Lucy Lawless
Xena is back, and she's taking names. Well, OK, not exactly. Lucy Lawless is back in the fantasy/sci-fi fold, playing D'Anna Friel, a pesky investigative journalist on Friday night's episode of Battlestar Galactica (airing at 10 pm/ET on Sci Fi Channel). Not only will the former chakram-throwing warrior princess look a bit different in her outer-space existence — Xena gone blonde, yo! — but Lawless will be brandishing her native New Zealand accent for the first time ever on screen.
"I've always been hesitant to do that, because it felt kind of gimmicky," she says of going Kiwi with a character. "But because D'Anna is a journalist and has kind of, but not exactly, a tabloidy edge to her, I thought that going in with that kind of Australian tabloid/British-y thing was appropriate."
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Xena: Warrior Princess
Lucy Lawless is happy to blast into space for a Sept. 9 guest role on Battlestar Galactica, but still is waiting to return to terrestrial butt-kicking in the long-discussed Xena: Warrior Princess movie, based on the syndicated series that ran for six years. "I would love to do it," she tells SCI FI Wire, "[but] nobody can agree [on] who owns the rights, and it's a big fat pain in the a--." Should Xena ever ride again, Lawless is open to a campier take on the feisty fighter. "It could be a good comedy," she allows. "Comedy always works." Unless you're Yes, Dear.
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Spring Break Shark Attack
How do you take on a hot show like Desperate Housewives? With some vampire bats, a time bomb and a serial killer, of course. And if those don’t do the job, there’s always a "superstorm" to destroy the world.
Welcome to the new CBS Sunday Movie, long the network-TV home for the tearjerker or spiritually uplifting Hallmark Hall of Fame film. A steady diet of those movies simply isn’t doing the job to attract younger viewers away from ABC’s Sunday lineup. CBS Entertainment president Nina Tassler said at the Television Critics Association press tour on Tuesday that it’s time to change course with more B-movie-esque thrillers.
"We know we’re up against a juggernaut on Sunday nights," she said. "As a result, we’re trying some high-concept and popcorn movies to go along with our traditional female films and star-driven vehicles. You’ll also see a somewhat different scheduling strategy."
In other words, Tassler will put those movies
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Seeing Lucy Lawless brazenly snatch Halle Berry's role on Monday's Two and a Half Men reminded us how much we've missed the Aussie spitfire. Any chance she'll ever reprise her role as that sapphic icon, Xena, Warrior Princess?
"This whole idea of a Xena feature [film] keeps coming and going," Lawless tells TVGuide.com with a sigh. "I've checked out of worrying and wondering and speculating about it. People keep saying, 'It's on! It's off!' I did just this morning hear something about it from my husband [Robert G. Tapert], who was the executive producer on Xena.
"They'd better hurry up," she laughs. "Otherwise, Renee O'Connor [who played Xena's sidekick Gabrielle] and I will be too old — and nobody'll want to see us in short skirts before long. It's gonna be tragic."
While we're all await
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Now that Charlie Sheen and Denise Richards have split, Hollywood wags speculate that it's only a matter of time before we'll see him with a new lady friend. Well, the wait is over!
On tonight's
Two and a Half Men (9:30 pm/ET on CBS), Charlie gets hired at an advertising firm where his new boss is gay. Hoping to score points, he pretends
he's gay, too, even scheming to pass off brother Alan (
Jon Cryer) as his live-in boyfriend. Of course, chaos ensues when Charlie becomes enamored of his boss' sexy ex-wife — played by
Xena, Warrior Princess star
Lucy Lawless — yet has to maintain the gay pretense to keep his job.
"I don't mind being deceived by Charlie," Lawless tells TVGuide.com. "He's cute, even as a gay man. I had a fantastic time working on that show."
Landing the gig wasn't easy, though. In the midst of her initial meeting with
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