Today, My Life is Murder returns to both Acorn TV and BBC America with the first two episodes of the eight episode fourth season. The series follows private investigator Alexa Crowe (Lucy Lawless) as she solves murders with the help of her tech guru Madison (Ebony Vagulans).

Recently, star Lawless spoke with SciFi Vision about the cases that fans can expect this time around, Alexa confronting her past this season, hanging out with the cast, difficulties in working with cats, if she would want to direct on the series, what she would be doing if she wasn’t acting, and much, much more.

Read the full transcript below and be sure to check out season four.

SCIFI VISION:   What can fans expect this season? What can they look forward to? 

LUCY LAWLESS:   Well, more spicy murders and sort of aspirational environments. And you get to hang with your parasocial best friends, which is us, me and Madison and Harry (Rawiri Jobe) and Reuben (Joseph Naufahu). It's a weird little family, and you're all invited to my home to be part of it and solve some murders. 

You seem like you get along really well. Do you hang out at all outside of the show? 

Yes, a lot. We did this tennis episode, and I was like, “Oh, God, tennis.” And we loved it so much that we all went out and we got hooked on padel, which is kind of like pickleball, but it's the European version. We don't have pickleball in New Zealand, but we do have this padel. We all got [rackets]. I've got like four rackets now. We all got hooked on it! Especially me and Joe, who plays Reuben. 

I was actually going to ask you about that, if you really played, but I guess that answers my question! 

Well, I haven't played for years, but I did learn it as a kid. I studied with a coach and [whatnot], but I haven't played it since, but the thing with padel or pickleball, is it's easy to get adequately good quickly. So, it's immediately gratifying. It's hard to be brilliant at it. That takes a lot of practice and skill, but just about any moron can be pretty good at it right away.

In the second episode, you sort of work with another private investigator, which is a lot of fun. Can you sort of tease about how that kind of changes up the dynamic, because really, it's a bit different in that one? 

Yes. That was fun working with Lisa Chappell. She's very well known in Australia…They are both playing, gaming one another. I think Alexa wasn't sure, could she be my friend, or could she not be my friend? I think there was a potential friendship there, but it all went a bit south.

By the way, I’m probably going to keep saying “your character” instead of her name so my Amazon device does not keep going off every time. [laughs] 

Yeah. That was so mean of Claire [Tonkin]. I said, “Let's not call it that, because it just doesn't seem like a name of somebody of my generation,” and she was like “No, no, I think it's good.” And I [didn’t know] that was gonna happen! 

[laughs] It happens a lot. Between your character and Harry, has there ever been any discussion about there being something between them? Because there's some good chemistry there. 

Yeah, I think he sort of he stayed over one time this season. Yeah, there's been no shenanigans of late. I might ask them if there's a next season, you know, “let's pop in a lover somewhere.” 

She gets some some flirting with the realtor [in episode three], even if it's not necessarily positive on her end. 

Oh my god, that guy was so funny. I loved that episode with the realtor. Benedict [Wall]. Holy shit. That guy was funny. He was quite nervous, but he was really funny. I asked the other producers, “Can we keep him?” Because he would be such a foil for [Alexa]…He would just be a great kind of frenemy. I want to bring him back as like the neighbor, the annoying neighbor that we had in the first season. 



Talk about how your character has changed since she started working with Madison, because, I mean, I think they both have changed with each other quite a bit. But how do you feel she's changed since she started? 

Well, I used to moan and groan about it and just ask quite rudely, you know, “Oh, my God, are you still here? Like get out my house!” She was very reluctant to accept Madison into her life, even though she offered her room in her house. But that's changed, because the time that Madison tried to move out, Alexa was kind of bereft. So, I think she has accepted Madison as her family. The same with the other guys…This is now her family. 

Do you think she'll ever stop pretending she doesn't want her there? [laughs] 

Nah, she'll throw that in every now and again. It's just her game. 

Do you share Alexa’s passion at all for baking? Is that something that you have in common? 

Passion is the wrong word, but I do bake, and I'm pretty good at bread. But I'm gluten intolerant. I have to make gluten-free breads. 

You work with cats a lot of times. Has that ever been an issue? Because I know a lot of people, you know, they say working with animals and kids are supposed to be the hardest things. Do have you had any weird or funny stories with the cats causing issues? 

