Danielle Cormack, Ephiny

I'd read the reports from Danielle Cormacks' few convention appearances so far. My general impression was that she was very blown away by the crowds of fans, a bit overwhelmed, and kind of quiet and shy under the tide of people.

I guess she got used to it.

When Danielle was introduced, a little woman swathed in sweats, a towel wrapped around her head, and wraparound mirror shades strutted onto the stage, grabbed the microphone, and announced in a crazy Bronx-ish accent "Yo! I'm gonna do a rap for you!" She broke into four or five verses about Ephiny, the amazons, and Xena and Gabrielle. I spent most of it rubbing my eyes in disbelief.

She then had the crowd sing the classic striptease song while she peeled off the sweats and headgear to reveal Danielle looking much more like we've seen her on our TV screens. She bounced all over the stage during her questions and answers and got incredibly goofy with us all. She blamed it on the huge amounts of chocolate she'd eaten - "That KitKat's kicking in now" - but she sure seemed to have a lot of fun. She told us she was getting too cocky with the convention scene now and predicted that we were going to knock her knees out from under her, but it never happened. She managed to hop on top of anything thrown her way.

[Sharon Delaney, by the way, reported to us later that Danielle made up that rap and the outfit on her way to the convention. Impressive!]

Ephiny has not yet been in any season four episodes - there was an episode she was scheduled to appear in, but other filming commitments forced her to cancel out. However, she's appearing in a Hercules episode, and she has seen a final cut of Amazon High, which she says may be a go, in which she plays a character called "Sinsara" (my spelling guess here is colliding headlong with trying to transcribe a Kiwi accent, so this is probably way off). Danielle said that Sinsara makes Ephiny look like an angel - I guess she's got attitude out the wazoo.

Danielle seems to like attitude a lot. She mentioned a couple of times that she'd like to take Ephiny more back to the headstrong show she made in Hooves and Harlots. She was proud of Ephiny for growing past all the wrong reasons she initially wanted to be queen, but it sounds like she'd like to see Ephiny get a chance to kick some more rump along the way. The audience gave their hearty approval.

In a related question, someone noted the short life expectancy of kids on XWP and asked whether Xenon's time on this earth was limited. Danielle's response was "Awwwww, horsie-boy?" As far as Danielle knows, her horsie-boy is still hale and hearty.

One questioner pointed out that now that Gabrielle is dead, Ephiny is the full-time Queen of the Amazons. "Hey, yeah!" Danielle replied. What's Ephiny going to do if Gabrielle returns from the dead and reclaims the mask? "I'll break her legs slowly!" She was just kidding, Gabfans!

According to Danielle, Ephiny is spending the summer rerun season putting a Mafia contract out on Xena in revenge for breaking her arm. Again, just kidding!

Danielle didn't have much of an idea of how much of a hit Xena would be when she first accepted the role of Ephiny. She said her reaction when she got the role was more "Yeah, OK," than anything else.

When asked if she'd ever been injured on the show, Danielle said one fight scene in Amazon High managed to injure her and she injured someone else. The fight scene was with Karl Urban as Kor, some kind of baddie dude, and they decided to put their all into the fight. Giving their all resulted in Danielle taking a head-butt that gave her a black eye, and Karl ending up with a bloody nose. I hope the director took them aside and asked them to give a little less than their all next time!

Danielle played down her part on the Xena shows and her work with Ephiny - "I'm crap on these programs!" Some of the questioners called her on it, including one boy who looked to be about ten years old. Danielle then proclaimed that she was going to stay in Cherry Hill forever.

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