Why Lucy Lawless is 'quite happy to be forgotten'

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https://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/s...o-be-forgotten

It is often said that newspapers contain the first draft of history, but not everybody wants to be a part of that history. Not Lucy Lawless. She does not want to be remembered.

Lawless reckons legacy is the pursuit of men. When she dies, she doesn’t even want a tombstone. She wants her ashes scattered somewhere, probably into the Hauraki Gulf. Whether or not anyone remembers her after that, well, she doesn’t really care.

But here we are anyway. “I don’t care,” she says, however her sentence is broken when she sees the camera about to shutter. She turns to look down the barrel. Laughs. There are lights and a camera, and I’m interviewing her in an old brick building in an affluent part of Auckland during the Sunday cover shoot. Working with cameras, talking, and posing for photos is all second nature, but perhaps that’s only because that’s what her job demands.

That’s the thing about Lawless, she has been familiar for 32 years. On screen, we’ve seen her play Xena, Lucretia in Spartacus, and Alexa Crowe in the comedy-drama series My Life is Murder. Off-screen, we’ve read accounts of her court appearance, her climate change activism, and the celebrity gossip that shadows people like her.

But she’s unsure we actually know much about her. She’s known to play strong female leads. Will we remember Lucy Lawless as an actor who pushed boundaries, to create roles for women as superheroes and genius detectives?

“No,” she says. “That’s what gets offered to me. I quite like a very passive, weak character. I love it!” She says playing “very passive” characters can be more fun than a bold hero. They’re more complex. The leading women she does play have been because directors seek her out for those roles. “I don’t seek anything out. I’m really, like, extremely passive. Maybe I’m not quite as passive these days, but I don’t really chase things,” she says.

Will we remember Lawless as an activist, who was fined and sentenced to 120 hours’ community service for climbing an oil drilling ship? “I don’t mind. At the time, in 2013, that’s what we had to do to try to wake people up to climate change. These days, it belongs to the kids,” she says. “The face of activism has changed a lot.”

Maybe, some will remember Lawless as the stranger behind a pillar in the courtroom’s public gallery because when she is between jobs, Lawless has a habit of watching criminal trials, particularly for murder cases. She also went to watch the trial of convicted sex offender, billionaire Jeffrey Epstein. She recalls, “He looked grey like he was staring down the barrel of a really s... life, and he knew it.”

When she goes to court, Lawless likes to go alone and sit near a pillar. She reckons the pillar will help shield her identity, and hide any smirks or grimaces.

“I always, as a kid, wanted to be a forensic pathologist. I didn’t really know what a pathologist was, but I wanted to figure out what killed things. I do love to see how it works.”

It would be easy to draw a parallel between her real-life fascination with murder, and her character in My Life Is Murder. But she insists it’s not connected: she says it hasn’t helped her play crime-busting Crowe, and is really just a hobby. “The first time I went to the High Court, I just couldn’t believe what they were talking about,” she recalls. “He said… ‘Just throw the body in the lake and let the eels peck at her’. And I was like, ‘What! I am home, I am in my happy place’.”

Home and her happy place are topics that often arise in conversation with Lawless. She’s a proud Aucklander. Lawless was born in Mt Albert, and today lives not far from her old family home.

When Covid-19 arrived, and production of My Life Is Murder relocated from Australia to Auckland, Lawless was thrilled to be able to work from her home city. It meant commuting to work from her actual home, not from a hotel or rented apartment. “I could sleep in my own bed, see my family, and show off my hometown to the world,” she says. “This [show] is made for a world audience, and it’s not New Zealand shot as Tolkien land, or some mythical place. It’s our city, and she is gorgeous, lush. We had to try hard not to have the Sky Tower in every shot.”

Forget the picturesque Southern Alps, or volcanic mysteries of the Central Plateau. In this series, the city of Auckland reigns supreme – and of course, most Kiwis do live in cities these days.

“My work has all been offshore, so when Covid arrived we – like everyone – thought ‘dammit, let’s move to New Zealand!’ And New Zealand is going to have to get used to itself as a beautiful, souped-up, metropolitan character,” Lawless says.

Since the 90s, however, it’s been rare for Lawless to find work in Auckland. In 1989, at 21, she got her first job in television on the Auckland-based show Funny Business. It was skit comedy affair in which Lawless played reporters, groupies, or anything else that was required. And then her last major project here was Xena: Warrior Princess, where she met her husband, Robert Tapert.

He was the executive producer, she was the star. “It was one of those things that was too clichéd to last, and yet we’re still here,” she says of her marriage.

The couple still live together in Auckland, although most of their work tends to be in the United States. They have two sons, who are 19 and 21. Lawless has a daughter, Daisy Lawless, who is 32 and works in the Auckland film industry.

Lawless is now 53 years old – and still a long way off retirement but she often talks about the screen industry in the past tense, or with only mild devotion. “I heard about how Nicole Kidman and those people managed their own careers with lots of letters and campaigning for things. I thought I should be like them, but it would be completely inauthentic. I just jellyfish along and have a nice time.”

“Also,” she continues, “acting isn’t the be-all and end-all for me any more. I like it because it’s fun and my core business, but some days I do change my mind or think of changing direction.”

Something else she’s doing that’s rather interesting is farming, along with her 19-year-old son. He and a group of men in their 70s to 90s, have been working on her small farm to plant rare trees and grow fungi.

“My son works with these old guys who are foragers and mycologists, which is the study of fungus,” she explains. “They’re experts, and he’s just this well-meaning kid they’re pouring their knowledge into.”

She loves the farm they’re building together. “These hands, these are my potato digging hands,” she says, staring at her fingers. “I dig with my hands!”

Does she eat meat, I ask? “Sometimes. Don’t tell James Cameron, he won’t hire me again.”

She says the farm is a place where old-school knowledge, new blood and environmentalism come together. She’s fond of the Himalayan oaks they’re growing. And the old farmhouse, even though it’s not much more than a “rat hole”, is a place Lawless feels at home. She’s been doing it up and filling in the holes in the floor and roof, but she’s decided to bring in a tiny house to live in, instead. First, however, she’ll need to get a new tractor. She’s already built the shed.

Maybe, Lawless will be most well known as a farmer. As the interview ends, she makes the point of saying you’re never “too old” to try something new.

“Life is long,” she says. And you never know where your biggest impact will come from.

At the moment, if she must be remembered for something, she wants it to be because of her children. On the subject of legacies, she quotes 19th-century essayist Henry Thoreau: “Be not simply good; be good for something.”