Xena: Warrior Princess star Lucy Lawless: ‘To have Lisa Simpson say your name is crazy’

Lucy Lawless was born in Mount Albert, Auckland, New Zealand, in March 1968.After acting in local stage productions she made her television debut in the Nea Zaland comedy series, Funny People. She then studied drama in Vancouver, Canada, before landing the starring role in Xena: Warrior Princess.

The US TV series was hugely successful around the world and ran from 1995 to 2001, making Lawless a star and leading to an appearance as herself in The Simpsons in 1999. She went on to appear in Battlestar Galactica, Spartacus: Blood And Sand, My Life Is Murder and Parks & Recreation, among many others. She has recently moved behind the camera for Never Look Away, a film based on the life of New Zealand-born CNN photojournalist and camerawoman Margaret Moth.

Speaking to the Big Issue for her Letter to My Younger Self, Lucy Lawless looked back at her desperation to leave New Zealand at a young age, her surprising aversion to sci-fi and her climate activism.

I come from a very stable environment – stable family, loving parents, very middle class. In New Zealand, that means very bog standard, cake stalls, church. But I was desperate to go out and explore. I used to watch planes when I was eight years old, going, I know there’s people on those planes, how can I get on them? I’ve got real wanderlust. I just couldn’t wait to get out. 

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I ran away at 18… hence getting pregnant at 19. For a lot of New Zealanders it’s an expected part of your development that you do your OE [overseas experience]. In those days, it meant coming to London. But I went with no money. It was a stupid plan. I can’t believe my parents let me go. They thought I’d turn around and come right back home again – and I wan’t even smart enough to do that.  

When I found myself pregnant, everyone was mourning the loss of my potential. They thought my life was over. But I didn’t. So I would tell my younger self to remember that life is long. Everybody tells you it is short, so you have to go for it. But sometimes it is more helpful to think about how long life is. In the end, I had three kids. You are also going to have several careers if you live long enough. So keep breathing. It will come. And when you don’t know what to do, do nothing for a moment. Life will take an uptick.

My father was the mayor of Mount Albert, so I was aware of social issues from a young age. We had the Springboks’ rugby tour of New Zealand when I was about 13 and my father, like a lot of New Zealanders, was like, ‘It’s only rugby.’ But my mother was very against any sort of entertainment of the apartheid regime. The match happened at the famous Eden Park in Mount Albert so the country – and my house – was riven by these two points of view. There were bomb threats to our house. I remember being home sick from school and asking my mum whether the bombers would come. That made me more of an activist. I saw my parents with two different points of view and knew I could act according to my own standards.

The first week I was home with my baby, I made this bizarre showreel. It included me tap dancing with my post-baby body in a leotard and high-top boots, I threw a bit of Shakespeare in there, it was ridiculous. But it helped me get a sketch comedy gig and fomented a huge amount of creative activity. One kid doesn’t impact your career. Two kids will – but they’re so damn funny and cute. And there is time for everything. There is time to have children, time to raise them, and then you might get another act once they have gone off to college. The mental freedom I have now I’m not worrying about them every minute is immense.

My heroes were all stage actors. I used to buy Plays And Players magazine and saw myself as one day coming to London and doing theatre. London was the centre of that world. Then I got sucked into fantasy action TV – now that was a crazy U-turn. It was never the plan. And it was murder having to do all those stunts. I was known in school as Unco, for uncoordinated, so it was a horrible shock to do all the fight scenes in Xena: Warrior Princess. I didn’t watch fantasy or sci-fi, I’m just not into it. I’m into real people and exploring humanity. I will always watch Judi Dench rather than people with pointy ears. 

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I was spirited away to Hollywood and doing cheeseball TV. There’s nothing wrong with cheese, I love cheese. But looking back, it’s not The Sopranos, is it? But the fact Xena had such an impact on people’s lives would have blown my mind. It had this effect down the line of giving courage to people. So it’s an honour to be an LGBT+ icon and part of something that makes people feel safer and more valuable.  

I was really lucky I never met a Weinstein. I try to treat young actors the way I would like to have been treated. And I wasn’t always treated right. But having had a good family life, I could cope with it. It might have scarred me far worse had I been more vulnerable. There were times it was jolly hard to persist. I was doing something where there weren’t any real exemplars ahead of me coming from New Zealand. 

Stick to the knitting. That’s another thing I’d tell my younger self. If they invite you to do a movie but you’re stuck on a TV show, don’t burn down the TV show. That’s not the way to live your life. Stick to the knitting and the jobs will take care of themselves. Whatever your career is, whatever your dream is, you don’t have to burn the house down to get what you want.

To have Lisa Simpson say your name is crazy. Not just the character you play but your own name. I would never have believed I’d be on The Simpsons or Saturday Night Live or a show like Parks and Recreation. These things are not my wheelhouse, but I got involved because of the cult of Xena. It opened crazy doors for me.  Part of me feels like I dreamed it all up. I don’t go in for the visualisation thing, yet it is almost as if I wrote the script.

A woman in their 50s is a very powerful thing. Because she’s not afraid of anything anymore. I’m developing things, we’ve already done four seasons of My Life Is Murder – which I’m producing and acting in – and I’m working hell for leather on projects I’m madly passionate about. Acting can’t hold me anymore. It’s such a narrow way of storytelling. Once you are used to being terrified 24/7, directing is so alluring and inclusive of other disciplines.

New Zealanders show up for mother nature. We had the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior in 1985 in a state-sponsored terrorist event by the French government. And that’s when Greenpeace became legendary down there. There’s a certain feeling of do or die regarding environmental issues for us. This Earth is a finite organism. I hold my generation responsible for a lot. Because Gen X science was very clear and we didn’t act. We continued the pattern of greed and excess. 

We occupied an oil drilling ship and I felt the most incredible calmness. [Lucy Lawless was sentenced to 120 days community service after occupying a Shell oil drilling ship for four days in 2012]. There’s no burden. Your motives are so pure. When you are acting in a way that may well lead to your death – but for reasons you believe in with every fibre of your being – such a peace that comes over you. It’s transcendent. But my younger self would have been shocked to know I would ever do that. 

I really want to tell my younger self that it’s all going to be all right. But I think I had a naive belief that everything would work out anyway. Maybe if you come from a stable environment, you have that? It’s difficult to fill the void an insecure childhood engenders in a kid. The advantage somebody from a loving home gets defies computation. I always knew I could count on my family if the chips were down – that’s what I would want for every kid.

Lucy Lawless directs Never Look Away: The Incredible Life of CNN Camerawoman Margaret Moth, which is in cinemas from 2 December. 

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