The Artist Formerly Known as Xena

Lucy Lawless - Five months pregnant and in rehearsal for a controversial new play in Auckland - contemplates life as an ex-warrior princess and the strange business of fame, wealth and showing off.

BY BIANCA ZANDER

PHOTOGRAPHS BY JANE USSHER

New Zealand Listener - February 9, 2002

When the black leather and fake tan come off for the last time, the woman inside the superhero costume has to adjust to life as a mere mortal again. For six long years, Lucy Lawless was Xena: Warrior Princess: dominator of men, vanquisher of demons and suspected lover of women.

Before Xena, she was a nobody. Lawless gained more than an alter ego; she became Xena's avatar. At least, that's how it was for the fans. Lawless insists she harboured no delusions. "I never thought of myself as Xena." But the fact is, when you meet Lucy Lawless, your first impulse is to cower. The second thing you do - much less of a reflex action - is marvel at how pretty and slender and feminine she is in person. Neither of those reactions would occur if you hadn't been expecting a butch, leather-clad Amazon to stomp into the room. Even though the show is over, you cannot help but gaze at Lawless and wonder, who is this imposter? And what has she done with Xena?

The actress admits that it took her a long time to recover from the role. "I was mentally and physically and creatively spent. For six years, I gave it every ounce of everything I had. It wasn't just the acting; there was a lot of other baggage that came with it. I had nothing to give in the end." Nearly a year after Xena's wrap party, and all that remains of the warrior princess is that husky boudoir whisper, the voice that made so many barbarians surrender their weapons. Rehabilitation began with a haircut. The trademark raven tresses and blunt black fringe have been traded in for softer, paler, rock-chick layers. Dressed in a loose gray T-shirt, faded green track pants and raffia sandals, with not a smudge of make-up on her clear, pale skin, Lawless seems like the kind of star you might brush past, obliviously, in a supermarket. But today is hardly an occasion for glamour. Lawless is five months pregnant and gliding about the offices of the Auckland Theatre Company, an hour before rehearsals for The Vagina Monologues, in which she will star alongside Danielle Cormack and Madeleine Sami. She wouldn't let the Listener anywhere near her home for an interview, apparently due to the presence of her kids, but more likely because the last thing you want when you really are a star, is a commentary of the décor of your Mission Bay pad, purchased, according to the tabloids, for $4 million in 1997. When you already have kooky stalkers in more than one country and a stack of letters on the kitchen table from total strangers, begging for money, you keep the gates to the mansion closed.

"I can be pretty defensive when it comes to me and my kids," says Lawless, who also keeps the blinds drawn during interviews. Especially when you mention that $4 million... "You know what?" she says, her blue eyes narrowing into a warrior-princess glare, "I don't even need to apologize." Whereas most local celebrities are world famous in New Zealand, Lawless enjoys the perverse distinction of being world famous everywhere except here. In her homeland, Xena was celebrated more as a source of employment for half the film industry - the other half worked on Hercules and Young Hercules - for six years, rather than as a cult TV series. But the rest of the world got it. While we were busy making props, the US and a farther 82 countries where the show was syndicated were salivating over our Lucy. From 1996 onwards, Lawless made guest appearances on The X-Files, Just Shoot Me, and The Tonight Show, where she famously fell off her horse and crushed her pelvis. She was on the cover of US Rolling Stone magazine's Hot issue, wearing black angel wings and suspenders. She was a Maxim babe of the month, and was interviewed, with her clothes on, by Penthouse, Playboy and Esquire magazines. She inspired - well, okay, Xena did - a lesbian club night called Meow Mix in New York. Some guy called Donald Trump tried to hit on her at a party. She headlined a Broadway production of the musical Grease. She got married and it was a Who Weekly wedding of the year.

At Universal Studios in the US, you could take Xena studies, without so much as a snicker, then go for a ride at the warrior princess's own theme park. Fans created an alternate Xenaverse on hundreds of websites, where individuals who call themselves Xenites could discuss occasions such as the time Lawless popped out of her frock while she was singing the US national anthem at an NHL ice hockey game. In case you missed this auspicious event, the video is still easily downloaded off the Net, accompanied by a cheerful message announcing, "Lucy Lawless' nipple is coming up." If fame had an index - and it probably will have one soon, printed in the newspaper next to the Dow Jones - then Lawless would be off the graph. What exactly is it like to experience that level of adulation, to be so goddamn famous? "You know I just... I don't think I'm capable of... computing it," stammers Lawless. "You know what I mean?" No, not at all. "It's just like water off a duck's back," she continues. "I kind of wish I could experience that charge of 'Oh, my god, you like me, you really like me!' But I just don't."

