Lucy Lawless Radio Interview
Top of the Morning Radio Show (National Radio NZ)
12 April 1997

Transcribed by MyHero

 

Below is the first part of the Lucy Lawless radio interview which took place in NZ April 12th. Brian Edwards interviewed Lucy for the "Top of the Morning" show on National Radio NZ. The interview is really interesting and Lucy is her usual funny, gracious and wonderful self....I hope I typed this in exactly (a few words I hadn heard before) and please excuse any typos as my spell checker hadn heard of some words as well (LOL). The very beginning of the interview was cut off. The interview is long, so I will have to type it in a couple parts. Thanks to Sylvia for recording this interview!

Brian: (beginning cut off)...a land in turmoil cried out for a hero, she
was Xena a mighty princess forged in the heat of battle. Well, so it began
towards the end of 1995 the television legend of Xena Warrior Princess.
Like its predecessor Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, Xena was to have a
meteoric rise to the top of the American television writings. For the first
time in a decade, the crew of Star Trek last month find that even warp
factor three was not enough to stop them from trailing both Hercules and
Xena. In real life Xena is of course our own Lucy Lawless. We love her, but
the Americans got to love her first. Not only is there a Xena fan club,
there is a Xena doll, and an official Xena page on the internet. The
biggest star ever to come from Mount Albert, Lucy Lawless joins me now.

B: Good morning, welcome.

Lucy: Good morning.

B: This is thrilling to have you here I've got to say, as a huge fan of
Xena myself. Now can we talk about your name first of all. Lucy Lawless.
Actually Lucy F. Lawless. I understand. (laughing)

Lucy: I know (laughing) Seems like the most audacious stage name that
anybody...

B: (interrupts) Well it is...Lucy Flawless

Lucy: I know, when I got married I thought nobodys ever going to take me
seriously with this name (laughing). And then I realized, if people weren't
taking me seriously it wasn because of my name, and I better get on with
things anyway, so...I like it. I like it now.

B: Its good, and the Lawless bit sort of suits the character tremendously
well, doesn it?

Lucy: I know, it was all preordained (laughing).

B: No it wasn , it was good luck really, wasn it? We could actually call
you Ryans daughter couldn we? Because your fathers name is Ryan. Tell
me about your dad first of all.

Lucy: My dad was one of eight boys who grew up under the auspices of the
Catholic nuns and montesellian. He became the mayor of Mount Albert the
year I was born and remained so for 22 years until they amalgamated into
Auckland. And my mother is a large part of the marrality as well. And they
are a wonderful couple of people who have been tremendously supportive to
me....never said "you can ". My dad...its very important for a father to
say to a daughter "you can do anything", because daddys very special to a
little girl for many years and in certain periods particularly so, and my
dad let me know there were no bounds on me and on my imagination and how
far I could go. My mother took me to plays and did collages with me in the
middle of the night (laughing), and shed mix up glue and fired the
creative side, so...I have a lot to thank...

B: (interrupts) Very encouraging family in other words, very positive
encouraging family.

Lucy: Certainly my parents...(laughing) plenty of knockbacks? from my
brothers and sisters...

B: There were what four brothers? Five brothers?

Lucy: Five brothers.

B: And you the only girl? Oh, another sister.

Lucy: Yes, I was in the happy position of being the first girl after four boys and...

B: Why is that a happy position?

Lucy: (laughing) Well, they were kind of relieved to see me turn up!

Lucy: And I hear from the others that I was luckier than the other
children, and Im sorry to my siblings for that but I didn know any
different.

B: I suppose one would expect, I mean people watching you on Xena would
imagine this girl must have been a tomboy. I mean that would be the natural
sort of...were you?

Lucy: I was. My mother said I didn know I was a girl until I was eight (laughing). They kept me in the dark.

B: So a rough and tumble sort of...its a very well known Auckland family of
course, the Ryans. I mean Kevin Ryan famous lawyer and so on and so forth
and all of that...and a good strong Irish Catholic family as well.

Lucy: Yes...

B: Was that an influence on your life at all?

Lucy: Tremendously.

B: In what way?

Lucy: The Catholicism as opposed to the strong family, the Irishness of the
family, cause it really wasn like that compared to kids that I grew up
with. My family was pretty liberal, very trusting. My mother and father
knew well enough not to keep us in a stranglehold. It just forces your kids
underground with their behavior. But it was that Catholicism that very much
effected me, and I went to church at least once a week till I was 18. And,
you know it gives you a love for that pomp, I mean its almost a clich E9...

