Xena's Back! Lucy Lawless Battles Locusts!

March 2, 2005
Now that "Xena: Warrior Princess" alum LUCY LAWLESS has stopped fighting ancient evil she's back on TV battling bugs in her new TV thriller "Locusts!" The butt-kicking star says her six years on the fantasy drama has provided some much-needed experience for the insect-infested flick.

"When I was doing 'Xena' they'd put spiders in your mouth and dump tons of rats all over you, so locusts are nothing," she says. The fun movie, set to air on CBS on Sunday, April 24, is about a deadly breed of bioengineered locusts that form multiple swarms, creating an unimaginable threat to the United States.

"'Locusts!' is a disaster/adventure movie that's for sure," Lucy says. "I think a lot of people are really freaked out at the moment about politics and science and economics and I think this taps into that suspicion out there."

Lucy says she's come to save the day in the disaster picture. "What's happening in this movie is I come in as a young gun in the department of agriculture, a former scientist and an investigator for the department," Lucy says. "I find out my mentor has a locust program that has run amuck and has threatened the heartland of America."

Lucy says she's gotten a lot of practice dealing with creepy-crawlers by having two young sons. "We hang out with bugs all the time," she says. "We have millipedes and snakes and lizards. I have little boys so it's slugs and snails and puppy dog tails all the time, so this is nothing!"

Although there are real locusts on the set, many of the creatures featured in the movie are helped out by technology. "Thank God for CGI," she says. "And frankly it's a lot easier working without them. It would be hard to wrangle 4 billion locusts, so I'm not displeased!"

To go behind the scenes of the adventure movie, watch tonight's ET!