Lucy Lawless is stepping behind the camera for the first time withNever Look Away. Lawless memorably first broke out on screen with the classic fantasy showXena: Warrior Princess, which she had originated inHercules: The Legendary Journeysbefore receiving her own spinoff. In the years since, the New Zealand actor has found further success with everything fromBattlestar: Galacticato key roles intheSpartacusfranchise as LucretiaandAsh vs. Evil Deadas the villainous Ruby.
WithNever Look Away, Lawless finds herself pulling from her home country’s history to explore the life of Margaret Moth, a photojournalist who worked for CNN in the ’90s, covering the likes of the Persian Gulf War, the Tbilisi, Georgia civil war, the Bosnian War, and a variety of other conflicts in the Middle East. The movie also chronicles Moth’s personal life, including the various lovers she had and the close connections she shared with them, before diving into the most turbulent time of her life in which she was shot and severely wounded in Sniper Alley in Sarajevo, which left her jaw completely shattered.
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Never Look Awaythen turns into a redemption story for Moth as, after numerous surgeries and nearly two years of recovering, she returned to work, including covering more in Sarajevo, the Gulf War and conflicts in Lebanon, Zaire, Somali, Chechnya and an Israeli raid on the West Bank. Having made its premiere at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, Lawless' documentary has garnered widespread acclaim and won a variety of festival awards, while also currently holding a 92% approval rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes.
In anticipation of its wide release,Screen Rantinterviewed Lucy Lawless to discussNever Look Away, why she was inspired to tell Margaret Moth’s story 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 directing, and thoughts on a potentialEvil Deadfranchise return.
Lawless Loves Telling The Stories Of “Bada– B—-es”
Screen Rant: I must say, I watchedNever Look Awaylast night, and it was just such a beautiful film from start to finish.
Lucy Lawless: Oh my God, thank you. Thanks for taking the time. I appreciate it.
Absolutely! I love, by the way, the mix of punk rock and really harrowing drama that you have in it. I’d love to hear when you first learned about Margaret Moth, and what about her inspired you to want to make a documentary about her?
Lucy Lawless: Oh, I just love bada– b—-es, and also that there’s an element of redemption. It’s a little bit of a biblical story, really, the sinner who faces catastrophe and becomes so much greater than they ever were before. So yeah, it’s a pretty classic kind of tale, but everything I learned about Margaret must have been when I, like everyone in New Zealand, was riveted when the CNN report that one of our own camera people, a New Zealander, was shot by a sniper in Sarajevo in 1992. So, I got this email from Joe Duran, who’s in the film, and I rashly promised that I would find the money and I would get the film made, and immediately [backed] myself [into a corner] by having the temerity to promise such things. [Laughs] So, I’ve never done it before, I just don’t know what gave me the hutzpah to say that, but here we are.
Much like with narrative features, the tone is really very much on the director, as well as whoever helped outline what the story is. And like I mentioned before, I love the sort of punk rock feel to it, but it is also a very moving film, as you mentioned the redemption story. How did you land on balancing the tones, both in the development and during the editing?
Lucy Lawless: Well, the thing with docos is it’s so much harder than working with a script, because you don’t know what the story even is before you’ve collected all the interviews, you don’t know what direction you’re going to go. You don’t know where you’re going to get appropriate pictures, so you have to fill in the holes. We had a dearth of images, because camera people are seldom in front of the camera. It was full of surprises. Plus, in archive at CNN, they were very willing to help us, but camera people didn’t get credited. There was no way to find out what she filmed, and most of the footage, the B roll, is all destroyed, because it was shot on Beta tapes out in the field, and only the edited packages were sent back by satellite to Atlanta.
Everything else was lost, so there is other people’s work in this, in all likelihood. But I tried to do my due diligence to make it line up with her passports and her press passes, etc. And anecdotally, I knew she was at certain conflicts. But, anyway, it’s bloody hard. So we had to create images, we had to create the diorama scenes, huge, large-scale dioramas by Weta in New Zealand, because obviously there’s no camera rolling when Margaret gets her face shot off. So, yeah, we had to be inventive. Use some buto dancing, animate her own hospital notes. Those are all the hospital notes she wrote when she was bandaged up, having lost her jaw, and we very faithfully rendered them into the film.
