Never Look Away’s Lucy Lawless in her directorial debut, telling the story of Margaret Moth and the Evil Dead franchise

Lucy Lawless is behind the camera for the first time with Never look away. Lawless first appeared on screen in the classic fantasy show Xena: Warrior Princesswhere it originated Hercules: the legendary journeys before receiving its own spinoff. In the years since, the New Zealand actor has found even more success with everything from Battle Star: Galactic for key roles in Spartacus franchise like Lucretia and Ash vs. Evil Dead as the villain Ruby.

With Never look awayLawless finds herself pulling from the history of her home country to explore the life of Margaret Moth, a photojournalist who worked for CNN in the 1990s, covering subjects such as the Persian Gulf War, the Tbilisi civil war, Georgia, the Bosnia and a variety of other conflicts in the Middle East. The film also chronicles Moth’s personal life, including the various lovers she had and the close connections she shared with them, before delving into the most turbulent period of her life, when she was shot and seriously injured in Sarajevo’s Sniper Alley. which left her jaw completely broken.

Never look away then turns into a story of redemption for Moth when, after numerous surgeries and nearly two years of recovery, she returned to work, including covering more Sarajevo, the Gulf War and conflicts in Lebanon, Zaire, Somalia, Chechnya and an attack Israeli in the West Bank. Having made its debut at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, Lawless’ documentary has been widely acclaimed and won numerous festival awards, while currently holding a 92% critics’ approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

In anticipation of its wide release, Screen speech interviewed Lucy Lawless to discuss Never look awaywhy she was inspired to tell the story of Margaret Moth in her directorial debut, balancing a punk rock aesthetic with a dramatic tone, forming a connection and trust with her interviewees, her plans for future direction and thoughts on a potential evil Dead return of the franchise.

Lawless loves to tell stories of “Bada– B—-es”

She was also surprised by the “Hutzpah“She had to commit to making the film

Screen Rant: I must say I watched it Never look away last night, and it was such a beautiful film from beginning to end.

Lucy Lawless: Oh my God, thank you. Thank you for dedicating your time. I thank.

Absolutely! By the way, I love the mix of punk rock and really angsty drama you have in this. I’d love to know when you met Margaret Moth, and what about her inspired you to want to make a documentary about her?

Lucy Lawless: Oh, I love bada– b—-es, and also that there’s an element of redemption. In fact, it’s a bit like a biblical story, the sinner who faces catastrophe and becomes much greater than ever before. So yes, it’s a pretty classic kind of story, but all I learned about Margaret must have been when I, like everyone else in New Zealand, was fascinated when CNN reported that one of our cameramen, a New Zealander, had been shot by a shooter in Sarajevo in 1992. I got this email from Joe Duran, who’s in the film, and I rashly promised that I would find the money and make the film, and immediately [backed] myself [into a corner] for having the audacity to promise such things. [Laughs] So I’ve never done this before, I just don’t know what gave me the courage to say it, but here we are.

As with narrative features, the tone largely depends on the director, as well as whoever helped outline what the story is about. And as I mentioned before, I love the punk rock vibe, but it’s also a very moving film, like you mentioned the redemption story. How did you manage to balance the tones, both in development and editing?

Lucy Lawless: Well, the problem with docs is that it’s a lot harder than working from a script, because you don’t know what the story is until you’ve collected all the interviews, you don’t know what direction you’re going to go. You don’t know where to get the appropriate photos, so you need to fill in the gaps. We’ve had a shortage of images because photographers are rarely in front of the camera. It was full of surprises. Also, in the CNN archive, they were very willing to help us, but the cameramen were not given credit. There was no way to find out what she filmed, and most of the footage, the B-roll, is all destroyed, because it was filmed on Beta tapes in the field, and only the edited packages were sent back by satellite to Atlanta.

Everything else has been lost, so in all likelihood there is other people’s work in this. But I tried to do due diligence to align it with their passports and press passes etc. And, interestingly, I knew she was in certain conflicts. But either way, it’s very difficult. So we had to create images, we had to create diorama scenes, huge, large-scale dioramas of Weta in New Zealand, because obviously there’s no camera rolling when Margaret gets shot in the face. So yes, we had to be inventive. Use some buto dancing, liven up your own hospital notes. These are all the hospital notes she wrote when she was bandaged after losing her jaw, and we reproduced them faithfully in the film.

