Alison Wall (Minya)

Alison seemed to approach this whole convention idea with caution, as if she wasn't too sure what to expect from this huge pack of rabid fans. It looked as if, by the end, she was having fun with her appearance, and a lot of her natural humor got to shine through.

Alison introduced herself with "Hi... I play Minya. Thank someone up there, I'm not Minya." Although she stood up for Minya by pointing out that she's gotten to play with Xena's whip and got invited to Gabrielle's birthday party, "So she's not a complete loser." She mentioned how much she loves Minya's pride in everything she does, no matter how terribly it might have been done. "LOOK AT WHAT I DID!!!"

The hardest part about playing Minya, Alison reports, has been working with goats. She described the shooting of A Day in the Life, when at the very end of a day of shooting, they handed Alison a goat and ran with the scene, with lots of people looking on. And the more Minya had to be excited, the more excited the goat got, and, she explained, when goats get excited, they try to climb. So she ended her first day of shooting by trying to fight a climbing goat long enough to do her fangirl gushing scene.

When asked about a Minya action figure, Alison said she wasn't sure what action Minya would have. She and the audience quickly decided on a whip. Alison seemed to take great pride in that whip action. She said that, when she returned after Day in the Life, a circus whip trainer from Moscow was on the set to teach her how to use the whip. Mostly, she reports, because some other guest star had been very scared of using a whip. But she told us with pride that the circus trainer told her she was quite good with the whip.

Alison wasn't sure where Minya is headed next. "She's such a slut!" Minya started out with Hower (said in a perfect Minya "Howwweeer"), then made goo-goo eyes over Ares... "and she's exploring everything now." "When they brought her back," she said of Takes One to Know One, "I had to think what she might be into." The crowd was getting a huge kick out of this idea.

Alison closed up with a funny image about the show, and about the hardiness of the crew and the perils of working outdoors. In the scene in Quill is Mightier when a parade of people go chasing through a field, Alison reported that the field was an old cow pasture that had now solidified into rock-hard, very uneven ground, and the poor Naked Gabrielle stand-ins had to dance through that barefoot. Murphy's Law struck, and one of the Naked Gabrielles sprained her ankle. Naked Gabrielle ended up being carried off the set by the Barbarians, a hilarious image, although Alison reports that the barbarians are really all sweethearts.

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