B: (interrupts) The theatrical side?

Lucy: The theatrical nature of religion. But, how did it effect me, it gave
me such an awareness of my mortality from a very young age. The hail Mary
prayer which you recite religiously (laugh) um, you say hail Mary, mother
God, pray for us sinners now until the hour of our death. I mean when you
are six and you talk about death, you go Oh my God Im gonna die. You talk
about your own death, repeatedly and um.. it made me aware that...it made
me in a hurry, it made me in an awful hurry.

B: A hurry to succeed? To do well?

Lucy: To achieve. To soak as much life as I could. And its been quite a
journey to slow down, enjoy whats now, and not to be always striving for
the future because you know the now is all we have really.

B: People might find that a bit strange, because you don really seem to
have slowed down very much do you? I mean the lifestyle you lead at the
moment as a television superstar is someone getting up at 5 in the morning
and all the rest, its a pretty hectic lifestyle youve got there now.

Lucy: I guess Im thinking about an inner lifestyle (laughing)

B: Oh an inner lifestyle?

Lucy: Well, Im not hungry in the same way. Im still hungry to keep
trying, striving, and changing but Im not desperate about life.

B: Well, aside from the drama of the church, did you always want to be in
the theater? Did you always want to act? Did you start acting from an early
age?

Lucy: You know I did, and I used to take moms scarves and tuck them into my
leotard and do a lot of ballet to awful music and she took me to a lot of
plays to Theater Corporate and Mercury and I would always pick which person
on the stage I would want to be and yes there were times from third form to
sixth form where I thought Id want to be a pathologist cause QuincyMD was
one. (laughs) God knows what a pathologist does, but...

B: Well, its something to do with death again...theres a theme here,
consumed with your mortality and wanting to be a pathologist and so on and
so forth. A marine biologist I think was on your thoughts...

Lucy: It was such a glamorous name wasn it? (laughs) There was no serious
consideration.

B: In fact your acting career in New Zealand wasn't an extraordinary
success was it?, I mean your success came elsewhere. Why's that do you
think? You had lots of parts and did lots of things, but you didn't reach
star status in New Zealand.

Lucy: I don't know. I asked Garth Maxwell, a New Zealand director who was
working on our show, that recently and he said "I think it would have
happened definitely it would have taken them a bit longer", but I have a
theory because I would always get cast for the American or Canadian New
Zealand co-productions. I'd always get those jobs and never the New Zealand
ones, so my theory is that I didn't look right. I didn't look like a New
Zealand (pause) perhaps the way I look, the way I behaved, was a little
scary, I think I was always a little big for my boots perhaps, a little bit
boulshe(?) My agent was told by a casting director on Shortland Street, and
I believe this is a correct quotation that "Lucy doesn't sufficiently fit
within the parameters of the show" (laughing) Never mind, well...

B: You haven't met that casting director since have you?

Lucy: I think she's probably quite right! I think I absolutely would not have been the right person...

B: (interrupts) Why not?

Lucy: because I would have grown tired of the format very quickly. All I mean really is there's no [?] in it for me, I should say thank you. Every part I didn't get brought me here.

B: So how did this happen then? How did the Xena thing actually happen?

Lucy: Somebody else got sick. Classic Hollywood story. The woman who was
cast in the part got ill and they said we're in a terrible spot and we're
filming in five days, can you get that Lucy Lawless girl? No, she's away
camping. Can you find her? (laughing) No we can't find her. Well you have
to. In fact the studio said you can't use Lucy Lawless because you just
used her in the episode immediately preceding this, and here's five other
actresses, and they all turned it down. At that time it was pilot season,
it was January in the States, or just coming up to January which is pilot
season when all the new shows put their best foot forward and try to get
picked up for a series. Well, nobody wanted to leave LA at that time of
year for an unknown series called Hercules for a three part, a three
episode arc on Hercules. And the job fell to me. Then it became a series
and that's history.

B: And the rest is history, as you say. Well, just go back a little bit,
before you did all that, you went overseas for awhile, you traveled in
Europe for a period. Then you went and worked in Australia and I read you
worked in a gold mine. I wasn't sure if that was true or not.

Lucy: Yes, that's perfectly true. I worked for a gold mining company.

B: Not actually down a gold mine.

Lucy: No, besides the open catskill mines, bloody awful things, you've seen
them in the news recently, like McCrays flat, probably bigger because it's
Australia.

Lucy: Yes I did, I worked out in the outback, drove small trucks and
changed a lot of tires, because there's a lot of spikes and I [?] for the
gold mining company and took samples.

