Advertisement

Spartacus Vengeance/Xena star Lucy Lawless reveals a secret: "I never liked" action scenes

 
Published Jan. 26, 2012

liam-mcintyre-spartacus-vengeance-08.jpgBlood flying toward the camera in a spurting fountain. Swords slicing through flesh as men scream in horror. White hot brands sinking into human flesh as the unfortunate recipient of the mark howls in agony.

These are just a few of the in-your-face action scenes powering Spartacus: Vengeance, the original series on Starz which plays like Gladiator for the small screen – complete with slow-motion, super-explicit sword fights in high definition images.

Focused on the exploits of a band of gladiators who escape their brutal training school during the time of the ancient Roman Empire, Starz's Spatacus is filled with the kind of killing and bloody fights once called "a bit of the old ultra violence" in Kubrick's Clockwork Orange film.

lucy-lawless-as-xena.jpgSo you'd think Lucy Lawless, who once starred as a behind-kicking Amazon in the classic TV show Xena: Warrior Princess, would miss getting in on all that fun, stuck in a role as Lucretia Batiatus, the scheming wife of the man who owned the gladiator school.

You would be SO wrong.

"I never liked the physical thing," said Lawless, whose '90s-era work as ruthless warlord-turned-heroine Xena remains her best-known role. "I'm strong, but I have no coordination; I was black and blue for two years solid because I would whack myself in the face or get punched. It was God's cosmic joke on me to give me a gig like that."

My fanboy fantasies dashed, I went on to ask Lawless about the challenges of this season, which finds Spartacus trying to carry on after the death of its star, Andy Whitfield, at age 39 last year of non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

The cable channel filmed a Spartacus prequel, Gods of the Arena, without Whitfield which aired early last year. But though he rebounded after his earlier diagnosis, eventually the cancer returned and took his life, requiring the casting of 29-year-old Aussie Liam McIntyre as the new Spartacus.

spartacus-vengeance-poster.jpgThe Vengeance season marks the first episodes featuring McIntyre playing the same character, picking up the story just weeks after Spartacus and his fellow gladiators killed a houseful of a guards and party guests gathered to watch a death match.

McIntyre seems to pick up the mantle of Spartacus ably, though Lawless admitted the fans will be the final judge of whether he replaced Whitfield adequately.

"It was certainly in the lap of the Gods," Lawless said. "Andy was so supportive of them recasting, because he wanted everybody to keep working. There's been plenty of times when we thought it might not go, and you just sit and watch and wait."

Lawless plays a much less physical role, as the only survivor of the massacre at the gladiator school, who loses a child through a sword wound. As the new season begins, she is found, shellshocked, swimming in the blood of all the guests and guards killed in her house.

(Because Starz is a premium cable channel, there's lots of nudity and graphic scenes, including a closeup shot of a captured gladiator's tongue cut off).

lucy-lawless-spartacus-vengeance-2012-01.jpgIf Spartacus' fights are one side of this unique series, Lawless' Lucretia embodies the other end; a series of political machinations and royal intrigue which lend an R-rated, soap opera flair to the story. Eventually, her character becomes a valued symbol – a sign for the Roman population that the freed gladiators are not all-powerful – which she parlays into the notion that she receives prophecies from the gods.

"She's going to have to go looking for friends in very unlikely places," said Lawless, cagey about revealing too many details. "Her mental state is a very important key to Lucretia from here on out. But I want you to know that by the end Lucretia…all of her dreams will be fulfilled, one way or another."

Another TV critic has compared Spartacus to PBS' genteel World War I drama Dowton Abbey, for both's series' emphasis on social roles, marriages for love, social standing and power, along with a bucketload of political intrigue.

Not sure I would go that far, but the combination of intrigue and blood can be compelling, as Starz present a series as brutally graphic and politically involved as modern television might allow.

"It makes the audience feel clever because nobody's saying what they mean, yet the audience can figure it out," Lawless said. "So the audience is always a little bit ahead of some of the characters in the room."

Spartacus: Vengeance debuts at 10 p.m. Friday on Starz.