Adrienne Wilkinson Fan Brunch Transcript

May 2001


This brunch took place right after Adrienne and BitchofRome.com had conducted our in person interview at the Pasadena Xena convention.

It was attended by Adrienne, her fan club and twenty lucky Adrienne fans. All fans are simply referred to as FAN. Fans too far away to quote directly have their question in brackets.

The brunch started out with people arriving and mingling, then getting brunch and sitting back down at the table. The questions didn't start until about twenty minutes into the meal.

FAN: (Do you watch your stuff?)

Adrienne Wilkinson: I'm actually not a fan of watching my own work. It's weird to me or something. I'm just judgmental about it 'cause if I did it now, I would have done it differently then, so it's just hard for me to watch. But anyway, 'cause I have to keep an updated reel, it's like a ten minute video that shows the best of my best.

FAN: A show reel.

AW: Yeah, so this year I have to site down and really watch everything so I can pick out what my favourites were, which I could have guessed if I tried anyway.

FAN: So what would your favourite be?

AW: From "The Haunting of Amphipolis," the scene where I'm Livia and Eve.

FAN: Yeah. That was great.

AW: The scene in "Who's Gurkhan?" when it's me and Lucy on the boat. It's a super short scene, but I just really like it.

FAN: When you're talking about your past?

AW: Yeah, exactly. The scene with Michael Hurst is "You Are There".

FAN: Oh yes! Yes!

FANS: (laughing and cheering)

FAN: That's the scene that made me an Adrienne Wilkinson fan.

AW: Yay!

FANS: (laughs)

FAN: The only person who've ever actually got to say [it] on "Xena".

FANS: (laughs)

AW: You have no idea how. It was tooth and nail. I was so nervous that they were gonna cut it out, 'cause there's a lot of places they didn't show it. But I assumed they would have cut the whole thing out because they would have expected it to be cut in more places then it even was. So I can't even tell you how thrilled I am.

FAN: They showed that episode last night at the con and then we saw the fish bit, just before you came on, they went, "Yeah!" (clapping)

AW & FANS: (laugh)

FAN: And when you were on they went (clapping louder) "YEAH!!"

AW & FANS: (laugh)

AW: That is by far, above and beyond my favourite scene I've ever done as Eve.

FAN: What was your favourite scene?

AW: As Eve, my favourite scene was with Michael Hurst in --what's that called again?

FANS: "You Are There". (laughs)

AW: But I just love that. It was so much fun. It was so funny. I love that scene. But as Livia, perhaps one of my favourite scene ever, no so much because of the acting, but because it was so much fan was the opening sequence of "Eve" where she's just terrorizing the village. I looove that scene.

FANS: (laugh)



AW: It was great. That, again, was so much fun. I was beheading this guy.

FANS: (snicker and chuckle)

AW: I know that's an awful thing to say but that's what was taking place and so what I was actually doing was chopping a head of lettuce because there had to be something you actually hit, but it wasn't like I was just faking. SO they had a head of lettuce there that I was chopping up, but then they had this guy that was bent down beside the camera who had this ridiculously large syringe. Like I don't know you would do with it. It was huge. And it was full of fake blood.

FANS: (laugh)

AW: So he's down there and right when I chop this thing, he would send this river of blood (demonstrates how the blood would go over her shoulder).

FANS: (laugh)

AW: So funny. That amount just couldn't come out of a human.

FANS: (laughs)

AW: It was hilarious, but they thought it was too graphic so they cut right there, so you don't see the river of blood, but you get the idea. But it's fun though.

FAN: (How was the Livia/Eve scene in "The Haunting of Amphipolis" filmed?)

AW: They hired a girl, generally my build, someone they thought who could fit into my costume because there's only one of those. They don't have multiple [ones], like my body double costumes [which] don't have real armour. It's all just enough visually while they're going past. It looks the same but still they're not this involved. So they had to hire someone about my size who fit the costume and the physical build and they just had her learn lines and she would say all the opposite stuff. And it took all day long because they had to keep changing my make-up back and forth and Livia's make-up took a long time because it's so much crazy eyeliner and stuff. So that scene --I was speaking to Julie actually about it earlier --but that scene, it took us the entire day and we had about thirty-five minutes at the end of the day left over and we had --it was something ridiculous, some insane number of scenes, like eight scenes that we still had left to do, but it didn't matter because they were all those ridiculous, me saying the same line again and again and again.

