September 2019 Archives

This article is from the AUSXIP News Archive and it's from the NZ newspaper "The Sunday News" from 2007.

Lawless reveals gay- crush
Sunday News
8 Apr 2007

THAT Lucy Lawless sure knows how to push the right buttons!

The kick- butt babe who brought us Xena: Warrior Princess – and has more recently been signed to star as Tanya in the US version of Footballers’ Wives – has her thousands of lesbian fans in a lather.

The Kiwi star told the gay webcaster PlanetOut that if she was gay for the weekend, she’d want to go out with Mary Ann from Gilligan’s Island, "Because I reckon Mary Ann was secretly a very bad girl".

If that isn’t enough to get the sisters in a sweat, she also reveals her first celebrity crush was on a cartoon character, then a Bee Gee who both seemed a little, well, you know!

"My first celebrity crush was on Choo Choo the pink cat in Topcat."

"I just had this incredible ... you know, funnily enough, now this is an interesting thing about me, he sounded kind of gay."

"Then the Bee Gee that I really liked was Robin, who seemed kind of gay. So what is it about me and gays?"

"Truly four out of five of my friends in LA are gay. Why do I pursue them?’’ she asked.

Lucy Lawless is taking on a different kind of performance in the New Zealand-made animated movie Mosley.
In the movie, Lawless plays the voice of Bera, the titular character's mother.

The movie also features Rhys Darby and Temuera Morrison.

"It's a movie that parents can go to and won't find tiresome," Lawless told Seven Sharp.

Huhu Studios made the film in New Zealand, and it was written and directed by Kirby Atkins - a former Weta employee.

It was also the first official co-production between New Zealand and China, and is endorsed by the New Zealand Film Commission.

The film follows a family of "thoriphants" - a fictional species somewhere between an elephant and a goat - as they go embark on a journey in search of the legendary Uprights.

Mosley will be released in New Zealand on October 10.

I Newspaper 25 September 2019

My Life is Murder on Alibi (UK) 3/5 stars

Lucy Lawless achieved cult status in the 1990s fantasy classic Xena: Warrior Princess, but in Australian drama My Life is Murder, she joins the ever-expanding ranks of TV detectives, playing Melbourne-based investigator Alexa Crowe. Crowe used to be on the police force, but now spends her time making bread with a complicated German gadget called a Loobenschwegen. Screenwriter Matt Ford must have a fetish for wacky brand names, since later we got a walk-on appearance from the Schmilford vacuum cleaner.

Crowe claims to be retired, but that appears to be true only when she hasn’t been offered a crime to solve. It merely took a quick coffee with her former boss, DI Kieran Hussey (Bernard Curry), to get her interested in the case of a woman who had fallen from the 19th floor apartment of a male escort called Dylan Giroux. Did she fall, or was she pushed? Have a guess.

Gritty realism is emphatically not the objective here, as the show aims to mix a little leisurely sleuthing with ironic glances at issues and obsessions of contemporary life (though it’s set in Australia, it could be transplanted to almost anywhere). Thus, the Giroux case afforded space for some reflections on Crowe’s life as a single woman in middle age (“Paying for sex doesn’t make you lonely, it makes you practical,” she asserted), and there was some mild satire of “wokeness” when Crowe enlisted her researcher Madison (Ebony Vagulans) so they could pose as a lesbian couple pretending to be flat-hunting in the suspect’s building. “That’s sexuality appropriation!” Madison objected. “It’s workplace harassment!”

You wouldn’t recommend Crowe’s investigative technique to aspiring young police officers – she doesn’t bother with back-up, and here cut to the chase by simply booking an appointment for Giroux’s smarmy professional services.

Cramming a complete case into a 43-minute show (when you take the ads out) required a few short cuts. For instance, Madison can find out anything about anybody within seconds using just a phone and a laptop, like a one-woman fusion of Google and the FBI. It’s enjoyable, but feels a little lightweight.

Lucy was interviewed on Stuff about climate change and in particular about farming and trees. You can also read the full interview on the Sunday Star Times with Lucy.

Scans: Sunday Star Times: Laying Down The Law - Lucy Lawless Interview 22 September 2019

Lucy Lawless' protesting days might be over. The actress was famously arrested for chaining herself to an oil drilling ship and joined an at-sea demonstration in the chilly waters north of Norway.

Lawless, who made her name playing fearless leather-clad super-hero Xena: Warrior Princess, admits she was terrified during the 2012 Greenpeace blockade of the Noble Discoverer.

The activists were trying to stop the crew leaving for the Arctic and scaled the ship's 53-metre drilling tower.