Directing A Documentary Requires “Quite A Bit Of Stewardship” With Interviewees
I also love the people that you speak with for this film, and that’s another thing with documentaries is I always love hearing about how the director went about building that trust with the subjects, especially something like this, where these people are digging up a lot of personal demons for themselves.
Lucy Lawless: Yeah, you’re right. There’s quite a bit of stewardship. But I love people, and plenty of people said no, by the way, for whatever reason. But the ones I wanted were the most human, the ones that could reach through the screen and be warm and credible, even if their stories were at odds with other people. Like the lovers. Their stories don’t jive, they’re a little in conflict. So, that’s the lean-in moment where you go, “Wait a minute, he said that, but that doesn’t match up with this guy. Who do I believe?” So, the audience gets to make up their mind who’s a reliable narrator. I just got really lucky, and made sweet, sweet love to as many people as I could to get them to come on board. [Laughs] And I tried to respect them in the editing, you know, not make fools, or use them unkindly or unfairly. I tried to, in this case, make it very fair. Maybe if they were wicked death spots, I would let them hang themselves, but I didn’t have to. That wasn’t the nature of this beast.
So what would you say, then, was one of the more surprising things that you learned about Margaret along this journey, since this is something where you have to go into areas of her life you may not have already known?
Lucy Lawless: Oh, my God, there’s so much stuff that I couldn’t put in the film. She’s a little bit of a criminal, but it just didn’t fit, because it was her time in New Zealand. [Laughs] There was really fascinating stuff. The hardest thing for me with all the accounts I was getting were the anecdotes were in conflict with one another, and I couldn’t figure out — she’s not like anybody I’d ever met before. People have said, “She’s like you,” she’s not at all like me. I don’t feel that way at all.
I couldn’t figure out what holds these elements together. And then, I realized through meeting the family that, at bottom, what tied all of these things together was this utterly pitiless, emotionally neglectful childhood. And, in a way, I think that might have become her superpower that enabled her to survive a catastrophic event like a sniper’s bullet to the face, which would have killed many a young soldier, according to the doctors.
So in talking about her family, that was something I found really interesting about the film, is how they come into the picture late in the game, so to speak. I’d love to hear the thought process about when to introduce them in this storyline, and how much you wanted to include them versus keep the focus elsewhere.
Lucy Lawless: Well, if you’re going to say the female gaze is in any element of this, that is the biggest component. Because I had a lot of resistance to my team going, “You don’t need it, leave this unknown.” I said, “If you don’t put in the family, A) I’ll take my name off it. B) Every woman in the audience will walk out. The family is crucial.” We underuse them just enough to keep you kind of 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 the way she was?” Those horrifying drawings that Jeff gave gifted to me — bless him — Margaret’s own drawings are ghastly of her childhood.
But it was emotionally neglectful. I found that out only two-thirds of the way through editing did I figure it out. So, that’s where it comes two-thirds of the way through the story. It’s just kind of in line with the order that I understood her. And it’s kind of satisfying, because you start with Margaret as a mystery woman who shows up in Texas, can remember nothing about her past. And then you learn, “Oh, she didn’t want to, and she hung out with these 17 year-olds who just accepted it on its face that she couldn’t remember. They just thought that was kind of cool and weird, but she was in, in hiding from her own history.” Yeah, she hated her dad.
Well, again, I think the way you “underuse” is perfect, because it gives us a connection to why she was the way she was, without sort of going down a rabbit hole.
Lucy Lawless: Yeah, and the way that the sister talks about, “Yeah, he used to beat us, wack us on the hand with a buckle round.” She’s kind of laughing, and that’s painful, because you’re going — and, in fact, when I was interviewing them, I said, “You do know that that’s not normal, right?” And they went, “Oh, oh, really?” And I said, “I just wish you kids had been loved more.” You could see that she had never thought of that, she’d never wished for different than they had. They couldn’t have imagined being more loved. But through talking to them, though, she was like, “Yeah, I wish that we had been cuddled. Things would have been so much different.” Because that kind of neglect has continued on to this day intergenerationally, I’ve met the nieces and nephews, and it’s just awful. Yeah.
