The former Warrior Princess, Lucy Lawless, was on hand last Friday at the Television Critics Association Summer Press Tour to promote the upcoming season of Spartacus: Vengeance. During the show’s panel, Lawless teased about the future of her character, the deliciously villainous Lucretia, telling audience members, “If you remember, when Ilithyia left us at the end [of Blood and Sand], she barricaded the door and effectively enabled the massacre to happen against her own people. So, the series is called Vengeance, and my relationship with Ilithyia will certainly be a testimony to an act of vengeance. You know what I’m saying? Anyway, lots with her, lots of vicious parlor games, which is where all of the real punishment is meted out.”
When Lawless was asked to give her thoughts on what it was like playing a strong female character in a testosterone-fueled series like Spartacus, she surprisingly said she saw Lucretia as more of a survivor than a strong character. “I don’t feel that Lucretia has any power whatsoever and never had," she told AfterEllen. "If you watched Gods of the Arena, you can see that she’s purely reactive. She’s always toeing the line of whatever her husband wants, and she pays the price every time when things come unstuck. So I don’t know what it looks like from the outside, but what it feels like to play her, she’s a little fish swimming for her life with all of these sharks on every side. So she’s a she’s a survivor. She’ll chomp a few little fish, smaller fish on the way, but really, she’s in the shark tank.”
Despite the fact that the 43-year old actress doesn’t see her character as a strong woman, she agreed with show Creator and Executive Producer, Steven DeKnight, when he said, “I love writing women in this show…because even if it’s a slave who you would think has no power whatsoever, if it’s Lucretia who really has no rights in this society, the interesting thing to me is to find ways to give them strength. I mean, no one is a wilting flower. I think we have some of the best female characters out on TV right now.”
Also on the show’s panel was actress Katrina Law, who plays the former house slave Mira on the Starz series. Law added that while the women of Spartacus were subjugated in the show, it was still a positive series for women, telling AfterEllen, “I think this is a great series for women to be on because we do get a lot of range. We do get to express a lot of our sensuality, our power, and get to explore that side, and we don’t have to stand in the background.”
“This year, Mira is on the run with Spartacus and the rebels, and she gets to figure out what it means to be free and what it means to be able to make decisions and have choices. She finds herself in love for the first time and all of these are emotions to be able to go through. And how she ends up fighting for love and for her freedom, I think it surprises her, and I think it’s going to surprise some of the audience members when they see what she ends up doing. And with Lucy, I mean, Lucy herself is just a very powerful woman. So it’s great to be on set with her and feed off of her energy.”
You can see the new full trailer screened at the panel below.
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