Newcastle Herald
(Australia)3 November 2000
Here goes Lucy
Cover story with Michael Field
The show, now seen in more than 115 countries after its debut in the United States in September, 1995, is made in Auckland and has ended up giving just about every aspiring actor in New Zealand a bit part or two.
Studios USA domestic television president Steve Rosenberg and Rob Tapert (who is also Lawless' husband), the series' co-creator and executive producer, said the series would wrap up production on its 22-episode sixth season early next year and would air through summer 2001.
The show features a jumble of myth and history where fearless, leather-clad warrior princess Xena is as likely to bump into Julius Caesar as a tribe of Amazons.
Lucille Frances Ryan, as she was born, is New Zealand's best-known face, up there with craggy old Everest conqueror Sir Edmund Hillary and All Black Jonah Lomu.
Lawless has also unwittingly become a hero of the lesbian movement, and although she is adamant she is not gay she did appear as a tow truck driver in Peach, an Australian film that was part of a lesbian film series entitled Women From Down Under.
Originally, Lawless was one of the local extras in Hercules, made by the same US company in Auckland.
But when the original female lead, Vanessa Angel, fell ill, Lawless was roped in. The rest, as they say, is history.
Lawless became Xena for three episodes in Hercules, and in 1995 a spinoff series - Xena: Warrior Princess - was launched, which ended up outlasting Hercules.
The show has, however, caused controversy, with one episode drawing protests from Hindu groups. Even before it had been broadcast it was asserted the episode suggested that Krishna blessed Xena's lesbian relationship - if that is what it was.
Although in private a witty woman, Lawless seldom says anything unscripted in public and rarely gives media interviews.
In 1998, US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright winged into Auckland and showed how well she had read her briefing notes.'I've never been to New Zealand before but one of my role models is Xena: The Warrior Princess, who comes from here so I feel very much at home,' she said.
She tried to convince New Zealand to change its anti-nuclear laws, but to no avail. A local reporter asked Albright if Xena declared she was anti-nuclear, would that help Albright change her mind?
Albright was nonplussed by the question. 'She's probably not,' she finally laughed, 'if you think about the way she acts'.
A couple of days later, after the question had been processed in Los Angeles by her army of agents, Lawless finally declared she was against nuclear power.
'I would be a traitor to my conscience if I did not, when asked, declare myself to be anti-nuclear,' she said. 'It should be understood that New Zealand's shunning of (nuclear) vessels is not isolationist ... It is not hostile activism but an act of courage, hope for the future and love for our children's children.'
She added that she was married to an 'all-American boy' and considered the US her second home. Lawless is the fifth of seven children in a strong Catholic household.
She was educated at the Catholic girls Marist College in Auckland and went on to Auckland University before dropping out after the first year. She then hitchhiked around Europe with her boyfriend, Garth Lawless.
Later, while working in Kalgoorlie, in Australia, they married and had a daughter.
Back in New Zealand in 1989, she got a job on a television commercial, which was the start of her professional acting life. She broke up with Lawless and later married Tapert.