Many thanks to Kym Masera Taborn from XMR for the transcript
The Mirror Newspaper
(UK)
May 26 2000
XENA: WARRIOR MUM
By: Ruki Sayid
HER blood-curdling battle cry turns screen baddies into quivering wrecks. Just the mention of her name sends male pulses racing - and some female ones, too. But striking actress Lucy Lawless, who plays the most powerful woman on TV, reckons life as a mum beats worldwide fame as _ a fighting machine.
Fans of Xena: Warrior Princess love the statuesque leather-clad heroine, who fights her way through ancient Greece with her trusty blonde sidekick Gabrielle. But away from the battlefield, 5ft 11ins Lucy swaps her thigh-skimming skirt and bronze breastplate for the chance to play mum to her baby Julius and her daughter Daisy, 11.
The star, who is married to the show's executive producer, Rob Tapert, 44, cuddles seven-month-old Julius as she says: "He is so delightful. I love motherhood - I can't wait to have two more children."
Lucy and handsome Rob wed two years ago. Daisy is from her earlier marriage to former school sweetheart Garth Lawless.
Speaking from her 1.5 million pounds ranch-style home in Auckland, New Zealand, Lucy, 32, reckons being a working mum is easier than staying at home with the children.
"When I had Daisy I was a full-time mum and I found that difficult," she says. "It was very isolating staying at home all the time.
"Now I'm in a wonderful position where I not only take my baby to work with me but I can also afford some help as well."
"It's great taking Julius to work because he has so many protective aunties and uncles around him."
She worked right through pregnancy, giving scriptwriters the headache of how to write around her bulge.
"I was fine for the first four months, but the skirt doesn't leave much to the imagination, so they gave me a cloak," she says. "It was great - for the first time in five years I was actually warm while we were filming."
Within weeks of the birth, she was back on the set for gruelling 10-hour shoots.
Xena has brought Lucy world fame. There are 192 websites dedicated to her, she has her own £6 million theme park attraction at Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida, and a new video is just out.
Lucy recently turned down £250,000 from Playboy magazine to run naked through hot springs and has been voted one of the sexiest women in the world.
Yet she wasn't on the original shortlist to play Xena.
"Legend has it that the original actress didn't make it because she was having a wonderful fling in London with Richard Gere, so thank you London," says Lucy, who played an Amazon in Channel 5's Hercules.
She had a crash course in martial arts days before filming began in Auckland, but says: "I learnt most of it through a series of short, sharp shocks.
"In the beginning I had plenty of little mementoes to take home - black eyes, torn ligaments, loosened teeth and a bad back.
"I even smashed my pelvis while riding a horse on to a parking lot on the Tonight show in LA. I pulled the horse to a stop and his feet skidded from under him.
"I will never forget the sound of hooves scraping on the pavement as I fell off. It took me a long time to get my confidence back."
Lucy does most of her fight scenes and stunts, but admits: "I don't do the flips. They are done by a girl who's 5ft 2ins and who wears fibre glass underpants with wires attached."
Xena's fame has brought some unusual requests.
"I get a lot of mail from judges who want to be spanked," says Lucy. "Or they want me to walk all over them in my boots.
"But I also get a lot of letters from women who have been inspired to re-enter the workforce, take charge of their lives or get out of an abusive relationship."
Despite her fame, she remains down-to-earth.
"It's impossible to play the big star when you're dressed in a leather mini -skirt, lashed by freezing rain and caked in mud," she says.
Xena: Warrior Princess is on Sky One on Wednesdays at 6pm.