Lawless, not yet 33, has always been famously down to earth. "It doesn't matter where I go, you take the girl out of Mt. Albert, but you cannot take Mt. Albert out of the girl. I've just got that middle-class, dry-area, straight-arrow sensibility." Only tempered with a little urban bohemianism. "I'm your average trendy-lefty, tree-hugging young person from the middle of Auckland."

From the year she was born until the age of 22, Lawless's dad Frank Ryan was the mayor of Mt. Albert. Along with her five brothers and one sister, she was raised a Catholic. "We weren't one of those families who went skiing," says Lawless, who admits to being envious of the ones who did. "Perhaps we could have gone, but it didn't occur to me to ask for those kind of special things. I was certainly not underprivileged in any way. Everything I needed, and some of the things we wanted [we got], and I guess that's how I try to raise my kids."

Apart from the one in production - due in April - Lawless has a daughter, Daisy, 13, from her first marriage to Garth Lawless, and a son Julius, aged 2 from her second marriage to Xena producer Rob Tapert. Time is split between Auckland and Los Angeles, where they have a home. "We live wherever we need to be. My husband has to be in the States a lot for work, but I'm soooo happy here in Auckland. I luuuuuve being home. It's just bursting with vitality. This is where my heart is, and this is

where my body understands."

Lawless appears to remember how to play herself. But although it is refreshing to meet an actor who isn't always acting, it doesn't necessarily bode well for their craft. To quote Esquire magazine: "real fans of Ms. Lawless like to kid themselves that she's a good actress - actually, every time Xena raises a sardonic eyebrow, you can hear it creak." To be fair to Ms. Lawless, when you're prancing around in a leather breastplate, subtlety isn't exactly the main requirement. But she does seem to be of a different breed than the other two actors in The Vagina Monologues. During a quick pre-rehearsal interview, Danielle Cormack and Madeleine Sami have an audience of one - me - but evidently, that is enough to put on a show. Either that or they have eaten too much sugar. Lawless refers to them affectionately as "high-octane".

"I'm sick of pussy," announces Sami. "Well, you've got another eight weeks of it, mate," says Cormack, with a honking laugh. "Another eight weeks of pussy talk, vagina, coochie snorcher, badly packed kebab..."

"Pah ha ha," snorts Sami, "badly packed kebab!" And so they continue, for 20 minutes, like two rambunctious schoolgirls skiving off behind the bike sheds. Cormack confesses to being naturally crass, but the other explanation could be that the subject matter is just plain embarrassing. Reactions to The Vagina Monologues - and it's one of those plays that you don't have to have seen to have an opinion of - range from ecstatic to horrified. What you get is exactly what is says on the label; a series of tales, told in the first person, about everything from orgasm workshops and lesbian awakenings to Bosnian rape camps and neglected private parts. Playwright Eve Ensler compiled them after interviewing more than 200 women on the subject of their vaginas. For every monologue that is cute and euphemistic, there is another that is equally explicit.

"I always though that I was really, like, open and liberated and really cool and stuff," says Sami, 21, "and then when I started to read this play, it was like, 'Whoa, this is really horny and really bad!' Not bad, but... I realized I wasn't as liberated as I thought I was. Not as liberated as Danielle, anyway."

"I'm working up to us all rolling around on the floor with hand mirrors, looking at our vaginas," says Cormack, 31, more than a little mockingly. "Oliver [Driver] included" - he's the director - "We're gonna make him a big plastic vagina so he can join in." Cormack was less than enthusiastic before she saw The Monologues performed in Sydney. "I was feeling reasonably cynical about the whole experience, but much to my amazement, I walked out of the show and felt quite differently about that part of a woman's body and about my own..."

