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It wasn't enough for the power hungry Velasca to be Queen - she had to set her sights on immortality. Melinda Clarke takes time out from being a hard-working mum to talk to Xena Magazine about her time as the renegade Amazon in Xena's second season. Interview by Ian Rentoul.
Official Xena Magazine: Issue 20
Fans hoping to see the return of Velasca to Xena: Warrior Princess finally had their hopes dashed in a recent episode of the show. In season six's You Are There, Charon confirms that he transported her to Tartarus after Xena entombed her in lava rock in the season two episode A Necessary Evil.
In fact, Velasca nearly did make a return appearance to Xena. Unfortunately, when the producers approached actress Melinda Clarke to resurrect the character in Return of Callisto, she was unable to spare the time. “At the time I was working on the show Soldier of Fortune,” she reveals, “which meant I couldn't do it.”
However, Clarke is just happy to have had the opportunity to appear in Xena at all. Velasca may have been her first role for Renaissance Pictures, but she very nearly starred in Xena’s father show, Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. “There were a couple of times when Renaissance called to ask about my availability,” Clarke recalls, “but I was either out of town or just unavailable. I read for Hercules: The Legendary Journeys before Xena started, and after that they would call me from time to time, but it just never worked out until the part of Velasca came up.”
That particular break came when Lucy Lawless had just had her infamous horse riding accident while shooting a guest appearance for the David Letterman show. “I got a call from my agents who told me I'd been asked to go down to New Zealand to appear in two Xena episodes. Lucy was still recovering from her accident, so she wasn't going to be in them much. If I remember correctly, one of the reasons they wrote the scripts the way they did, or at least the first one I was in, The Quest, was to give Lucy time to recover. By the time I got there she was up and about, but they wanted to give her a little more time before doing anything too physical.”
The Quest introduces Clarke’s character as the adopted daughter of Melosa, Queen of the Amazons, who Velasca challenges and kills in her desperate bid for power, declaring herself Queen. With Xena’s death in the previous episode, Destiny (and Lawless’ injury), the plot for The Quest became the story of Gabrielle returning to the Amazon Nation to challenge Velasca’s claim to queenhood, as well as a quest to find a batch of ambrosia to bring Xena back to life.
A Necessary Evil begins with the discovery that Velasca not only survived her battle with Gabrielle at the end of The Quest, she somehow managed to consume some of the ambrosia and is now a god. In order to defeat the now immortal Velasca, Xena pits her against Callisto in a fight which results in both goddesses falling into an ocean of lava.
“I went down to New Zealand with my fiance (who is now my husband) for a month to do both episodes, and had a fantastic time!” Clarke enthuses. “Xena has got to be the most organised and well run set I’ve ever been on. They are incredibly efficient, especially with all the action stuff they do.”
Clarke was also impressed by the show’s writing staff. The script for The Quest gave her a good starting point for the role of Velasca, which she was then able to build on in order to make the character her own. “For the most part, everything I needed for the character was in the text,” she says. “I read the script and saw that she was arrogant, an egomaniac, selfish and, in her opinion, above everyone else. So I had in mind images of women from the 1940s, like Joan Crawford, Bette Davis or Marlene Dietrich, who were larger than life on camera.
“Velasca refers to herself as the ‘Goddess of Chaos’, and I thought that was a good thing. So sometimes these characters can happen organically because you get an image in your mind of something and then make it a little bit bigger.
“Playing Velasca was fun, because it wasn’t a character in a show like, say, NYPD Blue, where you have to be very subtle and quiet,” Clarke notes. “I’m not saying that you overact, because you have to believe in what you're seeing, but at the same time you have to let go, to be this character who's larger than life, and it’s a lot of fun getting the chance to play that.”
Some complicated effects sequences were required for the portrayal of such a character. Clarke points to the scene in A Necessary Evil in which Velasca turns herself into a tornado. “I had to wear white contact lenses,” she recalls, “and I normally don’t wear contacts at all. They wanted me to do some kind of spinning thing so that they could get me turning around. Of course, I could barely see because of these contact lenses, plus they blinded me with sand from the wind machine! So I’m doing this Wonder Woman-style spin with sand in my eyes, and it didn’t come off very goddess-like! Plus I also lost my voice from shouting so much!”
Despite the difficulties involved in portraying Velasca, however, Clarke doesn’t regret her Xena appearances. “It’s wonderful,” she enthuses of the show. “I love Greek Mythology, although I wouldn’t say I’m an expert at all. I love anything with a period feel to it. Xena and Hercules are mythology but with a contemporary twist on the way that everybody speaks. I love the stories.”
Clarke has very fond memories of her two weeks in New Zealand. “I loved the food!” she laughs. “I remember that Renee [O’Connor] was very strong, and when I had to do a fight with her it was so hard to keep up. I also remember the look on my face when I saw the outfit I had to wear!
