Here are some screengrabs I've received from The Discovery
Channel as a preview of the episode on Grace O'Malley.
9/22 --
Lucy finished filming last Saturday. She did the last segment
on Lozen in New Mexico. Because of her work on Tarzan, she flew
from Toronto on Monday into Albuquerque and then made the two-hour
drive to Truth or Consequences. I met her there and we filmed
an interview about the making of the series that will be part of fan
club kit #7. It was an interesting time -- yipping coyotes and
all. I'll write more this week.
Lucy
is almost finished filming the Discovery Channel
"Warrior Women" documentary. She spent the first
week of April in China. On her way home, she
and her daughter, Daisy, stopped off in Singapore. Then
back to New Zealand for a few weeks until the middle of May
when she filmed the pieces in France, England and Ireland,
spending about a week in each country. That part of
the filming finished on June 10. At the tail end of that
trip, she went to Prague to film her part in The Ugly Americans.
4/2 -- "WARRIOR WOMEN" SERIES update
-- Here's a recent article from the Ireland on
Sunday newspaper. Reports are that Lucy is being a
real trooper and not afraid to get "down and dirty."
She's having a great time and is fun to work with.
"Grainne Mhaol" By Siobhan Gaffney
Lucy Lawless stars
in the adventures of the formidable
statuesque leather clad fighter, Xena Warrior
Princess amassing a massive cult following
throughout the world as she battles barbarians,
oppressors and demigods.
But now the Xena
Warrior Princess actress is coming to Clew
Bay and Clare Island to get face to face with the
myth of a real warrior woman; 16th Century pirate sea queen
Grainne Mhaol.
The adventures
of the16th Century pirate queen of the seas
are to feature in a special Discovery Networks
Europe series exploring history's most fearless female
warriors.
LA based actress
Lucy Lawless told Ireland on Sunday
that she was "really looking forward to getting
to the west of Ireland to see first hand where the amazing
Grainne Mhaol ruled the high seas."
Lawless has a
strong connection to the area where the real
life warrior woman, Grainne Mhaol controlled.
Her family, the Ryans, originially from Quilty in Co. Clare
ended up in her native New Zealand when her great grandfather
had a "scuffle with the police and
was sent down under for punishment."
The Warrior Woman,
who is anxious about leaving her three children
from 14 years down to 10 months for 3 weeks,
"turned down many lucrative but dissatisfying
offers from US TV to do make this fascinating
series.
"I just can't
wait to get to Ireland and to start filming, running
around the Irish countryside with a film
crew will be just fantastic," she said.
Grainne Mhaol
-- mhaol meaning cropped hair -- was known
to have chopped her long hair off to survive in the
mainly male dominated world of pirate infested seas,
controlling Clew bay with an iron fist from her
castle on Clare Island.
Grainne, who was
known as Grace O'Malley by the English, was
married with 3 children before she began
her famous career on the high seas, marshalling
3 pirate ships and up to 200 men as she opposed
the English attempts to remove her from her
kingdom.
"The facts are
thin on the ground about how exactly Grace
become this amazing and feared warrior. She
was a women who had no English but decided she wanted
to meet Queen of Elizabeth so that's what she did.
She sailed up The Thames river in London and
demanded an audience with the Queen, something that
was completely unheard of.
"Grace had no
English but excellent Latin forcing Queen Elizabeth
to talk to her in a foreign tongue.
"They were two
women in a tough man's world separated
by tradition but who experienced many
of the same hardships."
After Grainne's
first husband was been executed
by Queen Elizabeth's troops she remarried
in 1556 Iron Richard Burke and had a son named
Tibbot. She was captured by the crown's forces
and jailed for 2 years returning to her castle on
Clare Island to continue her defiance.
In 1558 Elizabeth
I pardoned her in an attempt
to bring peace to the region but his
attempt failed as the local English administrators
continued to go after the woman who had
been a thorn in their side for years.
"She was a woman
who paid a heavy price for her strong beliefs
and has to some extent been written out
of history," Lucy Lawless told Ireland on
Sunday.
Fighting was her
only means of survival and this she
did until the Irish defeat at the Battle of Kinsale
in 1601 ended her dominance. She died in
1603 and has since been, to a large degree, overlooked
as a genuine heroine of Irish history.
Her career spanned
from the supremacy to the suppression
of Gaelic rule. Folklore conveys
her alliances with English forces, her imprisonment
in the goals of Limerick and Dublin, and
her partial submission to Elizabeth Ist, Queen
of England. Her actions were brave attempts to uphold
her government over her fast retreating Gaelic
kingdoms.
The series, entitled
"Warrior Women," presented
by Xena Warrior Princess, Lucy Lawless,
will also feature other fierce women including
Joan of Arc; Boudica, Queen of the Iceni Tribe;
Chinese heroine Hua Mulan and Apache warrior
Lozen and will be broadcast later this autumn
on the Discovery Channels around the world.
3/28 --
Lucy Lawless will be hosting
a new Discovery Channel series of five
hour-long programs tracing the history
of female fighters. Here is a list of the five
women they will be profiling and some web page
links for those who want to "read all about it."
Joan of Arc (France)
http://members.aol.com/hywwebsite/private/joanofarc.html
Boadicea (England) --
http://travesti.geophys.mcgill.ca/~olivia/BOUDICA/
http://members.tripod.com/~ancient_history/boad.html
Hua Mulan (China) --
http://www.chinavista.com/travel/mulan/part1.html
http://members.tripod.com/~journeyeast/hua_mulan.html
http://stutzfamily.com/mrstutz/china/mulan.html
Grace O'Malley (pirate) (Ireland) --
http://www.legends.dm.net/pirates/grainne.html
http://www.maths.tcd.ie/~jaymin/sca/Granuail.htm
http://members.tripod.com/cathreese/DefiantWomen/pirates/granuaile.html
http://home.fiac.net/marshaw/mhaille.htm
Lozen (Apache warrior) (New Mexico) --
http://www.magiclink.com/web/lostheroines/webdoc1.htm
http://www.luciastclairrobson.com/GhostWarrior.htm