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As the best-looking sword-toting, leather-clad superheroine in TV, Lucy Lawless is a feminist icon for the 90's. "Xena is sexy but not in the way most people think," the New Zealand actress says of her role on the syndicated hit Xena: Warrior Princess. Her character's appeal is that she's "complex, and ever-changing," which is to say, Xena is a lot like Lawless herself. Balancing the demands of a relationship and motherhood with TV stardom - as well as a recent Broadway turn as Rizzo in "Grease!" - Lawless is too busy to take life as a warrior pinup seriously. "I'm not a sex symbol in my own house," she says. "I'm boring old mom." Executive producer RJ Stewart disagrees: "Lucy combines beauty, wit, honesty, and tons of soul - that's a very potent combination."
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"I don't know that I'm ever going to be able to top this year," says Lucy Lawless, ensconced in her family home outside the New Zealand city of Auckland. The actress's outlook is understandable. With her unaffected charm and Kiwi accent, the acrobatic star of Xena: Warrior Princess has beguiled audiences on every interview show from Good Morning America to Conan O'Brien, from The View to Howard Stern. She's sung cowgirl songs on Rosie. She even performed on Broadway - singing and dancing in "Grease!"Meanwhile, Xena has become a runaway hit, soaring above Star Trek: Deep Sapce Nine and muscling past Hercules to become the most popular action-adventure show in syndication. As the saucy drama's lusty and lethal title character, Lawless suddenly finds herself a sensation in 82 countries. "I'm much bigger in Cairo than I am in my hometown," she marvels. Success has unleashed a flood of merchandise. (Lawless's 9-year-old daughter, Daisy, favors Xena earrings. Lucy is partial to the plastic light-switch cover.) A recent episode, "The Furies," suggested that Xena's lineage, like Herc's, may be half-human and half-god. That would explain the Warrior Princess's prowess. But, as far as we're concerned, she's totally divine. |
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