B: Was it pioneering territory? What was the ratio of men to women?

Lucy: Probably one to fifty, one to forty. I really wasn't among...

B: (interrupts) One woman to fifty men....(laughing)

Lucy: I never met anything I couldn't handle. (laughs) I've heard it all.
All these....

B: (interrupts) What do you mean you've heard it all?

Lucy: There's nothing a man could say to me that I wouldn't be able to give
back for I don't think, short of actual physical violence.

B: So you've heard all the chat up lines?

Lucy: I don't mean chat up lines....any sort of verbal abuse or smart
aleck...

B: Oh, I see, right right.

Lucy: And besides, they were good actually, they were all fine.

B: Hmm. Have you gone to acting classes? Have you done any of that sort of
thing? You did do all of that.

Lucy: I have done various classes here and I went away four years ago to
Vancouver and went to drama school there for eight months.

B: I mean I know you have done some comedy stuff haven't you? At least one
season with Funny Business, didn't you? To what extent do you see yourself
as a comic actress? To what extent is Xena a comic role? That might be
worth asking.

Lucy: You wait, just you wait. Because there's a lot of expansion of the
parameters of the show and I get to do complete slapstick not just of the
Xena character, but I play doubles with myself and all these characters
which in [?] form I was playing and in sixth form in Biology being an
idiot, have me sort of fleshed out and I am playing every [?] of myself,
every extreme of myself.

B: You also worked for Air New Zealand Holiday for awhile.

Lucy: I did.

B: Everybody thinks that's a wonderful job. Get to travel the world, don't
have to pay anything, have a lovely time, etc, etc, etc. Was it like that?

Lucy: It was nothing but fun. It was fun, it was also hard work and
uncomfortable sometimes. You'd end up with some God awful Nazi of a guide
in some country, but it was always fun. I had wonderful photos and made
some great friends out of that. But it was only fun and in the end that's
why it was not hard for me to leave the show because of work. I knew in my
heart though there was nothing coming up in the acting horizon it would
make me heartsick to do it, so when I left there I left with nothing on the
horizon at all. And the another part in Hercules came up and then the Xena
thing.

B: When you got the part, or whenever someone rang you up or whatever they
do and said you got the part, how did you react? Did you have a tremendous
sense of excitement when that happened?

Lucy: Oh very...

B: You did?

Lucy: I would be very excited to get an ad of course, in those days. I love
to work, and I still love to work. But about that particular job...yes I
was particularly. I have to say the casting director Diana [?] sort of
championed me for that and she helped me be excited.

B: You were married by this time and had a child.

Lucy: Yes.

B: And you have a daughter who's coming up eight.

Lucy: Coming up nine.

B: Coming up nine...I asked you before and I'll ask you again whether she
watches the show, does she watch the show?

Lucy: I don't think she does much, because we're always out on a Friday
night. And it never occurs to me to go home and turn on the television. And
besides, I've seen these things three times before they go to air. You go
in for looping and redo the dialog when a plane flew overhead so...

B: (interrupts) Well tell me about Xena. What sort of character, I mean
does Xena sort of develop into the Xena character? I mean she started off
really being sort of a bad-ass from what I can understand, what sort of
character was she, what sort of character is she now? How do you see her?

Lucy: She is the archetypal villainess. She had to be the Hercules nemesis
and look good in her short skirt. Then the series happened to her and
(laughs) she turned over a new leaf, because you can't have anti-heroes
when you ...

B: Yeah..

Lucy: We tried that with American Gothic, well Renaissance and LA tried
that and they made American Gothic and people don't like to keep coming
back to watch an anti-hero. People naturally gravitate towards hope and
heroes. So, she had to change.

B: Well, yeah the original Xena goes around pillaging the countryside the
head of a needle army and murdering everything in site.

Lucy: (laughs) Well, they were looking for a spin off, and I seem to be
the, sort of the right person to do the job and I know Rob and Sam had
always wanted to do a female hero and just didn't know where, when or who
and it was ME AND HERE AND NOW (laughs) so, wonderful....I'm thrilled.

B: So, she was into profit and she was into cruelty and those area of
things, she's a pretty stern sort of a heroine isn't she? Xena doesn't
smile a lot does she?

Lucy: Brian, you haven't watched enough shows!

B: I've watched a few.

Lucy: She is....

B: (interrupts) Let me tell you this, I have no choice but to watch the
show, cause my wife insists we watch the show and she loves it...
Lucy: Good for her.

B: ...and she insists we watch Hercules, she loves that too. So, I enjoy
it. I do enjoy it.

