Many thanks to W. Chan for this transcript LL on Regis and KL 9/28/97 - transcription L=Lucy Lawless, R=Regis, K=Kathie Lee (clip of Xena fighting Ares from "The Furies") R: Yeah. K: She's just being heroic in her own way. R: Just saying hello to the guy, that's all. K: The way Xena does it. R: Fierce and fearless. K: Yes. R: Pop culture hero Xena the Warrior Princess, currently making her stage debut as Rizzo, yes, on Broadway. K: Who's also fierce and fearless. R: That's right, Rizzo of 'Grease' fame of course. Here's Lucy Lawless. (LL enters, wearing a white top, tight-fitting red cardigan sweater, black jeans and boots) L: Hi! R: Howya doing, Lucy? Nice to see you again. K: Great to see you again. R: Oh Lucy! K: Lucy, Lucy, Lucy! R: Yeah! K: You look great. L: Why thank you. K: Are you exhausted, doing eight shows a week? L: No I feel great only I bought this new cardigan and it's kinda too short... I keep worrying about it. R: It's all right with us. But anyway... Uhh, you know that we first met her... K: ...in New Orleans, and I was very sick. L: And I had had the same thing. R: I thought I was well, but anyway, she came out and sang. And we were both surprised by her voice. I didn't know you were a singer too. L: Ahh, yes, I forced myself to overcome a real phobia about singing in public performace, believe it or not. K: You seem to be enjoying it. L: I am. I'm doing Broadway, and it was really the scariest possible option for me this hiatus, but I took on this job and it's really been filled with... R: Rizzo. Rizzo with Grease. Sure. K: She's got the best role, 'cause she's just such attitude. L: Yeah. The second female lead is always the best one. There are always more conflicting, a bit more... K: Adelaide in Guys and Dolls, and right. Uh Huh. R: Now who's tougher in a no-holds barred fight? Rizzo or Xena? L: Know what? Xena's tougher but she's also more under control. Rizzo's a bit, um, a little more, a victim to her own... R: Now how do you play an Italian-American young lady with that New Zealand accent? L: Well I don't. I drop the American..umm, the New Zealand accent. R: And what do you sound like? L: (in a gruff American accent) "How long are we supposed to play babysitter for her?" (applause and laughter) R: Yeah, that'll do it. Nobody would think of New Zealand in a million years. K: You just put on yourself, let me turn that up(?)... You know what though, Reeg, she does a whole lot of, not just accents, but you speak several languages, don't you? L: I studied three languages at school in university and I went to... K: Unusual languages. L: Well, French, German and Italian. Not that kind of strange. I thought not. K: I thought it was Greek and Zimbabwe or something. L: No. I did learn a little of Hebrew when I came back, that's a really fascinating language. K: It's a lot of guttural. L: Yeah I really like that. (K hocks a bit) K: Can't beat a good guttural voice, huh? (L hocks a bit and says something in Hebrew(?)) R: You know, Xena has a very famous battle cry, almost as famous as probably... L: As you! R: Well no... K: Like Tarzan. That's his mating call. R: Tarzan in the old movies had a mating call that everybody used to do. What is your mating call like? L: Right. Well, in crude terms, you're quite right, it is a gimmick. You know, initially, we wanted something like Tarzan call for this character. And uh, it's bastardization of an Arabic woman's cry which they do in protest or in happy occasions. It's an all-purpous... K: An all-purpous ululation. R: An all-purpous yell, yeah. L: I couldn't do it, I couldn't move my tongue the way they do it. So I, you know, made up my own, and really, all I say is "ah la la, la la," but very fast. And tell everyone they keep spelling it differently on the Internet, but um, that's all it really is. But it's big... R: Can we hear it? (L lets loose the Xena battle cry and scares Regis in the process. Audience cheers.) R: Oh... K: Now did that get you in the mood? R: Yeah. Doesn't take much to get me in the mood.. L: Now can we hear yours? R: No, no, that was Tarzan's scream. But I have heard a version of that in Morocco. L: Right. I see it on CNN every weekend. R: Mmm hmm. So tell us about your life. You know, you kind of traveled around the world before you settled down. L: I did. I lived in the