Christianity.”
“Being part of a special ceremony is like going to another country and getting invited home for supper with a local family,” I said. “My parents are good at that. Once when they were in Venice, some nuns took them to their nunnery. I got them back but it made for an interesting story.”
Lucy laughed. “Contact with the natives is the best part of traveling.”
“Speaking of nuns,” I said, “have you started playing Christmas music yet?”
“I just put up the tree and the lights. And, of course, all Julius wanted to do was bite the glass lights,” she sighed. “I had a terrific time trying to discourage him from that.”
Hmmm - a sign that says “Do Not Touch” or “Hot.” Nope, he can’t read. How do parents handle that? Lucy gives me parenting tip #213.
“I let him have these experiences in a controlled environment,” she explained. “I can tell him things, but his attitude is, ‘I’ll be the judge of that, mum.’ I say, ‘That’s very hot, that cup of tea,’ while I’m holding it and making sure it won’t blister him. He looks at me and he knows what hot means, but he touches it anyway. I say, ‘See, I wasn't lying to you.’ I want to prevent him having a more serious accident down the line.”
“Do you cook Christmas dinner at your house?” I wondered.
“Rob does,” Lucy said.
“He does the cooking?” I asked astonished.
“Yeah, he's an amazing chef, a real gourmet,” she said with pride. “He takes the turkey and soaks it in brine for 24 hours and that does something magical to it. He makes all the stuffing. He's a genius in the kitchen which is just as well, cuz homey don’t cook!” Lucy laughed heartily.
“I know the feeling. If there’s a way to pop it out of the toaster or the freezer, I am on it just like that,” I laughed along with her.
“Yeah. ‘Daisy, come on. Pop Tarts for dinner,’” Lucy chimed in.
Thoughts of hot and cold and wet remind me of the episodes Lucy and Renee have been shooting recently. Shows like “The Abyss.” “You've been physically challenged yourself recently, haven't you?” I asked cautiously, remembering how much Lucy loves being cold and wet.
“Oh my God! That was horrendous, just horrendous!” she mewled pitifully. “The first three years, all our outdoor sets were at Sturges Road. We went back there just to shoot the river stuff in their pool. To create the effect of a moving river, they had outboard motors which meant that every single word we said had to be looped afterwards. That is not ideal simply because you can't easily recreate the mood and the character of your voice and make it carry the same energy and import that it had on the day.”
“Particularly if you’ve been drowning,” I added. “When you were on a talk show in New York recently, you said you were hoarse because of looping. Was it that episode?”
“That would have been the Valkyrie stuff,” Lucy said. “I can't scream like they do in Psycho-type movies.”
“You mean like Hudson Leick does?” I asked curiously, remembering that she and Renee talked about her inability to scream on the behind-the-scenes video.
“Right, I can’t do that,” she said with absolute conviction. “I can yell, but I can’t shriek. I think you need an impulse and I don't seem to have that.”
Well, I don't think Lucy was looking to do the next Friday the Thirteenth movie, so it probably won't hinder her career.
Remember that jigsaw puzzle of questions I mentioned, well there was one about the guy named Rubio in “Abyss.” Some people who are really well versed in Lucy's earlier work thought he looked familiar.
“I worked with him in Funny Business, the TV sketch comedy troupe I was part of. His name is Ian Harcourt,” Lucy said with a smile.
Thinking of Funny Business, I visualized one portion of that show that had distorted, squiggly faces and I was reminded of “The Haunting Of Amphipolis” and Xena and Gabrielle having their arms morph together.
“We had a stocking net over our arms and the rest was CGI. To me, that was quite easy to do because I've had to watch Evil Dead a hundred times,” Lucy said. “And, hanging out with Bruce (Campbell) and Ted (Raimi), you understand how to do that stuff instinctively because they talk and move and act like that all the time. They also talk in sound effects and film terms!” Lucy started to laugh.
Okay, she's got me buffaloed with that imagery. I've seen both Bruce and Ted on stage and they’re very adept at pratfalls, but talking in sound effects and film terms? Lucy starts making really strange noises - whoops, sirens, creaking doors. I'm starting to get the picture.
She's thinking and then says, “‘So I saw Lucy going down the road, jingling some money in her pockets, cut to Daisy screaming, ‘Where's the money from my piggy bank?’” That's an example of how Ted might talk - in pure film terms.”
“He'll use ‘cut to’ as if he's describing a camera direction?” I said in amazement.
“Yeah, all the time,” Lucy laughs. “For the first three years, whenever I was sitting at dinner with the two of them I was absolutely mesmerized. Then I realized that’s their MO.”
“That's the way they entertain themselves and everyone else,” I added.
“Yeah. Totally insane. They're funny, funny guys,” Lucy said, still chuckling.