Lucy: Good.

B: Anyway, smiling...

Lucy: You do see a grudge, uh, a deterioration through the fences, and that
just happened naturally as her character became more fleshed out as the
series went on. But I try to keep her the woman with the devil on her
shoulder, the dark mean chick I call her, because that's her appeal is that
fact she's so dysfunctional, and you want to see which ways she's going to
jump.

B: She's dysfunctional.

Lucy: Yeah...

B: What does that mean?

Lucy: She uh....(laughs), You see I get used to being around all these
Americans that speak like this all the time. I'm sure you know what it
means Brian but...

B: I don't.

Lucy: She has trouble relating to the world in an open hearted, natural,
friendly way. She is mistrustful perhaps, she's afraid to love, these are
parts of her character which I found it necessary to keep a hold of, just
to keep the lid on her. If you know too much about her, she looses her
mystic. Why should you watch someone who has no mystic? When I play other
roles, I can play someone completely different, I can play the goofy
princess or the tramp, but for her those are very important parts of her
character.

B: So, she's actually a bit insecure. (mumbles and jokes about something)
At times she's a bit uncertain about her own identity, I suppose that's
what dysfunctional might be.

Lucy: (laughs) Well, she belongs to the audience, never mind what they
think.

B: It's interesting really, because the Hercules actor is quite different.
Hercules, he's sort of warm and out-going and soft inside as far as you can
see, and resisting the approaches of all these women.

Lucy: He's a good guy. He's the man with the white hat, he's the ultimate
hero. The blurb from our producers is that Hercules is the hero you hope is
out there. Xena is the hero you hope is inside you.

B: Well, he's very much the superman hero isn't he? He's good, good, good.
He's never bad.

Lucy: Yeah. Yes, he's a family hero.

B: Yes he is.

Lucy: And a lot of things happen around him. He walks into situations
whereas things happen to Xena which makes it tremendously challenging and
rewarding to play.

B: Part of all of that seems to me that there is a sexual ambiguity about
Xena, that you can't be sure about Xena at all.

Lucy: I know, that was a surprise to us when that all started happening.
When it started happening....

B: (interrupts) It's not just talk is it, I mean there is something in the
character that suggests there is a definitely sexual ambiguity there.

Lucy: Well, isn't that funny because I certainly never created her with
that in mind. Well, from my part of putting together...

B: (interrupts) You say I never created her, did you create Xena?

Lucy: No, I didn't say I never created her, I said we never intended that
when we began the show. People sort of read that and we said really?, and
we all sort of laughed about it and then there have been times when walking
that line of ambiguity has been kind of fun and jokey and now, now I don't
care what people think, you know people are going to read what they want to
into the lines. We are no longer humored by that particularly, what she is
is what she is, and what the relationship between those two characters is
there own business (laughs) on their own, you know, outside the show. (both
laughing). What they do after hours is none of our business.

B: That's right. Of course as you know, a by product of that has been, that
Xena became an icon of the gay community...
Lucy: Yes.

B: ...in the United States, and I guess was something you...

Lucy: The lesbian community...

B: The lesbian community was something you didn't invite or necessarily
want?

Lucy: I don't mind it at all. I just think for women in general, whether
they're lesbian, gay, straight. If she fills a niche for them, that's
wonderful....because she's basically a good person who doesn't think she's
good and who is struggling against her own animal instincts. So for her to
be an icon for the lesbian, I am perfectly comfortable and proud of that.
Or for any seeker...

B: (interrupts) For women at large then?

Lucy: For women at large. Whether they are heterosexual, lesbian, young,
old, I'm thrilled.

B: Do you see yourself then, or are you seen do you think as a feminist
icon? Just broadening it a bit....

Lucy: Yes, that was a bit of a shock to me too initially, and now I am kind
of honored by it really. I didn't realize there was such a need.

B: What is the nature of that need?

Lucy: I didn't know there was such a need for a symbol of strength in
women. I guess I have been just going around blinked my whole life. I come
from a family of strong women and yes I'm ashamed to say when all this
feminists business started I sort of stiffened my back and said I'm not
getting on anybody's soapbox and this is my soapbox (laughs) and now I
recognize that there's a huge need out there for young girls to have role
models, I didn't want to be anyone's role model, I traveled enough being a
role model for my own daughter you know keeping myself worthy of being
looked up to. And I realized there's a huge hole there and if they take
that from Xena, that's fantastic. Somebody needed to fill that role. There
hadn't been a female hero, certainly not like this, forever. There had
never been a better role for a woman actress in television ever. I'm the
luckiest person on Earth I feel.