"I was really scared beforehand. When you cut a wire in a fence that really is crossing the Rubicon

Original site: https://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/climate-news/115899500/lucy-lawless-trump-boris-what-the-f-is-going-on

Lucy is interviewed in the Sunday Star Times (NZ) 22 September 2019

Lucy Lawless tells Andrea Vance why she’s in awe of young protesters and calls on Jacinda Ardern to come clean on her struggles to fight climate change.

Lucy Lawless’ protesting days might be over. The actress was famously arrested for chaining herself to an oil drilling ship and joined an at-sea demonstration in the chilly waters north of Norway. Lawless, who made her name as a fearless leather-clad super-hero in Xena: Warrior Princess, admits she was terrified during the 2012 Greenpeace blockade of the Noble Discoverer in Taranaki.

The activists were trying to stop the crew leaving for the Arctic and scaled the ship’s 53 metre drilling tower.

‘‘I was really scared beforehand. When you cut a wire in a fence that really is crossing the Rubicon.

‘‘I didn’t think we’d succeed, didn’t even think we’d get up there. All the way, climbing up I was mouth-breathing,’’ she pants hard. ‘‘I was thinking: this can’t be succeeding.’’

After four days, she and six other activists were arrested.

‘‘Being in a holding cell is not super-fun, especially when you’ve got a camera on you, on the toilet, and it is a grimy bed.

‘‘I mean, no-one comes and washes the bed before you get put in there, right? It’s got all sorts of bloody, drunk tank grunge in it.

‘‘And you can’t put your head out and say ‘what’s going on? Can I have a cup of tea?’ You don’t exist.’’

Was she afraid of going up against the justice system? ‘‘I don’t know. I was in for a penny, in for a pound, by then.’’

She was fined $651 and sentenced to 120 hours community service. And in 2017, she joined another Greenpeace protest against deep-sea drilling, dropping into the freezing Barents Sea.

Lawless, 51, hasn’t lost her fire. But she sees younger activists – like the School Strike for Climate – picking up the baton. ‘‘If the right thing happened, for the right reason if I was so moved, then I guess I would have to [protest] but I think the doves are rising up. ‘‘You see this with all these kids protesting, this week. It’s amazing.’’ Lawless, a mother of three, is buoyed by Swedish, teenage activist Greta

Thunberg.

‘‘Oh my God, I love that kid. I actually love this generation . . . I see some real anger. They are so badass that I am inspired by them. And the #MeToo generation: all these young women are not going to take s... anymore.

‘‘My generation, when we were coming up, you would hear about this casting couch. I never actually got invited on one – there is something about me that those kind of men don’t like,’’ she laughs.

‘‘We just thought that was the way of the world, and you didn’t question that. These young women today are like: ‘f .... you. Don’t touch me again, I am coming after you.’ And I am so in awe of them.’’

The conversation around climate change has started to shift, and become more mainstream thinking, she believes.

‘‘I got a lot of blowback from [the oil rig protest] . . . that was only in 2012, but people were not ready. I got a lot of guff from my community, who are mainly blue by the way, and my own family.’’

Now those same neighbours want to talk to her about the effects of rising temperatures. ‘‘I see lots more acceptance in the media, and even in my neighbourhood, people who were like ‘what did you chain yourself to an oil rig for?’ back a few years ago to now telling me, with all seriousness: ‘do you know there are going to be climate refugees?’

‘‘I’m like, yessssss! Thank God, you are finally understanding.’’

Lawless has been an environmentalist for at least three decades. Her first foray into public activism was a 1998 WWF campaign to stop whaling in the Southern Ocean, alongside Sam Neill and the late Sir Peter Blake.

She teamed up with Greenpeace in 2009, to become a climate ambassador and since then has sprinkled Hollywood stardust on many of their campaigns. Three years later, alongside Sir Richard Branson, she launched their Save the Arctic campaign.

‘‘I wish more famous people would get on board, so many people are more influential than me and I don’t know what they are spending their time on – but could there be anything more important?

‘‘Why be famous unless you are using it for good? I can’t imagine why.’’

On the day we meet, by a fountain at an Auckland beach, Lawless is dressed for walking her rescue dog Koha, in sunglasses, sneakers and an oatmeal sweater, a hole picked in one side. Her face is free of make-up and she’s incredibly beautiful.

Her ice-blue eyes light up when the subject comes around to environmental politics.

‘‘I have no interest in lipstick or fashion. I mean, I guess I tried for a moment in the nineties,’’ she says.

‘‘If my hair gets brushed in a day, it’s a good day. But I just fail because it is not authentic.’’