outback and I traveled around Europe on a shoestring. R: By yourself you lived in the outback. By yourself? L: Actually no. I was joined there with a man I later married and the father of my child, with whom I am longer with together but uh... K: But he's still the father of your child. L: But uh that's right the father of my child and a very good one. So um, yes I was living there and we saw snakes and kangaroos and just outlandish wildlife they had there. R: What did you do there? L: I worked for a goldmining company and we would um, map the earth and really kind of boring hot and filthy work. K: A lot of digging. L: A lot of digging... R: Looking for gold. L: Yes. People think you're down in the mine with a little pick-axe, you know like, a tribe of gnomes..in my (?) with a canary in a cage. But it's not like that at all. R: Now where else did you go through your travels? L: I also worked for a travel show. I hosted a travel show around the world. I went to Israel and Prague... R: In television. L: ...in television, yeah. And I gave it up, there was nothing on the horizon. I just knew I didn't want to be a (?). I didn't want to be a big fish in a small bowl..pond. I um... R: You wanted to be a big fish in a big pond. L: No, I wanted to be an actress and it'll be my lifelong pursuit to be a fine actress. R: So you came to Hollywood... L: I didn't, Hollywood came to me. Isn't that a trip? R: Where did they find you for this role? L: I was in New Zealand, they were filming Hercules. It was at that stage an unknown series and um, the woman who had been training for a month to play the part of Xena on a three episode arc on... R: This was on Hercules, Kevin Sorbo... L: ...got sick and uh, the studio said "No you can't. Don't use that local girl for goodness sake to fill in for her. You just used her. Here's a list of five other actresses and every single one of them turned it down because they didn't want to leave during pilot season, you know, to leave LA. R: And you were there. L: It was New Year's Eve... It was New Year's Eve and I got this really great horoscope, and we were laughing 'Fame and fortune await you,' and we were going "Oh what a load of nonsense!" you know, throw that away. In fact I went and I went and dug it out when..yeah. R: And it happened. See, that's why you never get sick, do you? Never get sick in this business, absolutely. K: Some of my best opportunities came when someone else got sick. Sandy Duncan got sick and I was called in to replace her to sing, open with Rich Little. Did my first Vegas act that way. She was so sweet though. She left a big bouquet of flowers in the dressing room. It said, 'Dear Kathie Lee, if you're better than me, I'll kill you. Love Sandy'. R: Those flowers did have a big snake in it as I recall. R: Just asking, you know this lady has been all over the world now, with a career, and before a career and so on and how did she like living in New York, because it can kind of be a transition for people and uh, you seem to love it. L: I absolutely love it. The people here are..I find Americans generally to have an open spirit but New Yorkers in particular... (applause) K: They don't get a chance to get something to give them something to cheer about. L: I know I know. Believe it or not I think Americans have a slightly low self-esteem about their public image around the world. But New Yorkers are so up front..any aggression is totally in your face and then it's over with. R: Do they know who they're dealing with? They're dealing with Xena! Have you had any confrontations on the street? L: No, people are very nice. I'm not... K: You do your own stunts don't you pretty much? L: No, I do the fights and i do the horseriding... R: The animals..? L: ...but as a rule, if you don't see my face, it's not me. and I work with really ghastly animals. I'm waiting for snakes and spiders. R: What have you worked with now on the show? Some rats? L: Rats. K: Hey I've been in show business my whole life. I've worked with a million rats. R: You've met all the rats in your lifetime. L: No, I've had a rat dumped on me. Um.. K: You actually got bitten didn't you? You had to get a... L: I got...It was just a precaution, but I got scratched. But, they were (?) and they were so afraid and they would cling to me. I just had nightmares.