B: Well that's interesting. I mean there have been roles like Wonder Woman,
in what way is that different then Xena?

Lucy: I think they are very two dimensional. The Bionic Woman wasn't so
cartoonish, but I don't think they fleshed out her humanity very much, this
shows all about two woman, and the only thing I can think that's comparable
would be Emma Peel but she was still teamed with a man.

B: Although you could easily make a cartoon out of Xena.

Lucy: Oh it is cartoonish, in the style of the show. But my job every week,
if I may be so bold as to say, is to make people feel, that's what I aim
for when I attack a script. To make you feel something every week and...

B: (interrupts) What the male viewers probably feel...

Lucy: (laughs) Clue me in....

B: ....is absolute lust.

Lucy: Really?

B: Of course. You're not telling me you don't...

Lucy: Absolute?

B: Well, a lot of lust.

Lucy: See, I don't have a view...

B: (interrupts) You have this gorgeous woman in her leather bra and her
short leather skirt and all this [?] that goes with it. Of course. Maybe
it's only me.

Lucy: (laughing)

B: A filthy old man like me (laughs), but I don't think so.

Lucy: On the inside of that costume I don't have that view of myself. I
certainly know...

B: (interrupts) Oh no of course not...no no no, not talking about your view
of yourself at all. We are talking about men's view watching the show. It's
a very sexy character.

Lucy: I look at it as something that somebody wants from a show and I use
the word sexy to describe a awful lot of things, food and...

B: (interrupts) Don't you get fan letters from men?

Lucy: Yes.

B: Roughly what do they say?

Lucy: Oh, you know, will you marry me? Will you walk over me with your
boots? Will you...I don't know.

B: But they're not lusting after you?

Lucy: No, I do not receive a lot of fan mail anymore, it's handled in the
States. It got too scary for me.

B: Really?

Lucy: Yes, and it got to the stage where I was reading things and I would
break down and cry. I would get 7 letters in a pile of 40 of people with
just awful ailments...like a kid in Turkey who's going to Moscow because
he's got to have a brain cancer operation, please Xena can you help? And
that's only in Turkey a million miles away, and you get that overwhelming
feeling, just tragedy cope-ability...

B: So those people are actually seeing you as a hero

Lucy: Someone who can help them...

B: (interrupts) They have suspended their disbelieve totally, they think
you can come and fix things.

Lucy: And it's too much for me as a person. I can't get up and go to work
joyfully everyday when I'm carrying the weight of the world on my
shoulders. And they were only 10% of the letters, but 10% of 400 is a lot
of letters. And if I responded to everything, I simply wouldn't have time
to do the show which gives them such hope and enjoyment anyway. So I
respond to what I can but I have to know when to say no.

B: When we are seeing you on the screen there, are we seeing a lot of
different people being Xena, I assume you have body doubles, stunt doubles,
riding doubles and all the rest of it.

Lucy: If you don't see my face, it's a good chance it's not me, we simply
don't have time to use me in every scene. As well as some things are too
dangerous. I do do my own riding, but if it's a ride away they'll use
someone else, because you can't stunt double and dialog scene.

B: How has this changed your life?

Lucy: Totally, totally. There's not one thing that's the same. Maybe I have
one jersey leftover (laughs). Even my daughter's a different person in two
years of course, but....

B: (interrupts) Is it all good?

Lucy: A lot of it's good. A majority of it is good, really good. And what
hasn't been good I've learned to sort of accept and not struggle against
too much.

B: Where do you go from here? What does Xena do next? I assume the series
will be around...

Lucy: Xena gets back on her pony and rides off to the next town...

B: Right at the beginning of this conversation you talked about being
ambitious, where would your ambition take you next?

Lucy: I have a very exciting project coming up I would love to tell you
about, but it's not signed. I will be singing in New York. I studied opera
as a teenager and I'm not particularly good at it, but I probably could
have become so if I had had that pure love for it as I do have for acting.
And that's a lifelong challenge in acting to become....

B: (interrupts) So we are looking towards Xena does Broadway?

Lucy: Lucy does Broadway, not Xena.

B: I mean Lucy does Broadway.

Lucy: Yeah.

B: Well, thank you very much, been lovely talking to you.

Lucy: It's been a pleasure, thank you for having me.

B: I've been talking to Lucy Lawless, and very nice she is too, I have to
tell you. Lovely person, nice to talk to. There you are, super hero on the
screen, super heroine, whatever you like.