Authenticity is important to Lawless, and it’s one reason why she’ll never get into politics.

The actress flirted with the Green Party in 2014, showing up at their election campaign launch and some press events. There were hopeful whispers that she might stand as a candidate.

At the time Russel Norman was co-leader, and he now heads up Greenpeace NZ.

‘‘I feel that being allied to Greenpeace then tying yourself to a party is a little bit problematic,’’ she says. ‘‘There are individuals that I really like and respect in politics because of what they do. But Greenpeace, I always believe them to speak the truth.

‘‘The reason I could never go into politics is because you have to fudge your own ideals sometimes . . . I just don’t know that I would be very good at toeing the party line.’’

Lawless would prefer plain speaking from politicians. ‘‘[They] make bold claims before [they] get elected and then get very oppressed by the reality of legislation or the business matrix that is crushing, holding us in this pattern.

‘‘I would love for them to articulate this – say ‘s... I thought I could come in here and make this change – these are the reasons I am really struggling’. God, give us this information.’’

Is she obliquely talking about Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who in 2017 declared climate change her generation’s ‘‘nuclear-free moment’’?

‘‘I think she is trying . . . that coalition was a pretty uneasy partnership there for a while.

‘‘I actually do believe in her as a really good person, with clear conviction. I just want to hear about the obstacles. What is stopping you, tell us? Because we can get behind authenticity. We just want to hear the truth, eh?’’

Ardern’s Government announced a ban on all new oil and gas exploration last year.

Lawless wants her to follow up by cancelling existing permits, which allow companies to search for oil in some 100,000 square kilometres around New Zealand’s coastline.

Austrian giant OMV hopes to drill a well in the Great Southern Basin this summer. In the days before Lawless speaks with Stuff, the company was granted a permit to discharge harmful substances from the drill rig’s deck drains.

‘‘I would like them to close those loopholes,’’ Lawless says. ‘‘They say the end result of

producing this product and its contribution to climate change cannot be considered in whether we grant these leases. But that just seems disingenuous.

‘‘It is just a terrible idea, I mean, it is the whole reason to ban them.’’

Lawless and TV producer husband Robert Tapert call Auckland home. She’s recently spent time in Australia working on a second series of My Life Is Murder, a crime comedy-drama. She plays detective turned private investigator Alexa Crowe.

She also flies in and out of New York and Los Angeles and is fluent in American politics.

President Donald Trump, who hit on her when she was starring in a Broadway production of Grease in 1997, is ‘‘some horrible game show contestant’’.

She worries we are being distracted from corporate ‘‘skulduggery’’ and the withdrawal of civil rights by showmen like Trump and new UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

‘‘What the f... is going on? Trump, and now Boris. It is not that America should be so manipulated, [it’s] that they should be so manipulable.

‘‘I want New Zealand not to go that way.’’

She has has faith that Kiwis won’t be blinded by political ‘‘artifice’’.

‘‘You see it on Queen St: someone walking into a shop in bare feet or stubbie shorts. People here are less concerned with image and artifice.

‘‘We are not a culture that encourages very much of it, to the chagrin of some of my more fashionable friends. But it might save us.’’

Lawless’ other main preoccupation is regenerative agriculture, which restores degraded soil and improves the water cycle.

She’s also disenchanted with the vilification of New Zealand’s dairy farmers.

‘‘It doesn’t work. It makes people hunker down and divide into groups. My feeling currently is we have to show people a boat that floats, to get them on board, coax them on board.

‘‘These people are working so damn hard . . . on this horrible, milk powder treadmill of intensifying. I want the general public to understand that we need farmers. We need them to feed us in the future and we also need them farming to be cleaner, more regenerative. Providing that kind of information and access to alternative fertilisers which nourish rather than deplete the soil is really key.’’

Greenpeace has campaigned for a reduction in cow numbers and an end to the use of synthetic nitrogen fertiliser. Lawless says farmers need support to try alternatives.

‘‘We are very pro-farmer. They seem enslaved and very stressed and very much in debt. We want to enable farmers to transition to a sustainable regenerative model that will feed our country.’’

‘‘People feel more empowered by positive solutions. They feel disempowered and weak when we give them the Chicken Little response.

‘‘So, try something else. How do you get people on board? Show them a boat that floats.’’

The Parks and Recreation star doesn’t just talk about climate action. She’s currently planting a 400-tree forest, in a secret location, aimed at carbon sequestration.

‘‘I want to have tree crops, so plant nuts, plant things that can be used for animal feed, that are not palm kernels.’’

