Lawless’ love of true crime leads to her new TV show
The next time you find yourself in a courtroom, look around. There’s a chance you might spot Lucy Lawless there.
The actress is fascinated by trials and on days when she’s not working will often go to court as a member of the public. There you’ll find the onetime “Xena: Warrior Princess” trying to look inconspicuous, soaking it all in.
“It just teaches you so much about life and your own society and justice and about yourself,” said Lawless. “It’s really important that we participate in the democracy. That’s a really good way to hold the justice system to the standards of the people.”
Lawless, 51, has attended a murder trial in her native New Zealand, jury selection for a grisly case in Louisiana and was even at Jeffrey Epstein’s bail hearing in New York last month when the financier faced sex trafficking charges.
On that rainy day, she showed up bedraggled in flip-flops and watched Epstein “shamble in,” acting shaky. The whole thing was over quickly. “Sedate is not the right word. It was somber. And methodical. And meticulous.
And all over in 20 minutes,” she said.
Lawless’ fascination with crime — she even will go so far as calling herself a “court ghoul” — has filtered into her latest project, the new crime TV series “My Life is Murder,” which premieres Monday on Acorn TV. “This much more closely mirrors my own personal interests,” she said.
Lawless plays Alexa Crowe, an ex-homicide detective who bakes bread, loves Crowded House, speaks German and corrects people’s grammar when she’s not chasing baddies. She is a fully realized modern woman — unfiltered, sexy, funny and prone to giving unsolicited advice.
In a typical scene, a villain holding a knife orders Alexa to stand up.
“Get up slow,” he snarls. She responds calmly: “I think you’ll find ‘slowly’ is the adverb.”
There are differences between Alexa and Lawless, of course. One is the character’s love of bread, which on the show is a symbol of new life and nurturing. In real life, Lawless is gluten-intolerant.
The show, set in Melbourne, Australia, explores closed worlds — undertakers, models, escorts and even bicycling enthusiasts nicknamed MAMILs (middle-aged man in Lycra). The show also tweaks conventions, casting a woman as a mob boss or making Alexa’s annoying neighbor a millennial rather than a crusty older woman.
“I just want to give people a little psychic holiday from all the grim stuff so they can recharge the batteries and go back out there and fight the good fight,” Lawless said.
Creator Claire Tonkin wrote Alexa with Lawless in mind. “There’s a lot of me in the character, and that’s the advantage of having writers build something around you. I’m a very lucky woman,” says Lawless.
Matthew Graham, general manager of Acorn TV, says Lawless’ new show continues the streaming service’s push for strong, relatable female leads.
“We love Lucy Lawless. We love what she brings to the screen — her strength, her vivaciousness, her intelligence and her sense of humor. We think that ‘My Life is Murder’ is the perfect vehicle to showcase all of that,” he said.
Lawless’ strength and humor were present when she burst into the public’s consciousness as Xena in a show that mixed dark mythology, action, campy humor and sly sexuality. It aired from 1995 to 2001.
“It was fun. It was about universal themes, of the triumph of the human spirit: love, courage and, of course, hate and fear underneath that,” Lawless said.