I’m glad you did ask her that, because I remember watching that scene and going, “I wonder if Lucy asked her afterward if she recognized that that may not be the most normal sense of punishment.”
Lucy Lawless: None of them ever considered. Their lack of curiosity and insight into their own state was amazing to me, being an actor. That’s why we spend years at drama school, you know, investigating your navels kind of thing. [Chuckles] But it was really instructive about who Margaret was, because they’re all like her, and yet none of them are anything like anybody else I’ve ever met. It’s just terrible.
Lawless Is “So Nervous” About The Reviews For The Movie’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 other people to start telling similar stories. And I love that, as this been making the festival run, it’s already getting phenomenal reviews. How does it feel for you seeing some of the reactions so far to the film?
Lucy Lawless: I’m so nervous. For starters, I never anticipated this in my life. I didn’t know that my life would take this hard sort of left turn, 180 degrees in the other direction, and make me want to get direct. It’s never been something I wanted to do. Now, it’s all I want to do. And the reviews, I’m so nervous that somebody’s going to put a stinker in there, and we’re going to stick to the bottom of Rotten Tomatoes,where White Chicks is. [Laughs] I just watched White Chicks the other night, it’s got like a 15% on the Rotten Tomatoes. Such a classic. Really, a terrible, dumb movie, but such a classic.
So, though I know it’s not the worst thing, we’d love to be certified fresh, and then I can join my husband. He’s got one for Evil Dead Rise. I can’t believe people love it, I’m so grateful. I just set out to make a movie that would please me and the film commission, my New Zealanders, made a film for New Zealanders, by New Zealand, about a New Zealander. And the fact that the world grabbed it is beyond my wildest imagination. So thanks, and thank you for taking the time to watch it last night.
So, now that you’ve got the directing bug, what do you think you want to direct next? Do you want to direct a narrative feature, do you want to direct another documentary?
Lucy Lawless: I found this book, and I went to the author, who lived in Milan, and said, “Dude, I want to buy your trilogy.” He said, “Ah, the only books rights I ever sold were 1992 to this really famous screenwriter back in the day who wrote a screenplay and then promptly died.” So, I went to battle and — well, I went and made sweet, sweet love to the family [laughs] — and got the rights to the script, and they allowed me to take it back to be more like the books.
A very perverse, very funny romp, and they allowed me to do that with a couple of minor changes. I’m so happy, so now, I’m trying to attach a really terrific English actor, and then go to market. So, I hope I have an exciting announcement about that. Eventually, I want to bring all the lessons I learned from this doco, like sound design and music and editing, to what I know so well, which is directing actors.
“There was a major sticking point in the legal paperwork…”
For my very final question, you mentioned Robert andEvil Dead, I’m a huge fan of that franchise as a whole. I miss Ruby,I miss the wholeAsh vs Evil Deadcrew. I know Bruce has been talking about an animated show for many years now, I’m curious if you have heard any updates on that front, or if you would be interested in coming back if Ruby were 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 would go, “What the hell am I doing here?” [Laughs] I’m like, “Did you make 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 Ray [Santiago]. Bruce is family. So, what I can tell you is that there will be a couple more Evil Dead movies. There was a major sticking point in the legal paperwork that had to be worked through, but looks like that’s ironing itself out, and I think we can expect a couple more movies in the next couple of years.
AboutNever Look Away
CNN camerawoman Margaret Moth fearlessly captures footage of war zones. After receivingcatastrophic injuries in the crosshairs of battle, she returns to work with more courage than ever.An intimate portrait of a trailblazing female photojournalist. Features interviews with Moth’sfamily and friends, including CNN’s Christiane Amanpour. A Sundance Film Festival premieredirected by Lucy Lawless.
Never Look Awayis now in select theaters and on digital platforms and VOD!
Never Look Away
Cast
Never Look Away is a documentary directed by Lucy Lawless that follows CNN camerawoman Margaret Moth. It details her fearless work in war zones, her return after sustaining severe injuries, and features interviews with family and colleagues, including Christiane Amanpour, offering an intimate look at her groundbreaking career.
