It’s been almost 30 years since Lucy Lawless shot to fame as the leather-clad warrior princess Xena and even now, with so many TV and movie credits under her belt, it’s still the role she’s known best for.
Some actors would chafe at still being recognised for their debut role decades later, but Lawless isn’t among them.
“To hear about actors wanting to get away from a role, I just felt like almost that was a cliché. You should be so lucky to have that problem,” she tells 9honey Celebrity from her New Zealand home.
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“So many actors struggle their whole lives and never get a role that achieves this sort of household recognition, and that sets you up for all kinds of other things,” she continues.
“Whether you want to admit it or not, there’s benefits to that. So I’m very grateful.”
She’s sitting in a cosy, warmly-decorated study and there’s a dog barking outside. When the doorbell rings, she smiles knowing one of the kids will get it.
All of this, she attributes to Xena: Warrior Princess.
“It’s how I met my husband, I got some beautiful kids out of it, I have a nice house,” Lawless says fondly.
“Xena gave me everything. Wonderful friends, and amazing memories, and a tremendous fan base. What the hell do I have to complain about? Nothing.”
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Lawless’ early success as Xena wasn’t planned. In fact, she wasn’t even supposed to get the role.
English actress Vanessa Angel was originally cast to appear as Xena in the first season of the ’90s series Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, but fell ill and couldn’t make it to New Zealand to film.
Lawless had already played two small roles in the show, so production knew she was reliable and called her back a third time to play Xena.
They dyed her hair blonde hair black, strapped her into armour, and the rest was history.
“In those days, it was new. It was a way into having a new kind of female hero who wore a short leather skirt and a bustier, and she kicked ass,” Lawless says.
She appeared as Xena in three episodes of Hercules, then played her in the spin-off series Xena: Warrior Princess from 1995 until 2001.
The show shot Lawless to stardom and she’s been acting ever since, until an unexpected message saw her pivot to directing a few years ago.
An old friend of celebrated New Zealand photojournalist Margaret Moth reached out to Lawless and asked if she’d be interested in making a documentary about Moth, who covered conflicts in Africa, the Middle East, and Europe throughout her career.
Despite having zero directing experience, Lawless said yes and Never Look Away was born.
Watch the trailer for the film at the top of the page.
It was her first time behind the camera instead of in front of it and that’s where she stayed throughout production, refusing to appear on-screen even once.
Her voice is only heard on two occasions, offering short prompts during interviews with Moth’s former lovers and colleagues. It was a deliberate choice.
“The reason that we did that was to remind you that these are interviews and [the subjects are] not actors,” Lawless explains.
“I wanted to have no narrator so that people would have to speak for themselves. That’s a much more complicated version of storytelling, because you don’t have anybody filling in the gaps.”
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As an actor, her job is to make the audience feel a certain way. As a director, she wanted to let viewers decide for themselves what they felt about Moth, her life and career.
Lawless did get nervous about some of Moth’s archival footage veering too close to current geopolitical events, especially her coverage of the Israel-Lebanon conflicts in the ’90s, but maintained her “neutral” approach even then.
“To me, making this film was like knitting a garment but leaving lots of holes for the audience to rush in and fill the gaps with their own suppositions and inferences,” she says.
“I never purported to tell the whole truth or the objective truth. It’s all the subjective accounts of others which don’t quite jive perfectly, which means that you, the audience, get to make up your mind about what is really going on.”
Never Look Away premiered at Sundance Film Festival in January this year and will make its Australian debut this week.
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Though most fans who remember her as Xena would love Lawless to return to acting full-time, she confesses to 9honey Celebrity that she’s already chasing her next directing gig.
“I’ve gotten the bug unfortunately, so I can think of nothing else,” she says with a grin, promising she’ll have “something cool” to show fans in a year or so.
“I found an amazing novel that I want to adapt. Now I’ve got to go out and find the money. That’s the hard thing.”
Never Look Away will be premiering at SXSW Sydney on October 16. Information and tickets here.
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