Far out, I thought, digging out one of my sixties phrases. And that expression also applied to the dance between Xena and Gabrielle in “Heart Of Darkness.”
“Just how far gone were Xena and Gabrielle during that scene?” I asked, wondering if the dance had left any impression on her.
“I haven't seen the episode, so I don't know how it turned out,” Lucy admitted. “I would like to think they were quite far gone. Everyone was becoming very carnal. That was all part of it. But oh God, I could hardly stand up in those shoes!”
Ah-ha! She did remember something about it. Not exactly the part I thought would have made a lasting impression, but that's Lucy. I chuckled to myself. “They were the highest heels I have ever seen you in,” I said sympathetically.
“They were dreadful,” she moaned. “And then, oh man, there was a moment when Gabrielle and Xena had to go back to back. Because Renee was in low heels and I was in very tall ones, they asked me to break my height, which means bend my knees. I thought they were in a fairly tight two-shot, but they were also running a wide camera at the same time. You can see me sort of stalking around her, looking ridiculous with my knees really bent to try to be down at a manageable height to work with Renee.” Lucy begins to laugh harder. “Xena looked like a crane, an ostrich on stilts.”
“I have to tell you, Lucy,” I said to her gently, “your knees were not what people were looking at in that scene. Trust me. There were other facets of that dance capturing people's attention.”
“Okay,” she laughed, “but when they cut to the wide shot, it just looks so silly. If I had dance rehearsals, I know I could pull it off. But the demands on my time are so great that learning to dance is really a low priority for me, I'm afraid. The fact that I'm not a terrific dancer is as much by choice as by lack of talent,” she chuckled. “So I can't complain.
“We did a recent episode and someone said, ‘Gabrielle is dancing in this, shouldn't we have Xena dancing too?’ And everyone went, ‘NOPE!’” Another burst of laughter from Lucy on this unanimous decision to leave her off the dance floor. “They know I don't like to go to the rehearsals. And it didn't hurt the scene. It would have been gratuitous. This was in the episode, ‘The God You Know,’ with the wonderful Alexis Arquette as Caligula.”
Her voice was bubbling with enthusiasm as she began to talk about working with Alexis and Garth Maxwell, the director, on this episode.
“It was such a momentous and rewarding episode,” she began. “I don't ever remember feeling so creatively satisfied. Usually, you have to shoot a show like Xena in a very workmanlike frame of mind - ‘Okay, we've gotta shoot this fight, get these angles.’ It's about banging off the shot list. Get one done - what's next? Get that one done - what's next?
“But we had such moments of pure inspiration this time where one person would have a spark of an idea and then the other person would spark off that and then the third person would spark off that idea. And we all understood each other without having to labor. We were completely in sync and I hope it's borne out by the footage cuz we had an amazing time making it.”
“It seems like the character of Caligula would have to be approached with a fair amount of delicacy,” I said. “There's quite a history of perverted sexuality associated with him.”
“The way he's popularly presented,” Lucy agreed. “We don't explore the sexual scenarios that go along with the Caligula myth. I think he might not have engaged in very much more than a lot of Roman nobility did in those days. But he's just been tarred with a blacker brush than some of his contemporaries.
“And yet he was a very interesting character and there are aspects of him that we really wanted to explore within the parameters of our show,” she continued. “And we got such a fabulous actor to play him. Along with Garth, Alexis was able to imbue Caligula with a measure of humanity and, therefore, honor, even in his perversity.”
“How did Xena relate to him?” I queried.
“The discovery that Xena makes is that although everyone thinks he's evil, she knows he was sick. And that is a new concept in Xena's world. They hadn't developed psychology then, but she pinpoints it,” Lucy said, elaborating on the process she went through in working out Xena's relationship with Caligula.
“This is not evil as she's ever met it,” Lucy explained. “This is about human frailty and she comes to relate to him in some way.”
“You found working through the psychology of this character stimulating?” I asked.
“I’ve always found Xena challenging in some way, but it’s been a long time since I've felt that spark of, I don't want to say it,” she laughed, “divine intervention. When something magic happens.
“It’s there all the time with Renee in a different form,” she continued. “We’ve really worked to understand one another and we’ve earned our relationship. This was a meeting of like minds who don't need any explaining and we just sparked off each other. It was different. What Renee and I have got we’ve worked hard to build. This was a gift out of the blue.”
“You've worked with Garth before,” I said.
“I’ve worked with him a lot,” Lucy pointed out. “But when Alexis got there, it was like he was the missing part of a circuit - the three of us were completely on the same wavelength.”
The day before this interview, I’d been sorting through some new photos for the newsletter and remembered the shots of Xena from “Dangerous Prey” in the Amazon outfit. “You sure are looking good, girl,” I said with admiration for the work Lucy put in getting back into shape after her son was born. “Maybe I'll use one of those shots for the cover with a sign pasted over it that reads ‘Recently Pregnant Woman.’”
