Claire Stansfield (Alti)

(some spoilers)

Claire now has a trademark opening to her convention appearances, like Hudson's "Well, here I am.". Claire opened both of her appearances this weekend by hunching over and rasping "Hi! I'm Alti!" before straightening back up to her young, gorgeous, tall self and explaining in a perfectly normal voice "And I talk nothing like that. How are you all?"

Claire is SO much fun at conventions. She obviously loves the excited reactions she gets from the crowd and still seems amazed and grateful every time, even though she's been to a few of these things now. She started on Saturday by telling us that she's gotten a lot of letters and support from people around New Jersey, so she labelled us HER people. Nobody seemed to have a problem with that, even if most of us don't hail from Jersey.

There was one new limitation on her stage enthusiasm: Creation had asked her not swear quite like the sailor she usually does. She had problems following this directive: a few four (and three, and five)-letter words slipped out anyway, although she steadfastly, with great difficulty, avoided the F-word, which provided a wealth of jokes for the weekend. During one of her presentations when the video system broke, Sharon declared the A/V "all Claire-d up." During the breakfast, Claire released a little pent-up frustration at our table, when we told her we had no language problems, by bouncing up and down and quietly chanting her new fine, favorite word five or six times.

Claire offered to answer all her most common questions in five minutes, and ripped through the whole story about reading the part of Cyane, her horror when she found out she was being considered for Alti ("I'm evil, I'm old, my career is over, goddammit!"), and her work on Xena since then.

Claire just got back from New Zealand three weeks ago, to film the episode "Dem Bones, Dem Bones." Alti gets a makeover in this episode: her resurrection includes a spiffy new tight leather outfit.

Originally in Dem Bones, Alti was going to show up naked, and fight 20 amazons without a stitch of clothing on. But in the middle of winter, a nude scene was NOT going to work, so by the time Claire showed up in New Zealand, the plan was changed: Alti would be clothed, but in something new. (Claire was a bit petulent about this.) Thus launched a hysterical story about Claire's battle with the new costume designer - on Saturday, Claire couldn't remember the designer's name, just that it was something cutesy like "Bumpy". The second day, she had remembered (or was reminded) that her name was "Beadie," which got no better treatment from her sarcastic tone of voice.

Beadie/Bumpy's original plan for a sexier, svelter Alti was to use the Sin Trade costume... with a belt. And a push-up bra with padding, which Claire was assured everyone on the show uses, but she responded with "Thanks, I've got my own." She didn't like the belted outfit one bit: "Alti doesn't care about cleavage! Alti doesn't decide 'I'll just wear a belt today'! 'Bumpy,' girl, this just isn't working for me." By this time, half the audience was on the floor laughing.

Claire got her way by doing an end run: she suggested that Beadie/Bumpy take a couple polaroids of the new look, and Claire took those to the script reading, dropping them in front of Lucy and the producer. Lucy went nuts, and at Claire's suggestion that she get something in leather like Emma Peel, Eric Grundemann's eyes lit up like candles. "So they scurried off to Bumpy," Claire proudly reported, and her new, spiffy outfit was born.

Alti just keeps getting nastier: according to Claire, she does something in Dem Bones that is "so wrong" that she had problems trying to separate herself from the character enough to do it. "But it's great." Major teaser: Claire said that had Lucy's stomach been a fake one, she wouldn't have had as many problems as she did, but as it was she and Lucy had to stay tight to keep the event in the show from bothering them personally. Somewhere related to this horrid thing is something that ranks "better than a kiss," and Alti says something so leading that subtext fans are going to go nuts.

One of Claire's favorite things (among many) about working on XWP is that she made an "amazing new friend" in Lucy. The two are fast friends now; they golf together (Claire said she felt like she was betraying her golfing partner when she went golfing without Lucy), they talk on the phone (Claire's boyfriend goes nuts whenever it's Lucy on the phone), and they get along like gangbusters. Shall we talk subtext, too? Claire mentioned many times how disappointed Lucy was that Alti wasn't going to be naked in Dem Bones, and when asked about whether Alti would ever kiss Xena, Claire very deliberately misspoke with a big grin "Oh, I would love to kiss Lucy... I mean, Xena."

Claire, by the way, knew Lucy was pregnant through four conventions before the news was made public. Claire gives some great teasers and tidbits about upcoming episodes, but the woman can keep a secret!

One of Claire's other favorite people is Kevin Smith - she's succumbed to the Ares charm big time. In Orlando, she and Kevin and Danielle Cormack had a few drinks - and a few more, and a few more - together after the convention. "Those Kiwis like to drink!" she proclaimed. She and Danielle "bonded over 25 cocktails", and Danielle stayed with Claire as she visited Hollywood agents and studios to try to break into show biz on this side of the world. Kevin makes her swoon every time she talks about him.

When asked what other Xena character she would play if she could, she said that she's drawn to Gabrielle, although that may just be because of the contrast to her own character (and physique) and Renee's work. She said Renee is awesome to work with, that she does everything on the show wholeheartedly. During the fight scene in Between the Lines, Renee was urging Claire to "Pull on my hair! Choke me!", which Claire responded to with "Weeelllll, OK."

While she was shooting Dem Bones, Claire saw some of the dailies (production film) from the season opener, Fallen Angel, that Hudson Leick (Callisto) is in, and said that we'll fall in love with the character all over again, Hudson is so astounding. But she also says that Callisto ends up with a little change of heart that would be the weakness that Alti would move in on.

Claire would enjoy coming back as Alti again, although she's worried that Alti's painted into a corner and doesn't have much of anywhere to go from here that would be new. She wouldn't want an evil sidekick ("No, I think she can handle it on her own."), but she liked the idea of having a good twin. She suggested a name like "Svelti", making her a fluffy airhead, and riffed for a minute on Svelti and Alti driving each other nuts. I think the producers should pay attention - this woman could have gone on for an hour with that idea, and it was hilarious.

Claire has her own website - www.clairestansfield.com - that she helps to keep updated, and she mentioned a couple of times that she reads all the email that comes in to the site. She loves the Internet and has visited "all the Xena sites - so I know what you guys have been up to." Some of her favorite sites include Whoosh, one of the Pacific sites (I missed the name, sorry!), and Tom's site, although she wants to talk to Tom about getting more Alti on his site. (ha!) She will soon be selling a poster of herself from the web site that will benefit a pediatric AIDS charity; Claire said she was inspired by the stories about JFK Jr. and how much he had done for charity with his fame.

Claire closed both of her sessions with heartfelt gratitude to the fans and show: she said both have changed her life and she loves us all for it. She said doing conventions has been one of the scariest things she's done in her life - she still hyperventilates before stepping on to the stage - but that she loves it and is now a "con artist."

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