Lucy, worrier woman

April 30, 2001 issue

New Zealand Woman's Day

Thanks to kiwiattic.bizland.com for the transcript.
You can order this and other Xena-related magazines at the Kiwiattic site.

As she hangs up Xena's sword for the last time, Kiwi star Lucy Lawless is proud to have stuck with her Warrior Princess role to the end. For the first time, the mother of two reveals that she came close to quitting the hit show two seasons ago after a crisis of faith.

"I couldn't stand it any more," says Lucy. "I felt so constricted and constrained in every way, and the work was unrelenting, extremely physical. We were filming down at the base of Mount Ruapehu, and it was bitterly cold," says Lucy in a new book about inspirational Kiwi women, Living Life Out Loud by psychotherapist Kay Douglas.

"There was not way out. It was awful. I'd be lying on the ground freezing and I'd cry. I'd just revert to being eight years old and I'd say my Hail Marys to get me through. I just revert to that mantra, 'This too shall pass', and that's so ingrained in me. In times of stress that's where I go."

Lucy says she knew she had everything - a loving boyfriend in Xena producer Rob Tapert (who she has since married) and daughter Daisy by her first marriage - but didn't feel happy and couldn't understand why.

"That was a really low time," she recalls in the book, which features 22 interviews with such women as squash star Leilani Joyce and Women's Refuge head Merepeka Raukawa Tait. "I didn't know where I was going next, but I needed skills to go somewhere different. I was stuck. I had everything - a wonderful boyfriend and daughter, a great career, a wonderful house. Why wasn't I happy? I knew it wasn't external. There was nothing I could blame. It was within me.

Lucy found her answers in self-help tapes. "I wanted to be happy and I knew I would not be happy as an old woman without children. Happiness to me means to be surrounded by youth and laughter, and that meant I had to have a family. Equally, I knew I would not be a happy woman if I could not work. I wanted to carry on working because I love it. So I realised that part of my fear was balancing family and work."

Lucy's life became whole when she married Rob and gave birth to son Julius 18 months ago. Now the end of Xena opens new doors. "I have far more options at this stage of my career because I can generate my own work, "says Lucy. "I'm not waiting for somebody else to hand me a work opportunity on a silver platter. I will go and make it happen."


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