Steven DeKnight is interviewed by Assignment X: Exclusive Interview: SPARTACUS: GODS OF THE ARENA creator Steven S. DeKnight reflects on the mini-series - Part 1
Part of the interview related to Lucy
AX: I felt that Lucretia wearing Gaia's red wig, it was her way of never forgetting and never forgiving what had happened in the past?
DEKNIGHT: Absolutely! It was very symbolic in that way. In terms of back story it almost didn't happen. We cast Jamie Murray, and it took us a while to find a Gaia that we all were crazy about and we really fell in love with Jamie. By the time we could get her to New Zealand we were very close to shooting, and it takes a month to make these custom wigs, so we didn't have enough time. We had to see if they could make Lucy's wig work. I can't completely remember, if they made Lucy's wig work from season one, or they put a rush job on it. I think it was probably Lucy's wig. It was a nail-biter right up until we were starting to shoot to know if we could have Gaia wigged for this thing to work. I was hoping and praying that we could get it done because it is such a powerful image. It's one of those little things that we love that explains why she wears wigs. We also had a subplot that we jettisoned. We had a whole wig motif seeing Solonius pick out his first wig, but that luckily fell by the wayside.
AX: It was set up to make the audience believe that Batiatus would kill his father Titus, and then in the end it is ultimately Lucretia that does the deed. Was that always the plan?
DEKNIGHT: We knew early on. The broad strokes started out as "Batiatus kills his father", but as soon as we started talking about it, we decided it was a little too obvious. We decided to have Lucretia be the one who does the deed. Batiatus can't do it so she does it and can never tell him. The twist in case people saw it coming, one way or another they knew the dad was going to die, but the twist here was Lucretia killing off Oenomaus' wife along the way. We had a devil of a time and we went round and round for a week, trying to figure out how Melitta gets a hold of the wine and how she drinks it without Gannicus drinking it. It was all a bit of a conundrum.
-- AUSXIP Reporter Klippart