It felt strange to see the leather-clad man-eater lounging easily in her chair on the side of a hill.
It was almost scary to face the woman who is one of New Zealand's richest people, with NZ$10 million ($8.35 million) under her belt.
Thank goodness Xena, played by actress 31-year-old Lucy Lawless, was relaxed.
Her firm thighs and muscular biceps gave no clues that in October, she gave birth to Julius Robert Bay Tapert, her second child.
Her first, Daisy, 12, is from a previous marriage.
Unlike Xena, who's quite a grouch, Lawless can be quite funny.
Would you prefer to win an Oscar or an award for mother of the year, I asked.
She shot back: "I'm going to have to say Oscar.
"I don't have to be the best mother that there is. I'm the best mother that I can be. I'm not interested in other people's opinion about how well I'm doing. Gimme the Oscar!"
Julius, she said, is living up to his name.
"Perhaps we shouldn't have called him Julius because children grow into their names, and he's so imperious!
"He just sits in his car chair like he's Jabba the Hutt, and kicks us all around. He's 3* months old. Bah-bah-bah!
"He just never stops talking, yelling. Doesn't cry, but he just likes to hear the sound of his own voice."
It was tough being a pregnant princess in the fifth season.
"They went very easy on me through my pregnancy. But the show is called Xena, so Xena has to show up to work.
"It was very difficult for them to write around my pregnancy and I don't want them to have to do that anymore. They just need to concentrate on writing really good stories without limitations."
She'll consider having two more kids - after the sixth and possibly final season wraps up.
After Xena
THE versatile Lawless wants to play a victim.
It may take a while yet because "they're not banging down my door with scripts for playing weak-willed tragic women," she laughed.
When asked which director or actor she wanted to work with, she said: "Ooh... so many! Susan Sarandon. John Turturro. Robin Williams."
Of Hollywood and celebrities, she said: "I saw Cher once, and I've met a few. But the more famous people you meet, the more you realise how ordinary we all are and how they all have feet of clay and are not necessarily any more interesting than the next person. Some are lunatics."
She's now finishing off the filming for Season Five - and having fun on the set. (Singapore just finished showing Season Four.)
"We got everybody to submit the worst photos from when they were teenagers, you know, when they were trying very hard to be something they were not."
She and co-star Renee O'Connor, who plays Gabrielle, made a yearbook as their gift to the crew.
What was her photo like?
"Um... I was 17 with a hangover, sitting with my dad in my pajamas, with the family dog who is now dead."
Xena: Season 5
SO what can we expect of the fifth season of this popular-syndicated show?
Lawless said: "It's the story of what happens after people die in the Xenaverse and one of the central themes in our show is redemption and a major fiend is redeemed in the episodes ahead."
Lawless' not saying how the season will end. She can't.
"I don't (know) because nobody tells me anything," she said, laughing.
"I hear my husband (executive producer Rob Tapert) working with writers over the phone and I hear snippets of what they are proposing. But very often that changes, so I have given up quoting him to anybody."
It was the end of the interview. Or so I thought.
As I stood watching the crew prepare for the scene, Lawless swooped back.
She asked lots of questions about Singapore and its laws.
She was interested in the two students who smoked marijuana in Australia and were jailed on their return here.
I, of course, spilled my guts.
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