“Yeah,” Lucy laughed.
“And how has that young man been doing?” I queried.
“He’s been at about 30 pounds the last five months - just keeps getting taller. And he's started saying words - Pooh bear and bird,” she said with a chuckle.
“Yesterday I went to Daisy's prize-giving at school. It was such a treat to be able to make it. I left Julius with the babysitter. She was carrying him and there was a little picture of me on the top of the newspaper and he said, ‘Oh mum!’ He looked at it and looked at it and then he wriggled out of her arms down to the floor. He went into the laundry and picked up my gray cardigan and just smelled it,” she laughed warmly. “So sad. So poignant. The babysitter had a little weep.”
“Awww, so sweet,” I said, picturing the scene.
“Such a lovely little fella. He's definitely a mummy's boy,” Lucy added.
“Tsianina Joelson’s in ‘Dangerous Prey,’ isn't she?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Lucy exclaimed. “It's pronounced ‘Chanina,’ otherwise known as Choo. She's a lovely woman. She’s a good actress now and physically wonderful at fights, but she's going to be terrific. She and Renee did a killer fight the other day. And just a beautiful person to work with.”
I’d also seen photos of “Ares’ Farm,” and Lucy seemed to have acquired a new talent. “You can milk a cow?” I asked.
“Can now,” Lucy stated with pride.
“Squirt anyone?” I asked in my best investigative manner.
“Renee,” Lucy chortled maliciously. “Gabrielle was giving Xena some lip so Xena squirted her.”
There were also some interesting marks on a parchment good-bye note from Xena to Gabrielle in “The Rheingold.” I decided to see if I could nail down the culprit. “Did you have anything to do with a ‘sealed with a kiss’ mark on that parchment?” I asked firmly, ready to do my best NYPD imitation until she broke. My stern resolve was met with giggles and more giggles.
“Did the art department do that. Maybe I did,” Lucy said evasively. “I think I might have done it. I might be wrong. I'm trying to think.” More giggles. “Yeah, I think that was me, but I don't know if my lips would have made a big enough mark.”
Okay, she seems sincerely befuddled. “Maybe they touched it up?” I said forgivingly. I actually tried to track down the parchment, but it seems to have gone astray in the prop department.
In “Coming Home,” Xena supposedly drowned under some ice. I thought perhaps that type of scene was filmed standing up.
“No,” Lucy explained, “I was lying under a piece of plastic ice with swimmer's gum stuffed up my nose to stop the water from rushing into my lungs.”
“Sounds scary,” I opined.
“We filmed it in a terrible hurry at the end of the day. I remember that,” Lucy reminisced. “One of the lighting guys had to leave because his wife had just gone into labor. Yeah, that was the night James left early.” She laughed.
“That's your strongest memory of that scene?” I said, astonished. “‘The night James left early’?” Lucy never fails to amaze me.
The internet is a strange and wonderful place and sometimes Lucy is absolutely astounded what the fans manage to unearth. I decided to throw a few bits and pieces at her.
“You did a bit in a movie called Ginger Snaps directed by John Fawcett, who also worked on Xena?” I asked.
“I did a voiceover for him,” she answered. “He initially asked if I wanted to play the mother who wound up being played by Mimi Rogers. I wasn’t available for the part so I recorded some voiceovers over the intercom as the school principal. It was fun putting in some silly things - ‘The Raimi brothers, please come to the principal's office.’”
“And you did Celebrity Deathmatch playing yourself,” I added, going down my list.
“Yes, I did!” she chuckled happily.
“You like that show?” I asked.
“I do like that show,” she affirmed. “I watch it sometimes. My daughter looks it up and she was so proud to have a mother who was on that show,” Lucy laughed.
“Do you enjoy doing voiceovers for animation projects?” I queried. “You have so much fun with voices. It's something you seem to enjoy and do well.”
“You know,” Lucy said after a short pause, “it is its own skill. It's quite difficult, I found. I see the results of what I’ve done before and learn from them. Hopefully, I'm getting better at it. I like doing animation, but it only takes two seconds to do - not a lifestyle I'd want to pursue.”
I thought about what she’d said and responded. “For an actor who works as much emotionally off other actors the way you do, it occurs to me not having anyone there would be the toughest part for you.”
“That might be the problem,” Lucy agreed. “In fact, you probably hit the nail on the head there. When I did The Simpsons, often there were no other actors in the room. For the bits I was with Bart and Lisa, those two actresses stayed. But mostly I was just working with a director and a sound person. He told me exactly how he wanted me to say things. And I just had to trust him on that because he knows what he's after and I was completely new to the field.”
“Physically, emotionally and spiritually. you feed off the other person,” I said, knocking it about in my head.
“Right,” Lucy agreed.
“And if that's not there, that could be the toughest…”
“That was very difficult for me, you're right,” she said, finishing my thought.