"Vadgggge!" growls Sami, interrupting. "...my own vaaaarge!" continues Cormack, with mock gentility. "It's kind of interesting to say that, in a way, because you just think you're setting yourself up as some kind of old battler, and I guess part of this play, as well, is reclaiming our own bodies. But it's hard to be like that without seeming like you're at the forefront of some 70s movement..." One of Ensler's aims in writing The Vagina Monologues was to end violence against women. Since it's inception, the play's feminist credentials have been permanently under siege. Its detractors have been harsh. They maintain that as a polemic, it is equivocal, and as literature, it is weak, in a 1998 cover story, "Is Feminism Dead?" Time magazine singled out the play as proof that the movement had degenerated into self-indulgent sex chat. To others, the return to a body-centered feminism seems regressive, or just plain irrelevant. Many more will walk out of the play as soon as they hear the "C" word. Sami has to recite a particular monologue and we are discussing the irony that I can't even print its title. "How will you write it?!" she inquires, cheekily. "The same way you write 'f, dash, dash, dash," I tell her.

"If you really can't stand that word, don't come and see the show unless you're prepared to change your ways," warns Cormack. "If you want to change your ways, and you wanna get over that word, then do. But I just can't be bothered hearing seat backs flipping up in the middle of the performance."

Put Cormack, Sami, Lawless and Driver in the same room and you end up with an impromptu session of theatre sports. Some of it is a rehearsal, but mostly they're just showing off. "Lucifer," says Cormack, greeting Lawless as she walks in the room, "we were just telling the Listener all about your heroin habit." Lawless smiles indulgently, sits down at the table and opens her script. "I keep drawing vaginas in my notebook - al the time. Maybe I can auction it off at the end of the play!" They settle down and listen to Sami reclaiming the "C" word. She goes through all the letters, "C C, CA CA, Cavern, cackle, clit, cute, come..." until she has spelt out the whole word.

"Revel in saying the words," says Driver enthusiastically. "Enjoy the 't' around, and what the word feels like in you r mouth." (Yes, directors do actually say such things.)

Cormack's cellphone rings. "Right," says Driver, grabbing his notebook and pencil, "Two demerit points for answering it."

"Whoever gets the most demerit points has to make a guest appearance on Shortland Street," says Lawless, prompting a discussion about how she had never been on the soap. "That I auditioned three times for the part of the nurse who says, 'You're not in Guatemala now, Dr. Ropata.'"

"What, Robonurse?" asks Cormack. Lawless never got the part. "But I got too big to care, baby."

Back in the monologues, Cormack reads a piece called, "The Woman Who Loved To Make Vaginas Happy", which is actually all about, um, moaning during orgasms. She gets to a list of moan types and Lawless and Sami have to pitch in with their interpretations of what each moan sounds like. There is everything from a silent Wasp moan, to a mountaintop-yodeling moan, with all sorts of baby moans and doggy moans in between. When Cormack announces the "uninhibited militant bisexual moan", there is really only one appropriate noise, and only one woman in the room who can make it. "Alalalalalalalalalala!!!" screams Lawless, incredibly loudly, and for three thrilling, leather-clad seconds, Xena is back in the game.

If you were paying close attention, you will have noticed that The Vagina Monologues is being directed by - gasp - a man, and a young one at that, actor-turned-director Oliver Driver. Amid accusations that a rooster has crept into the hen house, and may be privy to top-secret women's business, or worse, may try to sabotage a "feminist" play, driver is on the defensive. "My job isn't to fight for women's rights, and my job isn't to make this the most amazing feminist piece in the world. My job is to get it off the page, via the actors and the production company, and to deliver it in a really good way to the audience." Besides, he says Ensler chose a man to direct the New York and London versions of the play. "I would hate to think that the only plays I'm allowed to

direct are about 27-year-old white guys from the North Shore. It would be an incredibly depressing aspect of my life." The Vagina Monologues is renowned for celebrity participation. Everyone from Winona Ryder and Gloria Steinem, to Edie Falco and Sophie Dahl, has done their bit. In New York, Glenn Close got an audience of 2500 to stand and chant the "C" word. Only an ex-warrior princess could pull that off round here. It's not the first time the actor has had to get to gripe with gender politics.

