Lucy Lawless Plays a Teacher in New Outback Thriller

Lucy Lawless stars in ABC political thriller The Code as Alex Wisham, a teacher in a remote indigenous school who protects an Aboriginal boy blamed for the death of a teenage girl. She gets help from a computer geek who tries to prove the girl’s death was caused by an evil company doing secret government business.

Since the end of Xena: Warrior Princess, Lawless has been mostly doing comedies such as Parks and Recreation or tongue-in-cheek epics such as Spartacus. So how did the serious-teacher role come about?

“I was sent the script by Shelley Birse, the writer, because I guess she thought I had a bit of activist cred,” Lawless says. “She was looking for someone with grit and love, I guess. I’m very concerned about the environment.

“I read it and thought, ‘Oh my God, this is so good I have to jump on it’, and I was the first person on.”

Lawless has spent most of this year in New Zealand, where her children prefer to go to school, but she’s about to return to Los Angeles.

She’ll take on the role of heroic Isabelle Hartley in Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. “My reason for doing it is a bit of a nod to my old fan base and to the writers, because the executive producers were on Spartacus,” Lawless: says. “It’s one of those loyalty jobs that you put in.”

Original article by David Dale, The Sydney Morning Herald, September 14, 2014.