Sundance 2024 Interview: Lucy Lawless Talks Directorial Debut, Never Look Away

Esteemed New Zealand icon Lucy Lawless, widely celebrated for her compelling portrayals in memorable projects such as Xena: Warrior Princess, Spartacus, and Salem, is stepping into the director’s chair for the first time with the highly anticipated Never Look Away. The film is set to captivate audiences as it makes its world premiere at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival.

The feature documentary that tells the remarkable story of how Margaret Moth lived her life to the absolute fullest while covering war zones for CNN, and paid a significant price. When she was shot in the head by a sniper in Sarajevo in 1992, Moth lost the lower half of her face, which had to be reconstructed across more than a dozen surgeries. But she wasn’t done covering war zones, and refused to let her drastic injuries hold her back. She bravely returned to Sarajevo as soon as possible, and went on to cover multiple subsequent wars for CNN, becoming even more committed to showing the impact of war.

Pop Culturalist had the pleasure of speaking with Lucy about Never Look Away, highlighting the spirit of Margaret Moth, making her directorial debut, and more.

PC: Never Look Away is your directorial debut, and you initially had no intention of directing this project when it first came across your desk. How did that conversation with Margaret’s best friend Joe Duran influence your decision to helm this film?
Lucy: I responded that I would find producers and the money. I thought I’d simply produce. While we were trying to figure out and come up with ideas of who would be a good person to direct it, somebody said, “Why don’t you do it?” I was like, “No.” But then I thought, of course, I should. Who else has already dived into this story more than me? Just because I haven’t done it before doesn’t mean that I can’t. So I was foolish enough to grab the bull by the horns. Here we are two years later!

PC: Margaret was such a trailblazer throughout her career, similar to yourself, and she often marched to her own beat. What was it about her story in particular that resonated with you? As you began doing research on the life she lived through all these different interviews, what did you want to make sure was highlighted in this documentary?
Lucy: Like everybody, I want to live more authentically. I want to have more courage. I want to die knowing that I tried everything and that I didn’t chicken out. So I did find her story immediately attractive. I thought if I feel this way, I bet other people will too. I hope that people will take away from this the inspiration to be more yourself.

Nobody’s going to come away from this being like, “I want to be more like Margaret.” [laughs] That’s not going to happen. She was well in touch with her dark side. People say that about her. But you look at her and think, if she endured so much and succeeded so well when so much was taken away from her, who am I not to be fabulous in my own life? She’s an inspiration on that level.

As far as the research, a lot of things in our film, you have to read between the lines, but it’s the love. The love that existed among all these people and the pain that they still feel today over how much they miss her. There was a great deal of love for her. Like Christiane Amanpour, who gave us her time. That was the first day of the invasion of Ukraine, so they were very stressed and busy, all the photojournalists. But she still had so much regard for Margaret that she made time for us. I’m very grateful for that because everything she said was gold.

I always wanted to highlight the love. Being human is messy. It can get a bit dark at times. We’re not perfect, but love is love. There’s love for other people. There’s love for the children who haven’t been born yet. That was always Margaret’s concern and mine as well. I hope that reads through the film.

PC: You accomplished that, and the world needs more of that message right now. What you’ve done so brilliantly with this film is you’ve been able to find that perfect balance of incorporating interviews with Margaret’s close circle of friends and the footage that she took herself, which I imagine is a challenge since you’re highlighting this prominent figure who is often behind the camera. How were you able to find that balance so seamlessly and make it so cinematic?
Lucy: Well, I had a brilliant editor and researcher who had to access all this archive footage, which was terribly hard. You have tons of footage to illustrate this war, but there’s none to illustrate her internal journey and what’s happening when the camera wasn’t rolling. That’s why we went to Wētā Workshop and asked them to build this large-scale diorama, which for people my age in the ’70s was everything. It’s one of those wonderful things that’s so old that it’s new again. It felt fresh to do that. Because we didn’t have much money, we couldn’t have backgrounds, so we just had these black curtains. It created this very uncanny sense of reality. I wanted it to feel like a dreamscape. We made the light really apricot, and the faces are green or gray, and the buildings are gray. All of these things should not exist together, but it creates this feeling of uncanniness and uneasiness among audiences. We compounded that with really great sound editing and music, that felt really compressed so it felt a little claustrophobic. I like to use the word “submarine” when describing it.

We wanted to create that uneasiness and take people on a different kind of journey that was dark and surreal. We also had to use the dancer because there’s no photographic evidence of Margaret’s pain. She’s smiling in every photograph where she isn’t anesthetized. So we had to use other elements. I used Butoh. It’s an amazing Japanese dance form which I believe evolved only after the second World War to express the degradation of their bodies, the horror, the shame, and the underside of life. I’m very attracted to showing the darkness of the normal person.

So whether it’s in a character in the films that I make, as I expect to do more, there will always be that chiaroscuro in my characters because that’s what I celebrate about humanity. Margaret’s a great lesson that you don’t have to be a saint to live on the side of the angels.

PC: There’s also so much trust that’s needed when you’re working on a documentary. How were you able to build that with all the different subjects in this film as they shared these really intimate stories about Margaret?
Lucy: I went ahead on my own and got to know people. They have to like and trust you. It was unbelievably generous of them to give me their time. And people like to be heard. If you’re somebody who’s willing to listen, sometimes they’re going to talk. It depends on who they are. Journalists are tricky because when they get in front of a camera, they only want to tell the objective fact. It’s like, “No, get away from that.” [laughs] I just want you to be human. Please just be a little more human. Some can and some can’t because I’m asking them to be more poetic and step outside of the camera. They have that sense memory that when they’re on camera, they have to present themselves. I don’t want that presentation. I want people to be there in all of their messy selves.

PC: With this being your directorial debut, what was the most surprising part about this experience? What did you learn about your own craft that you’re now able to bring to the other facets of your career?
Lucy: I learned this really great lesson about emotional thinking and how it’s really bad for the planet, especially because there are a lot of things to get emotional about, and it feels good to get angry and take umbrage. It feels good to us. We feel busy and engaged, but it actually stops us from being useful.

What Margaret did so well and what I have learned through this process is to put emotional thinking aside. You can indulge in that in your own time. But when something is really important, it’s not helpful. There’s a stoic philosophy that runs through Margaret’s ability to cope in life, which I think was born out of an absolutely pitiless childhood. But if the rest of us had one instance of Margaret’s stoicism, the world would be in a better place. We would be more able to communicate. I think that would unite the world beautifully.

To keep up with Lucy, follow her on Twitter and Instagram. To learn more about the film, head over to the Sundance.org.