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DYLAN DUNLAP
DEQNSUE
In “My Life Is Murder,” a
delightful new detective
show premiering Monday on
the streaming platform
Acorn TV, Lucy Lawless
plays Alexa Crowe, a former
police investigator half-re-
luctantly drawn back to
work as an unofficial con-
sultant on deaths the de-
partment has deemed acci-
dental but an old colleague
believes are not.
Breezily written, with an
appealing main cast and a
healthy component of arm-
chair tourism — it’s set in
Melbourne, Australia — it is
a perfect summer series.
Lawless, who played the
lead in “Xena: Warrior Prin-
cess” and became a feminist
and queer icon in the bar-
gain, has been a model of
cool capability almost since
the beginning of her career.
(Incredibly, “My Life Is Mur-
der” is only her second lead
role, though she had major
parts in “Spartacus: Blood
and Sand” and “Ash vs Evil
Dead.”)
The new part, which stirs
maturity into the mix, suits
her well. “She’s not beholden
to police protocols any-
more,” the actress says of Al-
exa. “She’s going to do it her
way....She never seems to
compromise.”
The tone is light and
more than a little comic,
with just enough action and
suspense to keep things
lively. Where many modern
series would saddle Alexa
with doubts and demons,
“Murder Is My Life” leaves
her free — like Lt. Columbo,
Quincyor Jessica Fletcher
—to take care of business.
Getting her industrial mixer
to work — she bakes bread
semi-professionally — is Al-
exa’s main personal chal-
lenge.
Lawless spoke to The
Times on the phone from It-
aly. “I’m going to see ‘Car-
men’ tonight,” she said. “I’m
in Verona. They have a beau-
tiful old amphitheater, and
they do some pretty terrific
operas every summer. The
last time I was here, there
was a tenor who wasn’t quite
up to the job, and the audi-
ence just went septic on him,
the cackles and the booing.
It was Roman theater, they
were all thumbs down. And I
kind of love that chaos,” she
said, giggling.When you were growing up
in New Zealand, what did
an acting career look like to
you?
What I thought it looked
like was trying to get to
London to go to RADA [the
Royal Academy of Dramatic
Art]. And that was long
before the internet, so you
would have to go to the
consulate and get a phone
book and look up the num-
ber of the address of Royal
Academy of Dramatic Art
and write to them and that
would take weeks, and then
they may send back a form,
and you would have to
somehow film something —
you’d have to organize that
and pay somebody to edit it.
This whole “warrior
princess” thing was just a
complete departure and
kind of a cosmic joke on
somebody who was fa-
mously uncoordinated at
school. So it took on a crazy
tangent.Was there a local version of
a show business career?
A local soap started up
about the time that I was
starting to work. I never got
hired there, but I was up for
the job as they were devel-
oping it. I’d already done
some sketch comedy and
some TV commercials. I
already had a baby. She was
probably 1, so I would have
been 21 — so that also put a
bit of a crimp in my “I Want
to Go to London and Study
at RADA.” I [had] a teen
pregnancy.But it never diverted you
from your path.
Not for one moment. The
moment I had the baby I
was filled with enormous
creative energy, and started
writing little audition pieces
and skits and went and
produced it. That actually
did lead to some work.You’ve often credited the
Jack Klugman mystery
series “Quincy, M.E.” as an
inspiration.
I thought I wanted to go
into crime-fighting. I
thought, “I love all the
gnarly side of life, I totally
want to be a coroner.” And
then I realized what I
wanted to be was an actor —
I just want to act like a coro-
ner.Was having your own detec-
tive show a career goal,
then?
It really wasn’t. It was
only “right time, right idea,
right people” that brought
me to it. Right time of life.I’ve done splashing the
inside of people’s TV screens
with blood for twentysome-
thing years, and I’m ready
for — the world needs some-
thing a little bit different at
the moment. I wanted to do
something much closer to
myself, something modern.
I actually pitched to some-
body at CBS, I said, “Let’s
do the new ‘Murder, She
Wrote,’ ” and they were like
“No, no.” And I thought, well
... I’m a Little Red Hen and
I’ll figure out a way to do it.
[In a determined voice:] “I’ll
do it myself.”
And it’s not “Murder, She
Wrote” — I don’t mean to
ride the coattails of that.
But I was attracted to some-
thing a little more ...
friendly? Friendly and satis-
fying. Where the characters
are not hiding some hideous
secret. They’re flawed,
because we all are. But I
want to be part of some-
thing good, and something
kind. And I’m very attracted
to the idea of justice at the
moment, because the world
seems pretty — there’s a lot
of injustice.How did “My Life Is Mur-
der” come together?
I’d been sent some
scripts by a young woman
called Claire Tonkin, from
Australia. I really have not
spent very much time in
Australia the last 20 years.
I’ve only done one acting job
there. So it wasn’t topmost
in mind. All my thoughts
were about America or New
Zealand. But I read them. I
just thought, “The scripts
aren’t really there,” and I
forgot about it. But kept the
door open. And then I was
over in Sydney, at Gay
Pride, where Xena’s still a
bit of a fixture, and [Tonkin]
contacted me and said,through my agency, “Do you
want to meet?” And I said,
“I’ve got an hour and a half if
she can meet me Sunday
before I go home. ... We’ll see
what happens.”
