Con 2013 Hudson Leick Convention Report

by KTL


YOUNG’UN WARNING. THERE ARE SOME “NAUGHTY” AND POTENTIALLY OFFENSIVE WORDS IN THIS REPORT. FROM HUDSON’S MOUTH TO GOD’S EAR SHALL WE SAY? I SHALL CLEVERLY DISQUISE THEM BY PUTTING A STAR WHERE A LETTER SHOULD BE, BUT I SUSPECT JUST ABOUT ALL OF YOU WILL KNOW THE WORDS HUDSON ACTUALLY SAID.


I’m sure there are many pictures of the “New Hudson” out there. But what a surprise it was to see her suddenly transformed self in person. And when I say “transformed” I don’t mean just physically. Her now sporting a brown mohawk hairdo instead of her usual blond locks might easily have been an appropriate and easy, "go on, work it girl" look for her usual stage persona.

At cons, Hudson has always played a close to psychopathic wild and crazy grrl. Her performances always included lots of sexual innuendo, lots of acting out her mastery of us, knowing that we’ll accept anything she throws out there. And be not just accepting of it, but happy to take it in and enjoy it.

But the Hudson we saw this year was I think—just Hudson. Not an act, not putting on a character, this time not playing a role she discovered early on that worked well and pleased us.

So—just looking at her when she first came out didn’t really signal anything special about this appearance. But it definitely was a new experience for her and for us.

Hudson of course always gets a standing ovation.

She looks around at us and says, (possibly touching her hair I think) “My last chance to have a mohawk. How do you like it?” Of course we applaud and scream happily, even as murmurs are going around, “BROWN hair?”

“I just got back from a ten day meditation” (In India).
“I did a “c*nt” meditation. Kuh-kuh-unt. Terrible word. Who likes c*nt? I like c*nt.” Pause. “Oh I see some hands up who also do”.

“Female genitalia—the life giving (area). Why do we call each other that? Use those words?” (I think she also mentioned the word “pr*ck” here but it might have been somewhere else she said that.)

“I was meditating for ten days alone in silence”.

“How are your c*nts?” She said something like she liked to have her c*nt rejuvenated. “I have a woman in once a week to clean it up”. (Okay—so maybe she hadn’t QUITE left the somewhat psychotic bad grrl behind).

She told us the mohawk was Anita’s idea. “Your hair’s short. You should put it in a mohawk. I think they’d like it”. (Anita Ellis is her best friend who runs the James Ellis Foundation that is the charity Creation and Xena fans support at the annual celebrity breakfast at the cons.)

“This is the first time since I was 12 that I have my natural hair color. I’m going gray. My pubes too. I have a mohawk there too. But I’m not gonna show it to you. I need someone to help bring it more joy."

“I really don’t have a desire to act right now. I don’t have any interest in it.”

“I traveled. I shaved my head for India because I was mortified by it. I’m older. Different beauty. I was into my long hair. And into being pretty. While it was growing out I felt like a housewife. That’s why I got the mohawk. SO DIFFERENT.”

“Why do we call each other names which are about something beautiful? Use any body part. Your elbow. ‘You elbow face. You belly button'!”

“I want to give you what I want, but I want to keep me”. (I'm wondering at this moment if she said, "I want to give you what YOU want" and I wrote it down wrong. Or not.)

Hudson: “So you keep coming back year after year”. Fan: “So do you”. Hudson: “Yes. But I’m paid”.

“It’s been 17 years now. The show was only on six years”. "We’re home”. “That’s nice”. “Let’s go”. “Where we going?” “On a trip”.

Okay, the above paragraph is verbatim from my notebook. But who was saying what is not recorded. It COULD be Hudson saying everything since I usually try to indicate when a fan is talking. Or it could be that I was so engrossed in watching the new Hudson-on-stage woman that I just forgot to delineate the speaker.

“What’s the most fun you’ve ever had?” (This one is obviously a fan.)

Hudson thinks for a bit. “In Paris. Working as a model. I was a terrible model. Like this:” And I THINK she made a pose/face at that point showing how bad she was at modeling and then telling us the reaction of someone there--“You should act”.

“I was 19. In the south of France. Drinking. . . smoking. . . one of the best times I’ve ever had looking at the Mediterranean Sea”.

“Acting did two things. In acting class I started to look at people. I realized I was a little psychic. I said to one woman, ‘You’ve been molested by your dad’ and she started to cry. We have the ability to connect with each other at a deep level”.

“I became an actor. I so wanted to be loved. I so wanted to be important”.