Directing a documentary requires “A little administration” With interviewees

Lawless also had a main objective when choosing who to talk to

I also love the people you talk to for this film, and that’s another thing with documentaries: I always love hearing about how the director built that trust with the subjects, especially something like this where these people are digging up a lot of personal demons to themselves.

Lucy Lawless: Yes, you’re right. There is a lot of administration. But I love people, and a lot of people said no, in fact, for whatever reason. But the ones I wanted were the most human ones, the ones that could come across the screen and be warm and trustworthy, even if their stories were at odds with other people’s. Like lovers. Their stories don’t match up, they’re a bit in conflict. So that’s the supportive moment where you say, “Wait a minute, he said that, but that doesn’t sit well with this guy. Who do I believe?” Thus, the audience decides who is a reliable narrator. I just got really lucky and made sweet love to as many people as I could to convince them to get on board. [Laughs] And I tried to respect them in the editing, you know, not make a fool of myself, or use them in a cruel or unfair way. I tried, in this case, to make it very fair. Maybe if they were wicked places of death I would let them hang themselves, but it wasn’t necessary. That was not the nature of this beast.

So what would you say was one of the most surprising things you learned about Margaret along this journey, as this is something you need to address in areas of her life that you may not have known about yet?

Lucy Lawless: Oh, my God, there are so many things I couldn’t get into the film. She’s a bit of a criminal, but it just didn’t fit in because it was her time in New Zealand. [Laughs] There were really fascinating things. The hardest thing for me with all the reports I got was that the anecdotes were conflicting with each other, and I couldn’t figure it out – she’s not like anyone I’ve ever met before. People say, “She’s like you,” she’s nothing like me. I don’t feel that way.

I haven’t been able to figure out what holds these elements together. And then I realized, as I got to know the family, that, deep down, what tied all of these things together was this completely ruthless and emotionally neglectful childhood. And in a way, I think that may have become the superpower that allowed him to survive a catastrophic event like a sniper’s bullet to the face, which would have killed many young soldiers, according to doctors.

So when talking about her family, that was something that I found really interesting in the film, is how they come into play at the end of the game, so to speak. I’d love to hear your thought process on when to introduce them in this storyline and how much you’d like to include them rather than keeping the focus elsewhere.

Lucy Lawless: Well, if you’re going to say the female gaze is in any element of this, that’s the biggest component. Because I had a lot of resistance to my team saying, “You don’t need this, leave this unknown.” I said, “If you don’t include the family, A) I will take my name from it. B) All the women in the audience will leave. Family is crucial.” We underutilize them just enough to keep you guessing. We don’t want to tell everything all the time, it’s not that satisfying. There was no sexual abuse, you know, you want to jump to these things: “Why was she like that?” Those horrible drawings that Jeff gave me as a gift – God bless him – Margaret’s own horrible drawings from her childhood.

But he was emotionally negligent. I found that it was only two-thirds of the way through the editing that I discovered. So that’s where two thirds of the story arrives. It is in accordance with the order in which I understood it. And it’s quite satisfying, because you start with Margaret as a mysterious woman who shows up in Texas and can’t remember anything about her past. And then you learn, “Oh, she didn’t want to, and she went out with these 17-year-olds who just accepted it right away and she couldn’t remember. They just thought it was cool and weird, but she was hiding from her own story.” .” Yes, she hated her father.

Well, again, I think the way you “underutilize” it is perfect because it gives us a connection to why she was the way she was without going down the rabbit hole.

Lucy Lawless: Yes, and the way the sister talks: “Yes, he used to beat us, hit us on the hand with a buckle.” She’s kind of laughing, and it’s painful, because you’re going to – and actually, when I was interviewing them, I said, “You know this isn’t normal, right?” And they said, “Oh, oh, really?” And I said, “I just wish you kids had been loved more.” You could see that she had never thought about it, she had never wanted anything other than what they wanted. They could not have imagined being loved more. But when talking to them, she said, “Yes, I wish we had been hugged. Things would have been very different.” As this type of neglect continues to this day across generations, I’ve met nieces and nephews, and it’s just horrible. Yes.

