AUSXIP Lucy Lawless Files - Flawless Print - Lucy Articles
Xena vs. Mother Nature
Locusts, mutant bats, a vast flood
these are the terrors that torment Lucy Lawless,
The Toronto Star
30 October 2005
Many thanks to maRia for the scans
ROB SALEM
At this rate, it won't be long before Lucy Lawless qualifies as a Canadian
citizen.
The New Zealand-born actress, who became a pop-culture icon as TV's Xena:
Warrior Princess, was back in Vancouver last week to film the second of
three scheduled guest appearances on Battlestar Galactica, the cult-hit
sci-fi series remake, which belatedly begins its second season (already
airing in the U.S.) in January here on Space.
In between, she unexpectedly found herself in Halifax, N.S., finishing up
her own CBS TV movie, Vampire Bats, when the production was abruptly forced
to abandon its original New Orleans shooting location with the arrival of
Hurricane Katrina.
"We had only one vital scene left," Lawless says, "that was supposed to be
shot in an above-ground cemetery. So, sadly, we lost that. But a very able
(Canadian) crew helped us finish it off and with zero drama. I don't think
they believe in
drama up here. The only drama is onscreen, put it that way.
"After New Orleans, it was a little boring to be, you know, just people at
work, instead of jumping up and down screaming all the time."
The serious jumping and screaming began with the realization they faced a
disaster. "It was looming," she recalls. "But we didn't know enough (at
first) to really take it seriously.
"I was hanging out with hard-bitten veterans of the hurricane scene, who
were just going to, you know, double-fist it. And I was going, `Ha ha,' sort
of riding on their confidence. We were planning to throw a hurricane party
at the hotel.
"The morning before, within 24 hours of landfall, I turned on the TV and
they were saying, `This is a Force 5 hurricane! Get out!' says Lawless. "We
were thinking that, you know, if it just passed over, we would need to be
there to shoot on Tuesday.
"Never mind the party aspect, which is a large, large part of the New
Orleans life."
It quickly became clear there would be no party nor anything to shoot the
next day.
"I rang the remaining producers, we got in our cars, grabbed the film stock,
collected the payroll and the accountant, who was counting beans, ready to
go down with the ship and with hundreds of thousands of other people, we
inched out of town.
"We were all very grateful to be out safe. And greatly concerned for our
friends and colleagues who lost their houses."
Vampire Bats, which airs tonight on CBS and Citytv, is a sequel to last
year's Locusts!, with Lawless reprising her role as official eco-expert Dr.
Maddy Rierdon. After saving the planet from hordes of voracious mutant
insects, she's quit her high-pressure government gig to raise her family and
teach at a Louisiana college.
"There's an element of dissatisfaction in her in the beginning, because she
had this big sort of high-flying career ... I think it's necessary for the
survival of the human race, you know, that your baby gets first call on your
brain and body for the first couple of years of life. And then its need for
you starts to recede. Truly, that's been my experience."
In this regard, and others, she says, the character "may be the closest to
me that I have ever played."
Which is pretty much typical of the uniquely skewed trajectory of Lawless's
post-Xena career. Where most actors singularly seek out roles that will
allow them to "push the envelope," Lawless would seem to be climbing back
in.
"I was just talking to my driver, on the way to the airport, and he asked me
if I was playing a role that was going to stretch me. Well, I had the
stretchiest role of all time as Xena, so now it's all about bringing it
right down, to absolute naturalism.
"Which is a great challenge, in its own way. So yes, the roles are getting
more and more like me. But that's because Xena was so entirely unlike me.
Most people aren't really aware of that."
Particularly not the legions of die-hard Xena-philes and there are still
dozens of Internet fan sites dedicated to the decade-old show many of whom
remain adamantly unable to disassociate the actress from her best-known
role.
And the recent release of a tenth anniversary Xena DVD collector set has
only whet their appetite for more.
It may be a long wait Lawless isn't aware of any plans for a Xena revival
or feature. Then again, she hastens to add, she would be the last to know.
"You know, anybody at Universal who ever cared about it is long gone. And
they continue to waste what could be a great franchise. I just think that,
just in terms of business, to waste that ... what are you, morons? They're
fools. There's nobody there that values it. They just lost interest."
Lawless, meanwhile, has never been busier. Next up is feature film Darkroom.
"I'm excited for that, and a bit nervous, because it goes way out on a limb.
I'm playing somebody who is horribly psychologically and emotionally abused
by her husband, who turns out to be a very, very bad man, indeed."
And there's also her provocative recurring role an in-your-face
investigative video journalist with an unexpected agenda on the critically
praised genre hit, Battlestar Galactica.
Which brings her back to Vancouver, where she started pre-Xena back in 1991,
studying with X-Files Smoking Man and veteran acting teacher William Davis.
"I went to school here, and it's been interesting going back and stumbling
across the places I went, in a former lifetime, with my first husband, and
my daughter, who was only 3 years old, and we were living on the bones of
our asses ..."
And if Vampire Bats does the kind of numbers tonight that its highly rated
predecessor, Locusts!, did last year?
Another sequel? Perhaps even an ongoing series spiders, snakes,
radioactive roaches, malevolent man-eating frogs ... they have really only
scratched the surface of possible potentially life-endangering animal
threats.
Again, Lawless claims to be out of the loop. "People keep asking me that,
but I'm always the last one to know.
"I mean, it doesn't necessarily even have to be me. They came to me first
(on the sequel), but I'm sure that if I had said, `No, I don't want anything
to do with another, you know, silly animal name with a large exclamation
point after it,' they could happily have found somebody else.
"Having said that, I am glad that we all did it together we so enjoyed
being in each other's company."
