Sunday Express S:2 Magazine
(US)12 October 2003
Many thanks to Liz for the scans
Fighting Talk
She was the TV Warrior Princess with a line in leather corsetry that attracted a battalion of male admirers. Actress Lucy Lawless talks to Luisa Metcalfe about life after Xena
Tall and slim with light brown hair, piercing blue eyes and seemingly endless legs, Lucy Lawless barely resembles her butch alter ego. As Xena: Warrior Princess, the actress won legions of male and female fans with her muscular thighs, leather corset and her kick-ass martial . arts technique. Battling evil i and defending the vulnerable while wearing a micro mini-skirt and armed with her mighty Chakram-a sort of magical frisbee - Xena and her virginal sidekick Gabrielle took no prisoners. Looking more beautiful in the flesh, and speaking in a surprisingly broad New Zealand twang, the actress turned stay-at-home mother would prefer to talk about real fighting princesses.
After two years out of the limelight. Lawless, 35, who divides her time between her native Auckland and LA, is making her long-awaited return to television, fronting Warrior Women, a series about the real Xenas throughout history. "I am the ultimate current warrior woman," she jokes. "There was Buffy but she was too busy doing Scooby Doo."
The Discovery Channel series begins with the French mystic and soldier Joan of Arc before exploring the lives of the 15th-century Irish pirate Grace O'Malley, the Apache Indian warrior Lozen, the real-life Mulan - a Chinese warrior who inspired the Disney cartoon -and Boudica, the Iceni queen who led an uprising against Britain's Roman conquerors. A newly-fledged expert on women who fought oppression, battled invaders and outraged contemporaries, Lucy declares Grace O'Malley her favourite. "She was a real Xena. Xena was never so real to me as when .. I read about Grace. She became a very successful pirate and at one point she sailed her boat right up the Thames to Greenwich, demanded an audience with Queen Elizabeth and got it. She was one hell of a woman." While many viewers will admire the bravery of these female fighters, risking death for their cause, Lawless's appreciation of them springs from a different source. 'After wearing a leather corset every day for six years I think I'm more grateful than the average human being that we wear comfortable clothes."
Since she hung up her Chakram two years ago, Lawless is relishing her new life. "I love having the
freedom of choice, of getting up every day and thinking, 'What can I do today?' That never fails to thrill me because for six years I didn't have any choice about what I did. I was incredibly privileged. I had such wonderful people around me. It was a great role; it was everything that a person could want in life. It also gave me security and a family. I'm so thrilled my life went off on that tangent but it's even nicer to be able to spend time with my kids."
Happily married to her second husband Rob Tapert, executive producer of Xena: Warnor Princess, and looking after their children one-year-old Judah, and Julius, three, Lawless is revelling in her domestic role and also in being able to spend time with her 14-year-old daughter Daisy from her first marriage to Garth Lawless.
"I've been offered a lot of action television series since that's where I have most currency," she says, "but I have three kids and they deserve their mother being around for them and not on set 12 hours a day."
Adventurous by nature, Lucy has travelled the world with her then-boyfriend Garth, picking grapes in the Rhine Valley and working for a gold-mining company in Australia. After various television roles and a small part in the American cult show Hercules, she landed the role of Xena. With her hair dyed dark brown and her 5ft 10ins form encased in her trademark leather, she sparked a camp cult. But while she was a massive hit in America and Europe, she was barely known in New Zealand, which was the last country to get the show.
Now, during her longed-for break, Lucy has finally impressed her countrymen with a surprise role - as a singing sensation. Last Christmas she went on tour with Kiwi singer-songwriter Dave Dobbyn, singing and playing the tambourine. "We were on tour for three weeks and 1 was a real rock chick " Bur she has no plans to desert her original trade.. I'm definitely an actress," she says. "I'm dabbling quite a lot but I've taken time out and that's the biggest decision could have made. I've done it for my children and it's about being there for my little guys." Lucy turned down a part in X-Men and forgot about an audition to play Galadriel in Lord of the Rings while she was pregnant
"You know what might happen? By the time I'm ready and want to do a multi-year contract they won't want me. But what else can I do? I've turned down some great things for solid reasons because it's not worth it if your children are miserable." In her spare moments, she is penning her first screenplay, Anatomy Of A Marriage, which she carries everywhere, making new additions in pencil And while she is looking for a theatre part to stretch her mind as well as her limbs - Lucy has never exercised, she's just made that way - the good news for male fans is that she still has her Xena costume tucked away... just in case.
Warrior Women begins with Joan of Arc on Wednesday, October 15, on the Discovery Channel and ends with Boudica on November 12