“I don’t think anybody at the time realised it, but my hair was really short, and as soon as I got off the plane in Auckland, the person who greeted me got straight on the phone. I found out later that she’d called ahead to say that I didn’t have long hair, so could the hair people get a wig made for me!”
Not only did her experience on Xena afford her some happy memories, it also enabled her to make some strong friendships which she retains even now. “Hudson Leick and I are friends,” she reveals. “She's very intense, and I particularly remember the fight we did on the bridge. I couldn't imagine anybody else being Callisto. I saw Hudson just after she came back from a convention in England last year. She had a great time, and I’d like to try and take the time to do a convention in England because I have some friends over there. I did a movie in Spain where almost all of the cast were British, so it would be a good excuse to come over.”
Talking of Hudson’s natural portrayal of Callisto, ironically, leads Clarke to mention she actually had the opportunity to play the role of the Warrior Princess herself. “They called more than 40 different actresses to see who was available for the role,” she recalls. “I got a call from my agents, who said there was a possible two-part role available on a show called Hercules, but I was in Chicago at the time, so I was unavailable. I was quoted as saying I was offered the role of Xena. but that’s not true,” she admits.
“It’s definitely Lucy’s role,” she adds. “It’s her part, and nobody else could ever have done it as well. So whenever somebody says to me, ‘You were supposed to be Xena’, I say, ‘No, not at all!’ I don’t want to be known as someone who says, ‘That was my role,’ when it wasn’t!”
Following her appearance as Velasca in The Quest and A Necessary Evil, Clarke had a regular role in the television show Soldier of Fortune. “I really enjoyed the first season of the show,” she says, “but the second season left a lot to be desired, even though I had a great time doing it.
“Most of my career has reflected either drama or action,” Clarke remarks. “I’d like to do comedies, and I audition for sitcoms quite often, but when your resume reflects action, people don’t think you can be funny. You have to say, ‘Yes, I can be funny! I am a goof-ball!' But I think most performers like to do anything, and as an actor you should be able to do everything should the opportunity arise.
“I most enjoy performing in theatre,” she says. “It’s the purest process when it comes to acting because it is the process of rehearsal, trial and error, and collaboration between writers, actors and directors. It’s also the most rewarding. As an actor you go through different stages, and as I’ve been doing a lot of television lately, I’d love to do some plays.”
Clarke’s first experience in front of the earner: was at the tender age of five. “I played a sick child on Days of Our Lives,” she recalls. “I was paid $90. It was when they brought in children to be the sick kids on the Christmas show. My brother, sister and myself all got to do it at one time or another.
“By the time I was at High School, I realised that acting was what I wanted to do,” she continues. “I grew up in a town about six miles south of Los Angeles, and after a year in college decided that I wanted to move to LA and try some acting classes. I then got onto the same soap opera that my dad was on, and did that for a year. I played the daughter of a preacher who was blind. After that I did a funny goofy little teenage movie called Hot Under the Collar.
“My father, John Clarke, has been on Days of Our Lives since 1964. He also did the original pilot for the show, so I grew up around acting. My mother was a ballet dancer and had a couple of different dance studios, so I was tap dancing from the age of four. I was always interested in dancing and continued to do it through my teenage years. I also did youth workshops and musicals throughout my time at High School.”
Now that she has a one year-old-daughter, Clarke has found that her priorities have changed, and acting has become more of a luxury than a career. “I see it as a bit of a hobby because I’m a mum,” she admits. “I did an episode of Nash Bridges a couple of months ago, and I’ve also done an episode of The Pretender. But I’ve actually taken quite a bit of time off to be with my baby. That’s my full time job right now, and luckily, I’ve been able to stay home.”
Clarke has nothing but admiration for Lawless, who carried on working almost immediately after giving birth to baby Julius. “It’s amazing that Lucy had a baby and she’s still working,” she says. “The great thing is that, as actors, we can take our children to work, and I wish more women in other professions could do the same. We can have people looking after them in the trailer, but at a certain age it’s not really fair to them because they need to be out and about playing. It’s hard. You love to work, and you love to be a mum too.”
As the conversation draws to a close, Clarke stresses how pleased she is to have the opportunity to negate the rumour that she was offered the role of Xena. “When I first saw it I was mortified,” she says, “because it sounded like I was bitter or jealous, but it was never like that. When actors go up for roles, the producers are considering lots of people at the time, and I couldn't imagine anybody but Lucy as Xena. She’s one of the sweetest, most wonderful, people I’ve ever met.
“But everyone down in New Zealand is fantastic,” she enthuses. “Renaissance Pictures are incredibly professional, and I’d work for them any time.”