The project was driven by her youngest son Judah Tapert, 17, who has developed a love of soil and plant science. He’s nurturing the sprouts at home before they are transported for planting.

‘‘If you can do nothing else plant a tree, plant a tree on every . . .’’ Lawless breaks into a wicked laugh. ‘‘They don’t like it when you plant on the berms, I’m finding.

‘‘But sequestering is a really great way forward. So let’s be about it.’’

The last episode of Season 1 for My Life is Murder ended this week and now it's the UK's turn. The show will premiere on Alibi on 24 September 2019.

TV Times (UK) 21 September 2019 Issue. UK fans, tune into Alibi on 24 Sept for the first episode of "My Life is Murder" pic.twitter.com/WtOg2uh8bg

— AUSXIP My Life Is Murder (@MyLifeIsMurder) September 19, 2019

UK New! 17 September 2019 Issue about the start of #MyLifeisMurder on UK TV on Alibi. The show starts on September 24, 2019 at 9 pm. pic.twitter.com/oIKro1wU7l

— AUSXIP My Life Is Murder (@MyLifeIsMurder) September 18, 2019

Upcoming movie "Mosley" official trailer released. It premieres in New Zealand on October 10, 2019 and will be released to other markets soon. Lotus Entertainment has already pre-sold it to Australia/New Zealand (Rialto), C.I.S. (Top Film Distribution), China (China Film Group), Czech Republic/Slovakia (Fenix Distribution), Bulgaria, Ex-Yugoslavia and Romania (Programs 4 Media Limited), Israel (Five Stars), Middle East (Eagle Films), Portugal (Nos Lusomundo), South Africa (Filmfinity) and Vietnam (Ram Indo). “Mosley” follows the eponymous hero and his family of four-legged “Thoriphants,” intelligent creatures with the ability to speak like humans but that have been cursed to live a life of servitude. In an attempt to free his family, Mosley embarks on a perilous journey to find the mythical land of Kinesareth. The feature’s voice cast includes Rhys Darby (“Trolls”), John Rhys Davies (“Lord of the Rings”), Temuera Morrison (“Aquaman”) and Lucy Lawless (“Xena: Warrior Princess”). “Mosley” marks Atkins’ feature debut. He previously worked on the animation for Steven Spielberg’s “BFG” and “The Smurfs 2.” “It’s a visually stunning movie, and I’ve been in awe of the collaborative work of artists in New Zealand and China,” producer Daniel Story said. “The film has scope and power and can easily stand alongside any big studio project. I think we’re about to break the rules for what an animated feature film can do in the independent space.” “Mosley” is produced by Story, Trevor Yaxley and Bill Boyce for Huhu Studios, Peikang La for China Film Co., and Huang Jun for China Film Animation, with Tony Bancroft (“Mulan”) executive producing, and Jack Sheehan and Jeremie Guiraud executive producing for Lotus.

How cool is this Xena funko Vinyl Figure. Seriously. They just need a Gabrielle one now and then an Ares, Callisto, Joxer, Aphrodite etc etc

Price is $10.99 and release date is September 2019 but Amazon has it as October 2019 release date.

Order from: Entertainment Earth
Order from Amazon.com

Lucy was interviewed on the US show Kelly and Ryan on August 27, 2019 where she talked about her show “My Life Is Murder”

People TV's Couch Surfing interviews Lucy Lawless on Xena, BSG, Ash vs Evil Dead, My Life is Murder and other roles Lucy has played.

Moment in Time - Who Weekly (9/9/19 issue)

Sep. 4, 1995: starring Lucy Lawless in the title role, Xena: Warrior Princess aired its first episode in the US and quickly became a cult smash around the world.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO OUR AWESOME SHOW! 24 Years and still this fandom's heart beats. It has changed our lives in so many different ways. I've been reading the submissions for the Xena: Their Courage Changed Our World book and let me tell you, it will move you to tears. Extraordinary. Just extraordinary.

No photo description available.Want some more good news? Well the AUSXIP Charity Auction has ended for another year. We initially thought that this year's total amount raised was going to be smaller than normal because we weren't planning on a large auction. We are saving that up for the big kahuna of charity auctions - the 25th Anniversary Charity Auction next year. Let's just say we got it wrong. I'm happy to be wrong. Ecstatic to be wrong.

I am BLOWN away by this year's auction total.

This year's combined total is $11,201.55!

$6701.55 will be donated to Starship Foundation
$4500.00 will be donated to The House of Bards

That takes our overall total from all auctions to $215,452.21!

THANK YOU EVERYONE! TOGETHER we certainly made a difference, right? RIGHT!

Yes. Mind Blown.

BATTLE ON!