(clip of Xena fighting Ares from "The Furies")

Regis: Yeah.

Kathy Lee: She's just being heroic in her own way.

Regis: Just saying hello to the guy, that's all.

Kathy Lee: The way Xena does it.

Regis: Fierce and fearless.

Kathy Lee: Yes.

Regis: Pop culture hero Xena the Warrior Princess, currently making her stage debut as Rizzo, yes, on Broadway.

Kathy Lee: Who's also fierce and fearless.

Regis: 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)

Lucy Lawless: Hi!

Regis: Howya doing, Lucy? Nice to see you again.

Kathy Lee: Great to see you again.

Regis: Oh Lucy!

Kathy Lee: Lucy, Lucy, Lucy!

Regis: Yeah!

Kathy Lee: You look great.

Lucy Lawless: Why thank you.

Kathy Lee: Are you exhausted, doing eight shows a week?

Lucy Lawless: No I feel great only I bought this new cardigan and it's kinda too short... I keep worrying about it.

Regis: It's all right with us. But anyway... Uhh, you know that we first met her...

Kathy Lee: ...in New Orleans, and I was very sick.

Lucy Lawless: And I had had the same thing.

Regis: 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.

Lucy Lawless: Ahh, yes, I forced myself to overcome a real phobia about singing in public performace, believe it or not.

Kathy Lee: You seem to be enjoying it.

Lucy Lawless: 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...

Regis: Rizzo. Rizzo with Grease. Sure.

Kathy Lee: She's got the best role, 'cause she's just such attitude.

Lucy Lawless: Yeah. The second female lead is always the best one. There are always more conflicting, a bit more...

Kathy Lee: Adelaide in Guys and Dolls, and right. Uh Huh.

Regis: Now who's tougher in a no-holds barred fight? Rizzo or Xena?

Lucy Lawless: 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...

Regis: Now how do you play an Italian-American young lady with that New Zealand accent?

Lucy Lawless: Well I don't. I drop the American..umm, the New Zealand accent.

Regis: And what do you sound like?

Lucy Lawless: (in a gruff American accent) "How long are we supposed to play babysitter for her?"

(applause and laughter)

Regis: Yeah, that'll do it. Nobody would think of New Zealand in a million years.

Kathy Lee: 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?

Lucy Lawless: I studied three languages at school in university and I went to...

Kathy Lee: Unusual languages.

Lucy Lawless: Well, French, German and Italian. Not that kind of strange. I thought not.

Kathy Lee: I thought it was Greek and Zimbabwe or something.

Lucy Lawless: No. I did learn a little of Hebrew when I came back, that's a really fascinating language.

Kathy Lee: It's a lot of guttural.

Lucy Lawless: Yeah I really like that. (K hocks a bit)

Kathy Lee: Can't beat a good guttural voice, huh? (L hocks a bit and says something in Hebrew(?))

Regis: You know, Xena has a very famous battle cry, almost as famous as probably...

Lucy Lawless: As you!

Regis: Well no...

Kathy Lee: Like Tarzan. That's his mating call.

Regis: Tarzan in the old movies had a mating call that everybody used to do. What is your mating call like?

Lucy Lawless: 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...

Kathy Lee: An all-purpous ululation.

Regis: An all-purpous yell, yeah.

Lucy Lawless: 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...

Regis: Can we hear it?

(L lets loose the Xena battle cry and scares Regis in the process. Audience cheers.)

Regis: Oh...

Kathy Lee: Now did that get you in the mood?

Regis: Yeah. Doesn't take much to get me in the mood..

Lucy Lawless: Now can we hear yours?

Regis: No, no, that was Tarzan's scream. But I have heard a version of that in Morocco.

Lucy Lawless: Right. I see it on CNN every weekend.

Regis: Mmm hmm. So tell us about your life. You know, you kind of traveled around the world before you settled down.

Lucy Lawless: I did. I lived in the outback and I traveled around Europe on a shoestring.

Regis: By yourself you lived in the outback. By yourself?

Lucy Lawless: 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...

Kathy Lee: But he's still the father of your child.

Lucy Lawless: 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.

Regis: What did you do there?

Lucy Lawless: I worked for a goldmining company and we would um, map the earth and really kind of boring hot and filthy work.

Kathy Lee: A lot of digging.

Lucy Lawless: A lot of digging...

Regis: Looking for gold.

Lucy Lawless: 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.

Regis: Now where else did you go through your travels?

Lucy Lawless: I also worked for a travel show. I hosted a travel show around the world. I went to Israel and Prague...

Regis: In television.

Lucy Lawless: ...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...

Regis: You wanted to be a big fish in a big pond.