“You recently did a TV ad in New Zealand promoting early breast cancer detection,” I said, “and you said in a newspaper article you fainted during the mammogram?”
Lucy chuckled. “Yeah, I did. But that was only because I hadn't had any breakfast. I just rushed out to do the commercial and I'm a little bit squeamish. I just crashed. And yet, I can deal with blood and guts and true accidents in a very practical, pragmatic manner. But the abstract idea of diseases makes me want to faint.”
“And you did a painting for an arson-destroyed church in Sydney, Australia?” I dropped casually into the conversation.
“My God! How'd you know that?” Lucy said in open-mouthed astonishment.
“Fans read the newspaper article on the web and posted it to the Xena email lists,” I told her. grinning to myself. “Do you actually paint or did you just do something for this fund-raising effort?”
“I did paint as a teenager - all over my room actually.” Lucy admitted sheepishly. “I painted all kinds of flowers on the back of my door. Violets or made up flowers - beautiful little things they were too. For some reason, I then went minimal and scrapped it all off. I could kill myself for doing that.”
An idea popped into my head as I pictured what the door must have looked like. “If it still existed,” I told Lucy, “you could have removed it from your old bedroom and installed it in Julius’ room in place of the regular one.”
“Yeah,” she said with chagrin at the missed opportunity.
“I’ve never painted anything, but I did once take a piece of coal and draw on the inside of the garage in my house. That, however, was not artistic, it just got me spanked,” I sheepishly admitted.
Lucy laughed. I wished my parents had had her sense of humor. Ah well. Humor is one of Lucy's forte's and it served her well on a recent trip to New York.
“What devilish imp were you listening to when you hopped onto Conan O'Brien’s lap when you were on his show?” I teased.
Lucy let loose an evil chuckle. “I was about to go on holiday and I had all these talk shows to do. I was tired and not really interested in talking about myself. I did not know what I was going to talk about. But when I got to his show, I just had fun.
“I did any damn thing I wanted to and that's cool with them,” she continued happily. “I realized that is far more my niche than any of the others like Regis or any show where I have to sit in a box - 'this is your role.’ Maybe I need to be like I was on Conan for other shows because for the first time, I thought, ‘Yeah, this is how it should be. This is how I should feel.’”
“You looked like you were having fun. It was the best talk show thingy I've seen you do,” I told her.
“I always have a great time with Conan and his producer, Dan Ferguson,” Lucy agreed. “In fact, we went out after the show and drank watermelon martinis,” she laughed.
“Watermelon martinis?” I asked dubiously.
“Yeah. At a place called Luxia,” she explained. “While we were there, one of their band members sang. It was fantastic. I love those guys and Conan’s wonderful. He pretends to have a crush on me, but the truth is, I have a crush on him,” she laughed heartily.
“I think you have a thing for big, tall, redheaded Irishmen,” I tossed back at her and listened to her laughter over the wires.
“Speaking of the Irish,” I began, “I’ve got an ex-nun visiting at the moment. (Bet you all thought I'd never explain the nun in the bedroom.) I popped her into the bedroom when you called cuz I didn't know if I could conduct an interview with someone listening to me.”
“Oh, I like them,” Lucy laughed cheerily.
“Nuns?” I queried.
“Yeah, I like nuns generally,” she said happily.
“Her name is Barbara and I've known her 20 years,” I explained. “About five years ago, she decided she wanted to be a nun. When the time arrived for final vows, she realized that wasn't the way she wanted to live her life. We’ve been spending the morning on the topic. ‘Now what do we do with the rest of our lives?’”
“Yeah,” Lucy said pensively.
“We keep wondering if there's something we’re supposed to be doing. If we just eat, drink and be merry, is that enough?” I asked.
“I think that's okay,” Lucy mused. “That part's important too.” The topic seemed to resonate with Lucy. Her voice softened.
“You're heading into the final season of the show,” I said quietly. “You were in New York on this publicity tour when the studio made the announcement?”
“Yeah,” Lucy said, “I was a little more shaken up than I expected. In fact, I had an interview with a journalist that week. He was asking me about Xena and I was answering his questions. Suddenly, he said, ‘Oh, it's very interesting that you refer to her in the past tense.’ And I just broke down. He caught me in the middle of a genuine reaction where I just cried. All of a sudden, it was so sad to me. Even before the show was over, I was talking about her as if she was dead. And I didn't even know I was doing it.”
“You didn't have any idea you would react that way?” I asked.
“Yeah.” She paused and then continued, “The Christmas break was coming and it didn't feel like we were in the home stretch really. I expect to feel a lot of mixed emotions when we go back to work after the holidays.
“There will never be another role like this - with action, drama, comedy and even musicals. It’s been an amazing education and a challenge. And there will never be a character that's written so lovingly for me.”