"It came as a bit of shock to me, at the age of 26, when Xena was being heralded as a feminist icon," says Lawless. "I kind of freaked out at that. I was on the cover of Ms magazine in the States. I felt like a puppet on a stick, that I was being objectified in a way that I couldn't cope with, that I didn't know how to fulfill that feminist role." She said it took her a while to realize that it was Xena they were heralding, not her. Then she had to face all that Sapphic speculation surrounding Xena. Or as Esquire magazine put it, "Okay, boys - here's the bad news.

Xena probably drinks from the fur cup." Lawless never differentiated between her gay and straight fans, but she was initially surprised at their ardour. "But only because I was completely ignorant of the world, it made perfect sense when you think about it, that lesbians would cleave to two women, on screen side by side, through war, through the perilous male-dominated world and without husbands, or without Charlie telling them what to do."

Her co-star Renee O'Connor once went to Texas where she mentioned the fuss about Xena's lesbian subtext. "What lesbian subtext?" they asked. "About three years into it, they had never hooked in to it," says Lawless. "So, you know, it worked for the kids, and it worked for women trying to enter the workforce, it worked for lesbians, boys who like eye-candy... and it worked for judges who want to be spanked." The fact that Xena did it for so many fans means that Lawless, as its star, has an excellent credit-rating in Hollywood. "They're interested in you in a business sense, because you can carry a show." Good scripts have come her way, but she "keeps getting pregnant, right in the middle of them." This year, she has a cameo as a punk rocker, in the new Spiderman flick. There has been much speculation surrounding Lawless's philanthropic activities. One year, she was supposed to have propped up the Hero Parade, while another claim had her sponsoring film student Raina Webster in New York, which she flat out denies. "Uhh, No. I'd rather that sort of thing wasn't even talked about. I ain't Jesus Christ. And I gotta get back to work. I earn a lot of money, but I'm not the ASB Trust."

Which doesn't stop people writing to her as though she is. "People want you to bloody cure their children of this disease or other. I could give away every cent I ever owned and the letters would keep coming." At first, such appeals were extremely difficult to deal with. "And then you just realize, yah, I am not the Messiah. I'm not even Xena. And however much people think you are worth, you don't have that much money!" She has had to develop a donation gauge. "You give 'til it hurts and then you just pull back. Because otherwise your giving is not sustainable. You get what people in the movies used to call compassion fatigue. It's not generosity, you see, it's not altruism, it's just, 'I don't wanna feel bad about that person anymore."

For the last few years, Lawless's name has been more readily associated with her work for Auckland's Starship Children's Hospital, where he is a trustee, than with random acts of kindness. I wonder how she felt last year, when the Liz Gunn-fronted campaign against child abuse so publicly unraveled. Lawless said that it did make her question the validity of celebrity-fronted campaigns. "You've got to put your emotions aside for the good of the cause and often you must have to shut up about how you genuinely feel, because really you are just an actress. You have to take every comment under advisement. What is going to serve the interests of the kids? Not my emotions." Having said this, child abuse is obviously an emotional issue for Lawless. Just talking about the Save and Sound appeal, she gets hot under the collar and red in the face, her voice lowered to an indignant hiss. "We should all be concerned. Our prisons are chock-a-block with people who were abused, one way or the other, as children. So maybe it is everybody's problem... it's a chance for us to show we do give a shit." Lawless displays wrath so effectively, you find yourself quickly steering the conversation back to cheerier topics. Talking about her own kids seems like a safe bet. Parenting is a top priority for Lawless. "If you don't have a happy home life, and if you're not raising healthy, well-adjusted children then you've got nothing."

After all this talk of family and philanthropy, it is tempting to assume Lawless has no truck with being a star. Don't be fooled. I asked Lawless how she would fell if Xena turned out to be the zenith of her career and her answer is unexpectedly candid. "I don't think I would be happy, to e totally honest with you. It sounds so cheesy, but I think I was, like, born to show off, born to be in the spotlight... I don't know what else to do! You see, I'm not interested in doing very many other things than acting. I don't have hobbies. I'll hook a rug for my child's bedroom floor, because I can't find what I want... I do home-crafty things, but that's it, man." Sometimes you just crave the kind of attention that only a super-hero costume can bring. "I'm always looking for it. I need to perform, and a performer needs an audience. I don't think I could ever live..." and here, Lawless pauses just long enough to flinch with disgust, "...quietly anywhere."