Yeah, in the first season in Australia. They were very nervous to ring me, but they finally did. Claire said, “Oh, my God, Lucy. They've lost the cat!” And what had happened was, the cat wranglers, the owners, had taken the cat on holiday. Because it was Australia, they [drove] like seven hours to go and visit Auntie So-and-so, and they took the cat. It’s like, who takes the cat on holiday for God's sake? Anyway, they let the cat out, or they stopped to go to the bathroom or something, and the cat leapt out the window into the outback, into the bush of Australia. I've lost a cat in the outback before, because I worked there as a teenager in the middle of nowhere, and the cats just go feral, or they get eaten by a snake or something else, you know coyotes. Not coyotes. What do they have there? Dingoes. Anyway, I just started laughing. Like that was such an inconvenience that all you could do was laugh. Like, of course that's what we need. They lost the cat. It's really hard to get a stunt double for a cat, believe it or not. Unless it's night when they're all gray, they do not look alike. So, anyway, in New Zealand, we got back, and the first day that I worked with the cat, whose real name is Zeplin, I swear to God, this cat was sweating. It was so hot, and he was so stressed, that his fur was sticking up like it was wet, covered in oil. It was the most uncomfortable - and he was shedding all over me. So, it was just the most dreadful cat [laughs] on the set, but he's relaxed and we've gotten much better at keeping the environment cat friendly, because big men moving heavy equipment over a cat’s head is not - it's suboptimal, put it that way, for cats. But he's gotten used to it now. 

I don't know how much you can you can tease about this, but can you talk a bit about, from the finale, her meeting someone from her past? 

Our final episode is a double episode, and Alexa is forced to confront the person that she blames for her husband's demise. So, it's a very uncomfortable investigation into a murder which has ramifications. It brings back the whole grief process for Alexa. So, she's got to persist and solve the crime even though she's sick at heart and obsessed with her own demons. 

I know that you directed a documentary, would you ever think of directing for the show, if you, hopefully, come back? 

I don't think I would on the show, because I just have so much to do, and I couldn't deliver the pages and pages of dialogue if I'm sitting behind a monitor, designing shots, and talking to other actors. Like every minute of the day, I'm keeping ahead of the schedule. So, I've got a lot of other things to think about. But I'm longing to direct actors, and a large part of my job is making young or anxious actors comfortable so they can do their best possible work. So, I want one day want to do that on my own film. 

That would be awesome. Now, I know you're an executive producer on the show, which can be different depending on the show and on the person. What is your involvement on that side of it? And does that make it hard doing that as well? Or is it just kind of nice, because you have more control? 

No, a lot of my EPing, well, part of it is that you were in on the project before there was money for the project. So, you're an integral part of of getting the show sold and getting the money to make it and putting together a team and casting initially, but once we're in production, I drop out of of casting for the most part. Sometimes I'll weigh in if it's an important character, and they send me the cliffnotes of casting. I can cast a vote myself, but a lot of the heavy lifting is done by Mark Beesley, and Kate Hall, the writer, and Rachel from Greenstone. I have fantastic colleagues who take care of the nuts and bolts. The rest is about, you know, I'm the morale leader. So, everything in any organization, you have to set a tone, and that's of respect and fun and flexibility and can-do. There's never any blaming. you’re always moving forward. That's filmmaking generally. But I am the main influence over that for a lot of people on set. So, I take that seriously. 

I don't even know if you can tell me this, but do you have an idea if you're going to come back? 

I don't know if it’s been green-lit. I know that Acorn and AMC like it very much, so I'm hopeful. I don't have any fears at the stage. I believe it will, but I can't say that for sure. I don't know. 

But you're you're you're good to go if they do it. 

Look, it won't be me that kills the show. Because in this day and age, I take my people's jobs seriously. So, if I have a job that has given work to a lot of people that I care about, I'm not going to be the one that takes it away just because I'm want to go do something else. This is not the day and age to be doing that kind of that kind of diva move. 

What do you think you would be doing if you weren't acting, if you weren't doing what you're doing now? 

Oh, be a bailiff or something at a courthouse. 

Oh, okay. That's quite different. 

It's my guilty pleasure. I watch court court cases either on tv or youtube, or I actually go to the court and watch it on rare occasions when I don't have any work or anything else to do. I went to Epstein's bail hearing. I'll go anywhere in the world. I’ve done a lot in Louisiana. It’s very interesting. 

That's interesting. I did not expect that. Let me ask you really quickly, because I know everybody probably usually asks about Xena, but I'm going to ask instead about The X-Files. Do you have like a memory that stands out from that? Because that was always my thing growing up. 

Oh, right. Oh, it was one of those [where there was] quite a bit of underwater work. But that was crazy. I think it was supposed to be like, there was a car that went into the water, so I spent hours underwater. They would come and just give you a hose to breathe through, and you’d just sit there underwater and wait for them to [film it]. So, it took a lot of mental fortitude to just remain calm and stay down there for a long time at night in this dark old water and film things.