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Interview with Xenia Seeberg
SFX № 49, March 1999


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Lexx Appeal

FOR XENIA SEEBERG, STEPPING INTO EVA HABERMANN'S RUBBER HALTER AS LEXX'S LOVE SLAVE XEV (FORMERLY ZEV) NECESSITATED MORE THAN A CHANGE OF HAIR, AS ANTHONY BROWN DISCOVERS.

Should you happen to be in Germany this Summer, don't expect to recognise Lexx's Xenia Seeberg if you pass her in the street. When she walks into the room for an interview about her role as the new Xev, you expect to see some trace of the red-haired, cluster lizard-infected love slave from the weirdest parallel universe in existence. Instead, you get a petite and demure blonde who you could easily mistake for a ubiquitous PR girl.

"It was fun to kind of get into this other character with a different look," comments Seeberg, looking light years away from her on-screen persona in a sleek black trouser suit and jumper, "because now, when I'm walking down the street, people would not recognise me right away. The other things I did in Germany, people always recognised me. I still look the same. I've still got the same damn hairdo!"

On Lexx, that haircut is concealed by a vivid red wig, sparing her the harsh dyes which caused her predecessor Eva Habermann's locks to fall out. "I didn't have any problems with the wig, no. My hair could grow happily, in peace, underneath."

The colour of Seeberg's follicles emphasises the fact that Xev isn't quite the same character she used to be. Red was chosen because of the nature of the virtual sets which dominate the series - although not as much as last year. "We have way more sets than they had on the movies. The set builders, they were our real heroes, because they had to work day and night on them..."

Nevertheless, blue-screen work was still a vital ingredient in the mix...

"Actually, it was green screen," corrects Seeberg. "You can spot it was green-screen because Eva's hair was blue, and it would have faded out if the screen had been blue as well! But because we had green screen I wasn't allowed to have green hair, so we chose red."

So how did Seeberg's time at New York's Lee Strasberg School Of Acting, famed for its Brando-esque Method School, prepare her for this kind of special effects work?

"Not much, although it always reminded me of stage acting because you have to imagine so much more than what is really there. If you are fighting a huge green cardboard box and have to imagine it's some horrible monster, it can be pretty funny. It's not supposed to be, because at that moment of course you have to be serious, so it's a little bit difficult to make it look real..."

That isn't the only aspect of Lexx's production which can prove perplexing. "Everything's shot in English, and we have to dub it into German," Seeberg explains in her distinctively accented and slightly quirky English. Presumably, you'd call her accent mid-Atlantic, because it mixes a hint of German with the transatlantic tones she picked up during her stint in America. Fortunately, it's different to the twisted Lloyd Grossman vowels of your average disc jockey. So far as Lexx is concerned, she explains, English is her native tongue.

"I find it very difficult actually to do in German. Sometimes you really cannot pick up the same kind of humour, and have to do something completely different. It's just not funny if you translate it straight, and therefore you have to make up other things in German to fit the right space. Sometimes it's very annoying in a way. The first day of dubbing was very frustrating. 1 felt 'Oh my God, I can never finish this.' When you see yourself on screen, and you know what you've said in a scene, well, I'd start off a sentence in German and then all of a sudden, without even noticing, I'd say half of it in English!"

Once the German dubbing's finished, Seeberg's work on the new season will be complete, and although she'd like to do more, she's aware that Lexx's future lies in the hands of those capricious, channelhopping viewers. "There's still a chance that the series will continue next year, so we just have to wait and see..." she says.

It's a situation satirised in one of the new season's most off-the-wall instalments - "Lafftrak," where Xev and Stanley become the stars of an entertainment series which brings their wildest fantasies to life, not realising that cancellation could be a one-way ticket to the speciality channels where the cast don't survive. "It's very ironic, of course, making fun of our nowadays TV world," smiles Seeberg. "The reality that if your ratings fail then your show SNAP!" She slaps her palms together with a sudden clap. "It gets cancelled. That actually happened to a series I was on, but I'd left before they got cancelled! They survived for a while, but after I left they just couldn't do so well any more..."

