Lucy Lawless on Sex Nudity and Xena

Lucy Lawless bares everything in her new show Spartacus: Blood and Sand ... but the lesbian icon says getting naked wasn't the hardest part, it was doing it in front of a bunch of women dressed as slaves.

"Mostly I was stressed because there's all these women playing slaves hanging around like a bad smell following you everywhere. You're trying to do this intimate scene with a trusted colleague and these women are just standing there. They're from Nigeria and Cameroon and places like this, and I had been talking with them. And I was just so freaked out thinking, What are these women thinking? They must be thinking, Bitch! In my country you would be stoned for that. Just for acting that with somebody who's not even your husband."

Lawless tells Out magazine she was drawn to the series because it finally gave her a chance to play a bad girl, and one of the best things about the show, she says, is the fact that it bucks television's stereotypical portrayal of gay men.

"You know what's nice about Spartacus is that they have a gladiator who was gay and manly and he has one of the few true love relationships [on the show] with a young man who also is in the same ludus -- that's a gladiator training camp. And it causes no problems for them whatsoever -- the fact that they're identified that way. It's really nice to see gay men being portrayed as something other than cardigan-wearing hand-flappers."

She also tells Out that while she isn't opposed to stepping back into the role that made her famous, she fears that by the time someone finally gets around to writing a Xena movie, she'll be too old for the part.

"By the time somebody does come up with that I'm just going to be too old. And I'm really sad about that. I feel like it's a completely wasted franchise. Rob [Tapert, Lawless's husband and the creator of Xena and Spartacus] really wanted to get that going. In fact they did early on and I was just too tired and thought I was bulletproof and would be in demand forever. And that killed it."