FANS: (chuckle)

AW: "Try it this way. Try it this way." And they just plugged those in, but it was great. It was a long scene to film 'cause there was also all of those extra little things like the guy with the ax. There was just a lot of extra [stuff] and blue screen special effects that went into that scene. It took a long time to film but I loove that scene. It's really a good one.

FAN: Which costume were you most comfortable with? Livia or Eve?



AW: Oh. (expels air) Livia.

FANS: (laugh)

AW: I couldn't have been less comfortable actually in the rags. I was always uncomfortable. It was always getting caught on stuff, because the way the material just catches on things very easily. It's like this bazaar really loose, really burlap material and it just got caught on everything. Ah, this is funny. This was in "Who's Gurkhan?" and I honestly am not familiar enough with the episode to know if they used this shot, but they [had] an AD hiding in the weeds down where nobody could see her and she had a walkie talkie 'cause the camera was probably a half a mile away. It was this ridiculous shot where they were up on top of this building, you could barely even see them, they could barely see us but they wanted a really cast shot. So the person in the weeds is just there to tell us when to go. So it's this insane shot, there's one to do it and all that we have to do is walk over to Gabrielle's house. All we have to do is walk through this gate and walk up to the door and disappear inside the door. That's all we had to do. So were walking through and it's Lucy, it's Renee, it's Greg and (laughing) it's me and I walk through this gate and the gate, like, attacks me.



FANS: (laugh loudly)

AW: And I'm trapped on the gate. My outfit held on. Well, I could not [get free] (laughing) Greg sees what's happening and Greg's like, "What are you doing? What's going on?" There's no sound 'cause we're so far away, so Greg says, "What are you doing?" And I'm like, "No, I'm trapped; I'm caught against the gate!"

AW & FANS: (laugh)

AW: (laughing) So Greg is pulling on my cloth; I'm pulling on my cloth. (laughing) And finally, Renee and Lucy turn around and [say], "What are you doing? You have to walk through the gate."

FANS: (chuckle)

AW: I'm going, "I know."

FANS: (laugh)

AW: They did it one more time, but like I said, I don't know if it was used or not. It's one of those funny ideas that Michael had at the last second and we just tried to accomplish it and here I am, can't even walk through a gate.

FANS: (laugh)

FAN: How many takes did it take to film the scene in the house?

AW: Not many at all. I can't remember who it was --maybe it was to Julie again this morning --but we, Greg and I were in that scene for just a second and Michael is wonderful about being specific. He's very specific about exactly what he wants so he told me exactly what he wanted and we did that about two times maximum. It was so simple. There's horror stories about doing scenes over and over and over again. That one was so fast. That was my whole day's work.

FAN: Do you ever get the giggles?



AW: Terribly. Specifically with Tsianina. We cannot get through a scene without laughing. The worst example was the scene where we're supposed to be showing each other our scars.

FANS: (laugh)

AW: And we just thought it was the lamest thing in the world. I have the most inane dialogue. She says something like, "The guy who did this, I killed him by sunset." And I'm like, "Well I killed my guy's dog and his next door neighbor--"

FANS: (laugh)

AW: "--his army and his whole town." And every time where we would get to that part, every time I would start to tell her who I killed, "And then I killed this person and then I killed them all."



FANS: (laugh)

AW: And you could see her, she's like (pretends to hide laughter, her shoulders are shaking and mouth is twitching).

FANS: (laugh)

AW: Holding her breath because she knows she's about to die and between the two of us, like in every rehearsal, we were literally crying we were laughing so hard. And you can tell if you watch that scene again. Our eyes are glassy, but we're just getting through it. It was the last scene of the day and we only had two takes on it and it was so fast. It was a miracle that we even got through it. It's just ironic because the stuff I've had with Tsianina has just been funny. In "Coming Home," in the opening scene, with the big fight and there's the injured Amazon and I got help the Amazon and it was hilarious, because Eve doesn't a bag or something. So they're like, "She needs to be helping somebody fixing somebody." (chuckling) so I'm supposed to go over there and right as I'm walking over there, props come to me and gives (laughing) me this white cloth and tells me just to tuck it in my pants, [even though] I'm not wearing pants.

FANS: (laugh)

AW: And they're like, "Just tuck that in there, so you can whip it out as a band-aid."

