Lucy Lawless: Hi Susan, great thank you

Susan Woods: Welcome home

Lucy Lawless: Thank you

Susan Woods: Ok, Grease, you are on the stage, live audience, you have had a thing I read about singing live for a little while

Lucy Lawless: I did I stop-, I sta-started as a teenager singing lessons and I think in a way it kind of shut me down I don't know it's a good idea for kids to study so hard so young, but it was me driving myself and I think I gave myself a bit of a phobia so um for me the main reason I took Grease was to overcome this block I had about singing in public and it really forced me through that, I ah I had to get up and perform eight shows a week whether we were sick tired it you know just didn't matter you, the show must go on

Susan Woods: -to sellout audiences, I read

Lucy Lawless: Yeah it got, initially initially it sold out there was a very slow period because ah that's traditionally the dead time of the year when everybody goes back to school but ah the houses filled up pretty quickly and stayed full for the whole run so that was just wonderful

Susan Woods: And more importantly you enjoyed it

Lucy Lawless: Yeah I , you know what, the truth is, the truth that is I'm glad I did it and I'm really glad it's over too (SW laughs) and the further I get away from it the rosier the whole thing seems to me it was it was really hard work but it I loved the people there you wouldn't believe it but the people on Broadway are um they are totally non bitchy you wouldn't expect that from theatre you know I'm from a not from a theatre background, so um they were really busted my preconceptions about ah people in theatre, it was marvellous

Susan Woods: A lovely picture, I was reading about you today your mother painted a picture in my mind a ten year old girl standing on the coffee table with a seashell for a microphone you have come aways haven't you?

Lucy Lawless: Yeah my friend Michelle and I used adapt plays from kids stories. I think I was ten when I first discovered oh I really I like that, that performance um in um it was a school performance of a parable the prodigal son at my primary (laugh) school and I played yet another bad girl the one who rips off the prodigal son off and I remember the moment I remember what I was wearing where I was standing in my room when I thought wow I really like this performing thing it wasn't as scary as I thought.

Susan Woods: Is Xena a bad girl? She is sort of a bad good girl isn't she?

Lucy Lawless: She's trying very hard to be good but I think that is part of her appeal is that we can all relate to the flawed hero and ah she's not the man in the white hat and you don't know quite which way she is going to jump so um and the other thing is that this show is absolutely this show is absolutely not to be shak-taken seriously so um I love it I wouldn't give up my day job for anything (laugh)

Susan Woods: Even if it does mean crawling through tunnels with rats dropped down on your head

Lucy Lawless: Yeah

Susan Woods: That's extraordinary

Lucy Lawless: -rats eels, flaming branches you know (laughs) everything gets thrown at you

Susan Woods: It was just the rats that got me I have got to say. You are in the 50 most beautiful people in the world list. You are as I said one of the (LL laughs) - don't laugh- why do you laugh, is it, are you it is vaguely embarrassing

Lucy Lawless: Umm you know it's not, but it has all the aspects of fame, and you will know this, have nothing to do with who you really are in your real life and you are certainly not famous in your own living room and kitchen and um it's just the spectacl- it's just the kind of, the abstract concept that you could be um considered one of the most beautiful people- or famous or just celebrity is um not something you experience in your daily life generally and when I go to work I'm just Lucy and um when I go home I'm just Mum

Susan Woods: This is an extraordinary thing though, you are you know you are an Auckland girl, as I am, as a lot of people watching you tonight are and you are world famous on a huge international stage with thousand of young actresses doing anything to get there and there you are.

Lucy Lawless: Yeah I can't I can't believe it I can't believe it myself, but it's terrific what would you rather be? Sort of anonymous, penniless-

Susan Woods: - absolutely not

Lucy Lawless: - and without a job. I tried that and this is still more pleasant.

Susan Woods: Got to ask you, Donald Trump...what did he really say to you?

Lucy Lawless: (sighs) I was staying at his hotel and he rang up just to ask if everybody was treating me well and ah and simply asked out, asked me out for a drink and he was perfectly civil and um I know people would love me to dish some bit of dirt on him but I just have none to offer

Susan Woods: interesting man, charming man?

Lucy Lawless: (pause) ah charming maybe not interesting (both laugh)

Susan Woods: What does that mean?

Lucy Lawless: Ahhh hm well what does that mean, well he was very generous with his information about how much he paid for buildings and things but um ah I guess I don't belong to that world you know (laugh)

Susan Woods: You are not motivated by money at all are you?

Lucy Lawless: Umm no I mean I try not to be naive about it, I know the value of money, I know the value of um fame, of celebrity and its commercial and it tells you that your show is doing well and you have to service it in some measure but um money shouldn't be your primary decision making ah tool or a you know h it shouldn't be what drives you.

Susan Woods: The cost to your private life, your daughter Daisy there is a cost for all women who chose to work. Do you feel that heavily that cost, the guilt I mean?

Lucy Lawless: I have done, it took me a long time to get used to working. There is a cost for everybody in your family because um very often you will be built up in the press and every now and again they will dress you down you know they keep you ebbing and flowing in popularity, it gives them more pages to fill or whatever but um that can impact on people that you care about. I try not to take it too seriously and indeed try not to even read it because they are very liberal with quotations marks you know, and on the occasions that I have read these things it's been embarrassing. It can be embarrassing the quotes that they will attribute to you and you know you never said them and they will cobble stories together from interviews you might have done and kind of fill in the blanks on their own. That's my feeling but um again it is not to be taken seriously because, after all, magazines or even magazine style television shows no body remembers what anybody said they just remember the pictures perhaps and the overall feeling of celebrity so um I and I encourage my family not to, if they must read it, not to take it too seriously.

Susan Woods: Finally, a happy note wedding bells

Lucy Lawless: Yes!

Susan Woods: When? can you have you set a date?

Lucy Lawless: We are trying to set a date for ah early next year

Susan Woods: Daisy's happy, you're happy?

Lucy Lawless: She's very happy, I'm very happy

Susan Woods: Life is looking good

Lucy Lawless: Life's marvellous

Susan Woods: Welcome home and thanks very much for coming in.

Lucy Lawless: A pleasure and thanks for having me

Susan Woods: It has been wonderful. (to camera) Well we dumped the Spice Girls, we were going to promo the Spice girls (to LL) but I think you are better than the Spice girls personally, there you go (to camera) Paul is back in the chair tomorrow I see you at Breakfast at 7 tomorrow. That's Holmes tonight.

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