"I liked what they had in mind - the different kind of humour... They wanted to make fun of things that were taken too seriously." Xenia Seeberg

It's the uncertainties of modern-day television which won Seeberg her part on Lexx, after the series' backers hesitated over commissioning another run for so long that female lead Eva Habermann had already committed herself to another show. Although she managed to return for the opening episodes, the producers were forced to look for a new Zev, which is where Seeberg, a veteran of stage musicals and a number of German series, came in. "I didn't do the actual casting because I was away, but the producer saw my tape which he really liked a lot, which must be why he thought this girl might be suitable for the part. And that's why he sent me the tapes and said, 'What do you think about it?' I saw the original movies before I met the producer and director, although I didn't watch it on TV because I was away working..."

Fortunately, Seeberg liked what she saw. "I liked what they had in mind - the different kind of humour and that they wanted to make fun of things that were taken too seriously. It's totally new - there's really been nothing like this so far, so I found that interesting."

One thing Seeberg knew for sure was that she didn't want to imitate Habermann's Zev. So in addition to the aforementioned change in her hair colour (and the spelling of her name), Seeberg's Xev, created by the fusion of the original Zev and a flesh-eating alien, sports different characteristics.

"I think she has a few more dimensions now, whereas in the past she wall just a fighter and a love slave. Well, I wanted her to be more than that, and for the audience to be able to have a little more feeling for her. She has feelings which can't be reduced to everything circling around her libido."

Which sounds like a very conscious attempt to make Xev less of a gorgeous sex-crazed woman with a domineering streak.

I'd start off a sentence in German and then, without even noticing, I'd say half of it in English!" Xenia Seeberg

"She's not only that. That was one of the reasons why we didn't want her to look like a typical female sexual cliche type. Now, with what I look like in real life, with blonde hair and so on, we thought it would be too much, on top of showing so much cleavage. We needed a contrast and hopefully even women who are on edge about sexism will accept it, because she is very tough. She's not just sexy. Of course, the way we show her is like a teenage boy's fantasies, and a lot of people will have that in the back of their minds. It's up to you. You can look into it as deeply as you want, and if you look into it on just a superficial level, then, okay, it'll probably be just the sex element you see...

"But in every episode, you'll see different parts of her character, and I think just a greater surprise. I added certain kind of softness to her, really human feelings, and you can probably feel a bit more of a deeper friendship between her and Stanley. I mean, they still have those little everyday fights going on, like everyone else, but underneath you can count on more of a friendship."

Hold on... Stanley Tweedle abandoning his sexual fantasies towards Xev? Lexx wouldn't be Lexx without Stan's lechery...

"Well, in one episode they do get into a situation which is close to what Stanley always dreamt of, but, well..." It doesn't take a genius to work out that things go wrong for the former Assistant Deputy Back-Up Courier. "That's usually the intention behind it all. When they go to a new planet it's usually their sexual quirks which draw them into trouble, and we're lucky if we get out..."

Speaking of sexual quirks, you wonder whether Seeberg had seen the uncensored version of the second telemovie, Supernova, and the distinctly Freudian shower scene featuring an unusually underclad Zev.

"No, not yet," she smiles. "We're a little more decent about that now. We've started playing by the rules a bit more. We have shower scenes, but they're very discreet. I mean, we knew we'd be going out at prime time in Germany and I think the same in Canada, so we had to play by the rules a little... It's surprising - we can show so many really funky things there, but we're strictly forbidden to do nudity now..."

She shakes her head, perplexed by the bizarre standards of contemporary television. "I don't know..."

Lexx is now showing on The Sci-Fi Channel even, Tuesday at 9pm, and Sundays at 10pm.


© LEXX - LIGHT ZONE январь 2007 HELEN & Trulyalyana

 
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