The New Zealand Herald has a great article / interview with Ngila Dickson, the Oscar winning costume designer from New Zealand. Many a Xena fan would remember Ngila - she designed the costumes for Hercules & Xena. Ngila has gone on to bigger things since Xena and the NZ Herald article has a fantastic interview with her. The interview reveals at one point she had doubts about leaving Xena and going to work on Lords of the Rings but a chat with Rob Tapert convinced her to move forward. She won an Oscar for her work in the movie "The Return of the King".
Here is the truth of the matter," she says, then pauses slightly for effect - something she's rather good at. "I had a moment," she continues, "when I was offered The Lord of the Rings when I was having so much fun on [television shows] Hercules and Xena that I seriously was thinking that I was not going to accept it.
"It is one of those sort of pivotal moments in your life. I loved what I was doing and who I was working with and, in fact, it was [Hercules and Xena creator and producer] Rob Tapert himself who made me make the decision. He was having a conversation with me about how he had fired the [Hercules] writers in LA. He said, in that wacky American accent of his, 'Ngila, those guys, they've been writing it for three years.
They're getting stale. They're just repeating themselves.' And I was sitting there going, 'Oh my God, that's me. I've been doing this for five years'."
- News submitted by Jo