Aricles Annex - Xena: Warrior Princess Magazine Articles
The TV Guide (NZ)
February 15-21, 1997
pgs. 4-5, 100
Lucy Lawless just flawless
Xena star back in the saddle
from Jefferson Graham in Los Angeles
THE last time Lucy Lawless was in Los Angeles, she was recovering from a nasty fall.
The star of the syndicated Xena: Warrior Princess (TV3, 8:30pm, Fridays) fell off a horse while taping a skit for The Tonight Show with Jay Leno in October and suffered four fractures.
Lawless spent a couple of weeks in hospital, then went on The Tonight Show to laugh with Leno about it.
She was recently at the Burbank Airport Hilton for the first Hercules/Xena convention, a sold-out gathering that attracted 400 fans who dressed for the occasion in medieval costumes.
"I can't believe all the fuss," said Lawless, who signed autographs and posed for pictures with fans, both young and old. Although Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is TV's top syndicated drama, Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and Xena aren't too far behind.
"There are very few women like Xena on TV," said fan Laura Drane, of Los Angeles. "She's funny and powerful."
Lawless flew in from New Zealand to appear at the convention, to do a guest spot for NBC's Something So Right (as herself) and meet and greet station managers in New Orleans at the National Association of Television Programme Executives convention.
Lawless has been back at work, with doubles handling her stunts. She hasn't gotten back on a horse, and "I'm not going to be pushed into it. I want to recover fully."
She looks back at her accident as a "bad dream--don't care to remember it."
It even brought Lawless and her daughter, Daisy, closer together.
"She's more proud of her mum now that the show is such a success," Lawless said.
"Originally, she hated it. She blamed Xena for the break-up of my marriage. But not anymore."
And Lawless on Xena's popularity: "There are alot of people out there who have suffered from some kind of abuse--women, gays, kids--and they all relate to Xena.
"She's always fighting the good fight."
Followers can't fault TV heroine
from Eirik Knutzen in Los Angeles
XENA WARRIOR PRINCESS is all things to all people. Little girls love her as a beautiful role model. Their mothers - very much aware of her leave 'em and leave 'em attitude -- think she's a hoot.
Little boys go ape over her because she is an unflinching, powerful superhero on a par with Hercules. Their fathers lover her sense of humour almost as much as her scanty leather outfit.
The feminist press is forever trying to clarify her true relationship with Gabrielle, her trusty sidekickette. Animal lovers want to know her true feelings towards Centaurs.
"I want to make one thing absolutely clear, Xena: Warrior Princess is not to be taken seriously," says Lawless, 29, who plays the title character with electric blue eyes and long, thick hair dyed jet black flaring over her wide shoulders. Standing roughly 1.8m in her bare feet, the outspoken New Zealand native is clearly a force to reckon with.
"It was never my intention to do a show given to great political statements," she continues. "We like to give people a laugh instead, with the cast and writers doing parodies on every person we've ever met. I basically see Xena as a working woman in a tough environment."
The show, a happy blend of Greek pseudomythology and Hollywood special effects, which is shot entirely in New Zealand, is distributed in 15 countries in addition to the 200 TV stations in the US carrying the programme.
It was the top-rated new syndicated drama series in America in its debut year, when it regularly beat out Baywatch and its pale clone Baywatch Nights.
Lawless fought her way to a measure of TV stardom as the "mythical heroine with the dark past" after a guest shot a couple of years ago on Hercules: The Legendary Journeys as Lyla, the tough young bride of Deric the Centaur, a co-starring bit in the two-hour telefilm Hercules and the Amazon Women and a three-episode stint as Xena on Hercules.
When a Hercules spin-off series was in the works, the American actress cast as the lead in Xena: Warrior Princess became ill before production started and caused a desperate scramble for a replacement.
"I think there was a list of five actresses up for the part, and they all turned it down, God bless 'em," says Lawless, laughing.
It has been a "really wild ride" ever since, according to the neophyte actress with an impish sense of humour. "Absolutely everything has changed in my life. My marriage broke up shortly before the series and suddenly I am a single mother. And I felt like I had to compensate for not being particularly athletic with long and hard training to the point where I hurt my back."
Educated in convent schools, Lawless started dabbling with school pageants and plays at an early age. But after a brief stab at Auckland University, she grew restless enough to take a low-cost, two-year journey to Europe and Australia. Her high school sweetheart, Garth Lawless, dreamed up a scheme that entailed leaving Europe and working long enough in Australia to earn the money needed to travel in Russia. They wound up doing "dirty, filthy work" in the gold mining community of Kalgoorlie.
"People seem to have some romantic notion of what gold mining is," she says. "Like you're down there with the seven dwarfs with little lamps on their heads chipping bits of gold out of rock. Reality is drilling a deep hole and pouring in explosives. It's like a bloody atomic blast that lays waste to the landscape, leaving enormous pits about two miles wide."
Their travel plans changed radically when Lawless found herself three months' pregnant and with a wedding to attend. They moved home to raise Daisy, where Garth went to work as a bar manager while Lawless took a few acting lessons and hooked up with a television comedy troupe called Funny Business. It was followed by an eight-month stint in Vancouver, Canada, studying drama at the William Davis Centre for Actors Study.
In 1992, Lawless co-hosted Air New Zealand Holiday. Two years later came guest spots on Hercules: The Legendary Journeys.
She still likes to travel, but makes sure that Daisy's needs are taken care of first. "She adores her father and we'll always live close so she doesn't have to choose between us," says Lawless.
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