* Xena Blooper Reels
* About Ted Raimi
* Convention Coverage
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Ted recalled his first day on the set in New Zealand like this... "My driver said to me, 'watch out for the Wetas.' I didn't know whay they were.
I was sitting in my trailer and suddenly I saw this huge thing like a brown grasshopper looking at me. Cue to the exterior of my trailer and me running
out in my underwear, shouting 'Aaaah!' I heard the driver say, 'Now you know. Welcome to New Zealand!' " 7
"Part of the reason I like Xena so much is that I can really work hard on the show. I always bring
three or four magazines thinking I'll have time to read them, and I never get through one word..." 1
"Usually... I get up at 4 o'clock in the morning (ouch!) study lines until about 6 am,
jump in the shower, drive to the set at 6:30 to be on the set at 7, and I work till about noon,
we have an hour lunch break, I’m usually straved by then (I could eat my plate). Then we work from
1-4 and because we shoot in New Zealand we have the english afteroon tea (with cake and little sandwiches)
it was hard to get used to actually. " ... "Being in the US, I'm only used to deli sandwiches and hamburgers but it still a really cool custom."2
"Then I go home at 6 at night wiped out and do it again the next day, its a blast!" 2 .."By Friday I can
barely stand up. I remember on this last show, I was so tired on Friday that after lunch,
my eyes were open but I was actually asleep." 1
Ted traveled to New Zealand six times a year for two weeks at a time.. including three days for costume
fittings and rehearsals. "They send me into costume fittings anyway, even though my costume never changes," he
laughs. "I call it the 'DYGF' fitting, which is short for 'Did you get fat?' They don't want to say it, so
it's diplomatic just to do it each time." 3
His costume helped make Joxer's clumsy humor come naturally by making it hard to walk.
When the weather is hot and the ground is rocky, "I [would] fall like ten times in on day." 4
And how 'bout Joxer's death on the show?
"It was partially my choice and it was partially
the choice of Rob Tapert," referring
to the show's executive producer/ writer/ co-creator. "Rob wanted something very
dramatic for my last contracted episode. ... He said, 'Well, what if we maybe killed
Joxer?' I said, 'That would be cool. If we do it, let's make it a big deal, a
really big bang ending.' And so it was Rob's idea to have me killed by Xena's
daughter, which I thought was very good." 5
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"We definitely miss Ted; the wardrobe girls
and everybody miss Ted. . . You just want your friends to be happy
wherever they are, so if Ted is happier doing something else, then that's good. Not so good
for us, but happier for him."
- Lucy Lawless 6
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Shooting the death scene itself, the actor recalls, was a "weird" experience. Raimi
figured that the mood on the set might be somber, and it most definitely was. But
it wasn't quite as somber as he anticipated. "We are all such hardworking folks
that it went off like a normal day," he says in a slightly bemused tone of voice.
"We shot it around 11 o'clock, not long before lunch, and it kind of went off
very mechanically. By the end of the episode, everybody started to realize, 'Oh
my God, this is Ted's last episode. He'll never be back again, maybe.' Towards the
end of that week, it got a little teary-eyed for me and for everybody else, but the
day we shot the death scene was pretty damn mechanical. Everybody was looking at
his or her watch, going,'When's lunch?' But it was great to shoot it." 5
"I tried
out a new thing for me as an actor. Initially in the script, when Joxer died, I
had about two pages of death. I was on the ground and I'm saying, 'Xena, Xena,
you meant so much to me all these years. Gosh, all the things you've done and all
the things I've tried to do. And Gabrielle, I really loved you and all the love
I have... blah, blah, blah, etcetera, etcetera.' It was really long. "I just
took a black pen and did something that most actors never do, which was to cut
all my lines. I cut 90% of all my dialogue. I kept 10% and I asked the
writers if I could put in another two or three lines. So it turned out to be
very short. I did that for two reasons. One, I always find it personally a
little phony when people have a lot to say when they're dying. My brother
Ivan is a doctor. I'd called him up and said, 'When people don't expect to
die, what are they like?' He said, 'They don't ever think they're going to go.
That's what it's like. If they're young or old and get hit hard and fast, they
don't think they're going to go.' I thought that was a very interesting place
to start. So when you see Joxer, he just says, 'I don't feel so good. I think I'm
a little 'cold.' And then he just dies. I also thought that was the most tragic
way to go, and I wanted to go for maximum tragedy. That whole holding hands and
stuff never really did it for me." 5
"I will miss Lucy and Renee's fine company," he notes, referring
to Lucy Lawless and Renee O'Connor. "It's a rare thing to be on a TV show and to be
with actors who you truly respect in every way. That's a lucky thing. You either get
luck or you don't, and I got lucky. I'll miss Lucy and Renee as friends and I'll miss
their acting ability. They're both very talented. I won't miss the food in New Zealand.
I won't miss the travel to New Zealand. Twelve hours on a flight, man, that's for
flight attendants and pilots, not for me. I like to keep my feet on the ground." 5
1 - Earth's Mightiest Hero: Starlog Article, Febuary 1998
2 - Yahoo/Big Star Chat, August 26th 1999
3 - Loyal to the Legends: St.Louis Post-Dispatch, February 13, 1998
4 - AnotherUniverse.com, 1998
5 - XPOSÉ #48: Ted Raimi talks to Ian Spelling ,August 2000
6 - Warrior in Twilight Starlog December 2000 pg.80-81 by Joe Nazzaro
7 - That's All, Folks! Off. Xena Mag November 2001 pg.14 by Kate Barker
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