Lucy Lawless: No, I wanted to be an actress and it'll be my lifelong pursuit to be a fine actress.

Regis: So you came to Hollywood...

Lucy Lawless: I didn't, Hollywood came to me. Isn't that a trip?

Regis: Where did they find you for this role?

Lucy Lawless: 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...

Regis: This was on Hercules, Kevin Sorbo...

Lucy Lawless: ...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.

Regis: And you were there.

Lucy Lawless: 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.

Regis: And it happened. See, that's why you never get sick, do you? Never get sick in this business, absolutely.

Kathy Lee: 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'.

Regis: Those flowers did have a big snake in it as I recall.

Regis: 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.

Lucy Lawless: I absolutely love it. The people here are..I find Americans generally to have an open spirit but New Yorkers in particular... (applause)

Kathy Lee: They don't get a chance to get something to give them something to cheer about.

Lucy Lawless: 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.

Regis: Do they know who they're dealing with? They're dealing with Xena! Have you had any confrontations on the street?

Lucy Lawless: No, people are very nice. I'm not...

Kathy Lee: You do your own stunts don't you pretty much?

Lucy Lawless: No, I do the fights and i do the horseriding...

Regis: The animals..?

Lucy Lawless: ...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.

Regis: What have you worked with now on the show? Some rats?

Lucy Lawless: Rats.

Kathy Lee: Hey I've been in show business my whole life. I've worked with a million rats.

Regis: You've met all the rats in your lifetime.

Lucy Lawless: No, I've had a rat dumped on me. Um..

Kathy Lee: You actually got bitten didn't you? You had to get a...

Lucy Lawless: 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.

(audience eeews)

Kathy Lee: They were afraid..they were afraid?!

Lucy Lawless: But worse than rats is eels because eels..their muscularity is such that they can move in one direction and their skin will move in another. And it's slimy and it's so primitive that they're terrifying.

Regis: Do you do your battle cry to them when they get uh...?

Lucy Lawless: I..no I don't do anything. I just... when the camera's rolling I do what I have to do as calmly and get these off me! and I'm outta it.

Regis: But not only animals she's got, you know, a lotta bad guys she has to confront.

Kathy Lee: Hey it's a tough world.

Regis: ...and here's a clip of Xena taking on those bad guys. Take a look. (clip of xena doing Three Stooges-style fights with some thugs)

Kathy Lee: That was Three Stooges in there!

Lucy Lawless: It is absolutely Stooges.

Regis: You're absolutely right, choreography by the Three Stooges. Uh...

Lucy Lawless: I only watched Three Stooges for the first time the night before. I mean I kinda seen them but I just thought it's one of those guy things.

Kathy Lee: Oh they're so funny.

Lucy Lawless: Now I absolutely adore them.

Regis: Yeah absolutely. Well uh you certainly took care of those guys. But there's a lot of stuntwork in this. Can you show us a little stunt too?

Lucy Lawless: I would love to. Who wants to hit him most?

Kathy Lee: Reeg. why don't you hit Reeg.

Regis: Why don't you..take me on if you like.

Kathy Lee: I'll you what. Just to prove that nobody really gets hurt in stunt fights unless it's a terrible accident, um, it's all about angle of the camera. Where are we? Over here.

(everyone stands up)

Regis: There's another camera over here.

Lucy Lawless: We're on two here. And you're gonna pass a hit directly through my face.

Regis: I'm gonna try to slap your face. Like this.

Lucy Lawless: From wide...to wide. Right. Okay.

Regis: You can stay quite far back. A camera has no depth perception so it doesn't know if you are a foot away or five inches.

Regis: Oh really? I always thought they were this far away but they're not. They're further than that. Okay so here we go. First punch is this. HA! (Regis swings, lucy feints a hit)

Lucy Lawless: Aaagh! Dammit, Reeg!

Regis: Did I really get her? And then what... You're gonna follow up on that?

Lucy Lawless: Um, now where would we be? You come a little more here and you gotta sell it for me. It's really more in the person who gets hit that makes the magic work.

Regis: That's right. So I'm gonna slap you first and you're gonna punch me back right?

Lucy Lawless: All right. I'm gonna punch you that way and you're gonna... (gestures opposite way)

Regis: Hey Xena, take this! (Regis throws a punch, Lucy's head snaps sideways, she hits back, Regis spins around in a tizzy)

Regis: Not bad.

Kathy Lee: That was great! I watched you on the monitor and it looked realistic.

Regis: She's on Grease till October 19. If you're coming to New York you should see her. And Xena the Warrior Princess is in syndication right now. We'll be right back with Scott Hamilton.

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