And I met her, and first of
all she said to me, “I was
very unwell as a kid” — and
in my mind, there’s a little
red flag because I thought,
“Uh oh, she’s a fan.” Not that
being a fan is bad, but it
might be that she’s at-
tracted to me for the wrong
reasons. ... A fan’s not a
business associate, you
know what I mean? It sim-
ply doesn’t work, in my
experience.
But the more she talked,
and the more I learned
about her trajectory — her
writing career and her ca-
reer with the network — I
thought, “This girl’s really
got chops.” I sensed I was
catching her at this wave,
and quite selfishly I
thought, “I’m going to take
you for my own.” Claire is
everything I dreamed she’d
be and more. She’s just a
great partner. Maybe I’m
hersidekick now.Your young associate on
the show, Madison Feli-
ciano, played by Ebony
Vagulans, is described as a
“fan” of Alexa. Was that
relationship informed by
your own experience?
No, not really. They
wanted her to have sort ofan acolyte. What is informed
by my real life is that I can-
not stand to have an un-
equal. You’re either my
friend or you’re a fan,
[which] by definition — it’s
an unequal relationship. I
could not have somebody
who was deferential in the
audition, and Ebony just
met me like for like. I felt like
I was casting myself in some
way, ’cause I thought, “You
will be effortless to have
around.” I knew I could be
three feet from Ebony seven
days a week and not have a
problem with that. And plus
she’s so talented and so
attractive and so full of life.
Everything about her was
good ... and I said to the
network, “She’s a star.” And
it was unanimous, actually.On “Xena,” you had a fe-
male compatriot, Gabri-
elle, played by Renée
O’Connor. Was there a
thought of re-creating that
dynamic?
There was for me. I
mean, I saw it as a gal pal
show from the beginning.
You know, there’s also a guy
in the mix [Bernard Curry
as Detective-Inspector
Kieran Hussey, Alexa’s
police contact], which is not
part of my fandom, really.
Not at all, actually. But it
kind of does give it that little
element of family, which is
part of the good, the whole-
someness that I want to seeand spend time with at the
moment. I want to feel good,
for God’s sake, just for a
moment when I watch TV
instead of feeling [sighs]
debilitated by the grimness
on my Twitter feed.I like the fact that, where in
most such shows there
would be the open question
of whether Alexa and
Kieran would get together,
that isn’t in the cards here.
They were always look-
ing to write in some URST
—do you use that term in
America? Unresolved Sexu-
al Tension. And I was like,
“Absolutely not.” My char-
acter could not play it that
way, because Bernie [Curry]
looks like he could be my
little brother.It seems astonishing that
this is only the second show
you’ve played the lead in.
That surprises me too.
Because, I guess — maybe
it’s solipsism — I always felt
my role was very central to
whatever experience I was
having. But also I was in
New Zealand raising my
kids. You can’t just drop
them like a bloody sloth — I
don’t know how sloths raise
their babies, I might be
completely throwing shade
at sloth mothers. Anyway, I
had to be there, and now
that they are older and gone
off to college, I’m free to step
up and do my own thing.‘My Life
Is Murder’
Where: Acorn TV
When:Anytime
Rating:Not ratedsource said Brougher and
Deborah Horowitz, who in
April left her post as deputy
director for creative content
and programming, were
“needlessly secretive” and
did not collaborate well with
the museum’s board of
trustees or with various
branches of the academy.
This created a rift, the
source said, that impeded
planning and led to high em-
ployee turnover.
Opening a museum is not
for the faint of heart, and
museum directors speak of
the difficulty in overseeing
the construction when their
training may lie more in
courting donors, strength-
ening board relations and
helping to shape the overall
vision. At the Academy Mu-
seum — which will be the
largest devoted to film in the
country — that comes in the
form of 50,000 square feet of
exhibition space and two
movie theaters.
With the Los Angeles
County Museum of Art and
the Hammer Museum em-
barking on expansion plans,
the Lucas Museum of Narra-
tive Art under construction
in Exposition Park, and the
Broad, the Marciano Art
Foundation and the Insti-
tute of Contemporary Art,
Los Angeles, all expanding
the museum landscape, L.A.
has become a nexus for an
ambitious cultural evolu-
tion. For the Academy Mu-
seum, though, the director’s
departure seems to come at
a particularly inopportune
time.“Where they are right
now — making that transi-
tion between heavy con-
struction and the other
things a museum does — is
the most fragile and sensi-
tive time for any organiza-
tion,” said Justin Jampol, di-
rector of the Wende Museum
of Cold War History, which
opened in Culver City less
than two years ago. “It’s a big
switch, and it has a very
stressful impact on the or-
ganization.”
Jampol called a director’s
departure so far along in
museum construction was
“a pretty severe move.”
“It’s either saying, ‘This
individual did something
wrong,’ ” Jampol said, “or
something larger went
wrong with the overall proj-
ect.”Oscars project in lurch
[Museum,from E1]
KERRY BROUGHERis leaving his post at Academy Museum of Motion Pictures.
Brian van der BrugLos Angeles Times‘Xena’ star
on finding
fun in crime
Actress Lucy Lawless
channels a strong and
mature character in
‘My Life Is Murder.’
NEWZealand-born Lucy Lawless plays consulting detective Alexa Crowe in the series “My Life Is Murder.”Acorn TVROBERT LLOYD
TELEVISION CRITIC