The
New York Times -February 22 2000
Fireballs,
cranky gods: It's why 'Xena's' pal loves her job
an interview with Renee O'Connor
by
-?-
And
baby Eve makes three.
"There are babies everywhere,'- says
Xena: Warrior, Princess star Renee O'Connor, referring to the
impact of Eve, newborn daughter of Xena (Lucy Lawless), who arrived
a few weeks back as an immaculate conception in the episode "God
Fearing Child": "We've had about four different babies playing
this one character."
"It's really amazing," she adds. "I don't think that I will ever need
to have children of my own, because they're around me all the time."
Speaking by telephone from her New Zealand home on a rare day off
turn the syndicated hit, O'Connor cracks up, "'The great thing," she
says of the babies, "is that you get to give them back at the end
of the day."
The advent of Eve came in the wake of Lawless' real life pregnancy,
which culminated on Oct. 18, 1999- with the birth of Julius Robert
Bay Tapert. The baby's father is her husband, Xena creator/Executive
producer Rob Tapert.
Of course. the ramifications of Lawless' maternal joy were felt well
before the actual onscreen and offscreen deliveries. To accommodate
Lawless during her pregnancy- O'Connor handled more of the fighting
and action sequences than usual. Post-Julius as Lawless luck some
time off to recover and be with her family, several well-received
episodes focused almost exclusively on Gabrielle (Xena's faithful
sidekick).
"I just latched onto anything I could get and really bit my teeth
into it all," O'Connor says. "It's obviously been the most I've
worked in the entire run of the show, but it's been a great opportunity
for me. both physically and as an actress. Gabrielle has been fighting
for three. In a sense, just rent of sheer obsessiveness, to protect
us all." the actress adds.
"Now that we are going back to being more of a Xena driven show again,
I have been fulfilling my own desires by doing theater scenes and
anything else I can out of work, at the end of a 14-hour day on the
show. "If the energy is there, I think, you are always willing to
do whatever you can, just to grow as a performer end to have a good
time," she says. "That's what I'm looking for - I always want to have
fun."
O'Connor promises plenty more fun in the latter part of Xena's
fifth season. Much of it will involve Eve, whose recent arrival threatens
to herald the twilight of the gods - in other words, she may cause
Zeus, Hades and Ares to lose their power over mankind. "We are going
to have all sorts of twists and turns," O'Connor promises. 'And I'm
sure that we'll have this huge finale in which we try to kill off
all of the gods.
"Next season will actually be the one that I am most curious about,"
she adds, "in terms of what direction we'll go in and what new enemies
the writers will create to continue the show. We've always had plenty
of angry gods to deal with, but next year should be a very interesting
challenge for everybody."
O'Connor figures that Xena will be around for another year or two,
and she's definitely up for it. After all. there are still butts aplenty
to kick, character traits to explore, episodes to direct and stranger
than-strange experiences to savor.
"Every day on Xena is strange:' says O'Connor, who spent a recent
comic episode, "Married with Fishsticks" portraying Crustacea,
a mermaid with three fishy kids. "There is always something that makes
me sit back and laugh, because I just can't believe I'm doing it."
"Yesterday, for instance, I was sitting at the bark of a cart
that they had attached to a truck," she recalls. "We were
getting ready for the shot, and the director was yelling, 'And a gigantic
plasma fireball is coming at you from the left!'"
"You've just got to laugh!" she concludes. "I have to think,
'This is my job.' Every day there is something just like that and
I love it"
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