I’m glad you asked her that, because I remember watching that scene and saying, “I wonder if Lucy asked her afterwards if she recognized that this might not be the most normal feeling of punishment.”

Lucy Lawless: None of them ever considered it. Their lack of curiosity and awareness about their own state was incredible to me, being an actor. That’s why we spent years in drama school, you know, investigating this kind of thing about your belly button. [Chuckles] But it was really instructive about who Margaret was, because they’re all like her, and yet none of them are like anyone else I’ve ever met. It’s just terrible.

Lawless is”So nervous“On criticism of the film’s wide release

She also has big plans for what to direct next

I hope that when this comes out, this story really helps inspire others to start telling similar stories. And I love that as the festival gets going, it’s already getting phenomenal reviews. How do you feel seeing some of the reactions so far to the film?

Lucy Lawless: I’m so nervous. To begin with, I never imagined this in my life. I didn’t know my life would take this kind of left turn, 180 degrees in the other direction, and make me want to go straight. It was never something I wanted to do. Now, that’s all I want to do. And the reviews, I’m so nervous that someone’s going to put a stinker in there, and we’re going to be at the bottom of Rotten Tomatoes, where White Chicks is. [Laughs] I just watched White Chicks the other night, it has like 15% on Rotten Tomatoes. A classic. Truly, a terrible and stupid film, but a classic.

So while I know it’s not the worst thing, we would love to be certified new and then I can join my husband. He has one for Evil Dead Rise. I can’t believe people love it, I’m so grateful. I just decided to make a film that I liked and the film commission, my New Zealanders, made a film for New Zealanders, from New Zealand, about a New Zealander. And the fact that the world grabbed it is beyond my imagination. So thank you and thank you for taking the time to watch last night.

So now that you’ve caught the directing bug, what do you think you want to direct next? Do you want to direct a narrative feature, or do you want to direct another documentary?

Lucy Lawless: I found this book and I went to the author, who lived in Milan, and I said, “Man, I want to buy your trilogy.” He said, “Oh, the only book rights I ever sold were in 1992, to a really famous screenwriter at the time, who wrote a screenplay and immediately died.” So I went to battle and – well, I went and made sweet, sweet love with the family [laughs] – and I got the rights to the script, and they allowed me to take it out to make it more like the books.

A very wicked and very funny prank, and they allowed me to do it with some small changes. I’m really happy, so now I’m trying to hire a really amazing English actor and then go to market. So I hope to have an exciting announcement on that. Eventually, I want to bring all the lessons I learned from this documentary, like sound design, music and editing, to what I know so well, which is directing actors.

Lawless doesn’t know about her evil Dead Future (but knows franchise status)

“There was a big hurdle in the legal paperwork…”

For my final question, you mentioned Robert and evil DeadI’m a huge fan of this franchise as a whole. I miss Ruby, I miss everything Ash vs Evil Dead team. I know Bruce has been talking about an animated show for many years, I’m curious if you’ve heard any updates on that topic or if you’d be interested in returning if Ruby was involved in the animated revival.

Lucy Lawless: Oh, my God, Ruby. It’s like, “Honestly, who is Ruby?” became a joke on set, because Bruce [Campbell] and I’d say, “What the hell am I doing here?” [Laughs] I’m like, “Did you do this role just to keep me in the country? What the hell is Ruby?” But I love hanging out with Bruce and Dana [DeLorenzo] and Radius [Santiago]. Bruce is family. So what I can say is that there will be a few more Evil Dead movies. There was a big legal paperwork hurdle that needed to be resolved, but it looks like that is getting resolved, and I think we can expect a few more films in the coming years.

On Never look away

CNN camerawoman Margaret Moth fearlessly captures footage from war zones. After receiving catastrophic injuries in the crosshairs of battle, she returns to work with more courage than ever. An intimate portrait of a pioneering photojournalist. Features interviews with Moth’s family and friends, including CNN’s Christiane Amanpour. Premieres at the Sundance Film Festival directed by Lucy Lawless.

Source: Screen Rant Plus