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March 2001:
Lexx season 4 episode 'P3X'
is to feature Craig Charles and Hatie Hayridge (famous for starring in
the UK sci-fi comedy show 'Red Dwarf')
The following
excert is from the RED DWARF Site www.reddwarf.co.uk
A
strange reunion as Craig and Hattie team up to appear in bizarre SF favourite
Lexx. With a curious echo of the last series of Red Dwarf surely in mind,
the producers of cult SF show Lexx - currently screening in the UK on
Channel 5 - have placed Hattie Hayridge and Craig Charles into their coming
fourth series. Hattie plays Heidi, a Texan prison warden, with Craig appearing
as her husband - albeit without the Texan accent - in the episode P3X.
"It was good," Hattie told reddwarf.co.uk, "because I'd never acted with
him that way before - [as Holly] I was always in my separate bit."
Asked how this bizarre partnership came about, Craig said,
"I think Hattie was offered the part originally, and once she'd said yes
to it, they thought they'd make it sort of a Red Dwarf-y tie-in. Hattie
plays this Texan - a cross between Jerry Hall and Daphne from A Streetcar
Named Desire - and I play this English governor in a Texan jail. I'm the
warden, she's my sub-warden and my wife. We've got this daughter who is
completely insane..."
Did he know what he was letting himself in for?
"Lexx is like S&M meets science fiction It's a very sexy show - I felt
like a dirty old man half the time. During the filming, sometimes I just
thought, 'I hope my wife doesn't see this'."
Hattie agrees: "They said it was the most risqué one they'd done - half-naked
men holed up in dungeons. Naked women in the showers in the women's prison..."
Hattie remembers the costume being particularly fun: "The costume woman
said, 'Oh, you're much thinner than I thought you'd be. Maybe we'll change
it when you get over here...' She was imagining a great big, fat Texan!
I was meant to be wearing trousers and a shirt - it was a little bit Cell
Block H-y. But when we got there, me and the make-up women and the costume
women got together, all girly, and made her a bit more Dolly Parton! It's
still prison uniform, but I wear a shirt that's two sizes too small and
a really short skirt. They curled my hair up - just a few curls, my own
hair." "Hattie is horrible in it!"
Craig insists. "She's horrible - the wife from hell. She's really mean
- the wife from hell! She constantly insults me." Hattie agrees: "It's
a marriage not made in heaven. We were thinking, 'Where would we have
met?' Because I'd obviously never been out of Texas. He must have been
passing through when we met, and married."
But perhaps the most memorable part of the shoot was the weather. "Halifax,
Nova Scotia - the coldest place I've ever been," Craig shudders. "It was
like minus 20 over there! They had the worst recorded level of snowfall
since records began while we were over there. It was great - like a big
winter wonderland."
Although - Craig being Craig - there is one other abiding memory: "All
the cast are really nice. Michael McManus is a nice fella. Didn't really
socialise with the girl who plays Zev. She's got remarkable lips. They
can't be real! Apparently one of the cameramen was saying that sometimes
they cast shadows!"
Craig's experiences of Canada can also be found on lineone.net amongst
his game reviews.
September
2000
On september 7th, 2000, Salter Street Films announced that its science
fiction series, LEXX, has been re-ordered for a fourth season by the SCI
FI Channel in the United States
'The SCI FI
Channel has ordered a season of 24 one-hour episodes, which will bring
the total number of LEXX episodes to 65.'
With the delivery
of season 4 expected later in 2001, the rumour is that filming began January
15th 2001,
For the official
news release click
here
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