AW & FANS: (laugh)

AW: (laughing) So it's like I'm pulling lord only knows what out of my pants.



AW & FANS: (laugh)

AW: (laughing) My make-up lady's like, "What? She's fixing her with a panty liner?"

AW & FANS: (laugh)

AW: That was horrible. In "Path of Vengeance" it was the exact same type of thing. What happens is, (laughing) they cut this part out where they've captured me and then, all of a sudden, just like in "Coming Home" we see that one of the Amazons is injured. (laughing still) And literally, in the script is says, "Eve practices her chiropractic magic."

AW & FANS: (laugh)

AW: (laughing) So we filmed it, but we had to do this scene, like eight times and I'd be bound up by these two chicks and then --whatever the dialogue was to get me over to this girl who's having chiropractic problems.

FANS: (laugh)

AW: I lean down and they're like, "Well, just, you know, do a chiropractic thing." So I'm all like -- "HUNH!" (pretends like she is adjusting someone's neck, but does it so fast and violently that it would snap someone's neck if it was done for real)

AW & FANS: (laugh)

AW (laughing) My chiropractic magic.

AW & FANS: (laughs)

AW: (laughing) It was the most bizarre thing. I don't know when Eve went to chiropractic school but...

FANS: (laugh)

FAN: She got it from her mother.

AW: Yeah. That's my interpretation too. So anyway, the point being, again, that's where Tsianina and I were cracking up 'cause every time I would go over to do (laughing) my chiropractic magic, she couldn't look at me.

FANS: (laugh) [Please note: a waiter was cleaning up the plates at this point. This will be relevant later, I promise]

AW: She had to look somewhere else, because every time I would do it, it was the funniest thing in the world, 'cause the girl who was laying there all comatose is all -- (does a dramatic awakening) "Uuh!"

FANS: (laugh)

AW: (laughing) It was all dramatic. It was funny. Oh man!

FAN: (Do you like Eve's new green outfit?)



AW: Oh I love it. This is such an embarrassing Adrienne piece of trivia, but in the wardrobe fitting for that costume --'cause they didn't tell me I was getting a costume --I kept going, "I hope so. I hope so." And they kept saying, "Well maybe. If it fits the storyline." And I'm back there and they had a different costume for me and I put it on and it worked and I was literally tearing up.

[The waiter is carrying a plate and drops a knife nearly on Adrienne.]

FANS: Ooooh! Oh.

AW: Knifes are attracted to me.

FANS: (laugh)

AW: But, yeah, I was getting so emotional. You just get sensitive about that kind of stuff and it's really hard on set because in all the episodes I was doing, all the other characters were getting multiple costume changes and girls like that stuff! I'm about costumes and I just had the rag ensemble, which you do not feel remotely attractive in or self confident. I can't even tell you how happy I was.

FAN: [No idea, but the question about the rag costume]

AW: The only time it really, truly bothered me, the only time it really upset me was when we were filming�uhh�help me out. What's the episode where Lucy and Kevin are in the freezing cold place and she falls --

FANS: "Coming Home".

AW: Sorry, I keep getting confused, but in "Coming Home" I just thought it was the most ridiculous thing. We're up in the alps and I'm wearing this bikini.

FANS: (laugh)

AW: I just thought it was ridiculous. I always wanted there to be a conversation where [Xena] was just like, "Why don't we get you some clothes."

FANS: (laugh)

AW: Something! You'd think she'd have extras of something.

FANS: (laugh)

FAN: She has plenty of clothes.

AW: Exactly. We don't know where she keeps them.

FAN: Argo's bottomless saddle bag.

AW: Sorry?

FAN: Argo has this amazing saddle bag with everything.

AW: Yeah, it's like Mary Poppins' bag.

FANS: (laugh)

AW: Where you pull a coat rack out of it.

FANS: (laugh)

FAN: Anything can be in it.

AW: Exactly.

FAN: I know why there weren't clothes when it's cold.

FANS: Why?

FAN: 'Cause it's a TV show.

AW & FANS: (laugh)

AW: You hit the nail on the head there.

FANS: (laugh)

AW: Absolutely.

[At this point it we all got up and got pictures and autographs with Adrienne and mingled with each other and Adrienne. Adrienne did some poses including the Livia glare as well as performing a small piece from "You Are There". Then we said our good-byes and headed to the convention]