We're totally obsessed with "Spartacus: Vengeance" here and we were thrilled to get a chance to sit down with genre legend Lucy Lawless who plays Lucretia at the Winter Press Tour. Lawless, who's character is in a desperate situation this season, gives us a look at playing a crazy (or not so crazy) woman, doing nude scenes and what playing "Xena: Warrior Princess" has done for public perception.
"I think if she's crazy, she's crazy like a fox. She's entering a terrible -- she's going down a path with many snares and it's not going to be a comfortable life for her. She hasn't got any friends. She's got no support. No husband, no house, no baby, no lover and not a thing. Ilythia (Viva Bianca) shows up and that seems like it ought to be a good thing but it ain't."
We asked Lawless about playing "crazy" and what it takes as an actress to walk that fine line between over doing it and getting it just right. "I don't. People just suspect me. Because it's Lucretia or because it's the person who played Xena or who played the bad girl. 'She's in the bad girl role,' that we assume she's going to be totally bad. I can play it totally straight, absolutely down the line and you're going to suspect me anyway."
We talked about doing nude scenes and whether or not she'd gotten comfortable with it. "Who's comfortable?" she says. "Actually, we have to hire people who are comfortable. If you're doing a brothel scene, you can't have extras who are being prima donnas. It just holds everybody up at $100,000 a minute, or however much it is. For us, no. There is no getting used to it. It's a very funny thing."
She also says that you sort of lose your sex drive working on the show. "Those things lose their taboo. We're so sick of thinking about it, worrying about it, talking about it. The show is great for everyone else's sex drive but ours," she laughed.