“As a model, I traveled to Japan. ‘See-she’s somebody’. That’s why I became an actor.”

“I’m so grateful and happy that I’m NOT an actor”.

“Xena gave me great gifts. The people closest to my heart I gained from this show.”

“I had my 10 year reunion during Xena. I had time—I wanted to go back and show them I was important. I was on a road to be a movie star. So people would think I was good enough. That’s why I shaved my head. So I could be good enough for myself and not for anyone else.”

“I loved playing that character in Xena”.

Then I have a note, “The shriek”. I THINK the question was was that scripted or did it just happen, something like that.

“On Xena, we made everything up”. ‘Uh. . .can you do a yell?” “Yeah”. “Okay”. “I do it really low. And it feels GOOD".

“I was very friendly as a kid." She imitated herself, standing bouncily in front of another kid saying, "You wanna play with me?" with this huge, excited, ferociously hopeful smile on her face. "Then when I hit puberty...” She pantomimed horror at budding breasts and crotch.

“I was highly depressed during Xena. If I ever get out of this, that’s what I want to do—bring other people out. I could play violent because I had it within me. Having darkness in you is not bad—it leads you to (try to fix it).”

“I liked wearing the black outfit best”.

Then I have written down, “Please give me something”. I’m not sure if Hudson said that or a fan.

I noticed that this year Hudson was working with a bit of an edge. Through the way she sometimes looked at some fan at the mike and the look she had on her own face as she waited to form her answer, she was obviously acknowledging and letting us know that she knew that some of the questions were silly and were primarily focused on the person asking it, being asked by them mainly to present themselves in a “How cool am I?” type of way. Which we have always had at the cons, but is seldom called out by the actors. This Hudson was too honest and open to play along blissfully with that. This was the deepest Hudson I’ve ever seen.

“Hercules was a drag. It was fun because Kevin didn’t know what to do with me. I was his leading woman—then I was like, ‘YA-YA-YA’!!. He didn’t know what to do with me. He’s a producer. So he took away all my lines because they made him look bad”.

“Xena was more feminized, less sexualized. We looked like that (the same costumes I think she said or I interpreted this to mean that) but it was more about character”.

“If you sit long enough, you realize that your mind talks incessantly. It won’t shut the f*ck up!” “When we can control our minds, it’s better for us. The mind (worries) and causes us pain”. “Sit perfectly still for one full hour three times a day. The mind—‘This is BAD for you!’ The body is fine”.

I have the pretty cryptic next note: "They’re all like—we want boobs!"

Fan: “Thank you for sharing so much”

I’m pretty sure it was Hudson (just might have been the fan though but I think it was Hudson more) who then said, “Growing up Episcopalian had no meaning to me. (I decided) there was no God in the second grade.” (Pretty sure she means “in general”, not just not in the second grade sitting at a desk say).

A fan asked a question that Hudson repeated, “What expanded me? Yoga class in L.A. with a plastic surgery woman. She had HUGE boobs. When they left, I felt an incredible spirit.” (When the boobs left? When the women left? I’m obviously tiring at this point. . .)

A fan asked what it was like swapping playing Xena with Lucy. “I hated it. Renee helped me a lot because she knew what Lucy would do. It’s just mimicking. It’s not creative”.

I then have written down, “Life bringing words” and I think she’s referring to c*nt and pr*ck again.

Then we got to the meat—the auctioning off of her dress, boots and (I THINK at a fan suggestion) her earrings for the benefit of the Ellis Foundation.

The auctions are always a lovely thing. People will bid and sometimes other people will participate in their bids, adding to them so that they can raise the amount of money the foundation will get higher. You get these little good-hearted syndicates spontaneously spurting into being as the bids go on.

The dress ultimately went for one thousand, five hundred and fifty dollars. The boots for four-hundred dollars. And the earrings for three-hundred dollars. Not bad.

After the bidding, Hudson said goodbye to us “Thank you for showing up. You guys are always so loving and giving. Every year starts (for me) with the Xena con.” And then she left the stage.

Again, this was the most intriguing Hudson I’ve ever seen. She usually hides behind that persona she has played year after year at the cons. Yes, it was always enjoyable and fun-but this Hudson caught my heart. She was SO sincere while still definitely Hudson. Like in celebrating genitalia as being a wondrous, creative part of the body—I thought that was just so real and true. I always look forward to seeing her onstage every year, next year I’ll be even more looking forward to seeing where she is then and what she’s got to say to us about it.


KT