Girls Just Wanna Have Fun (Xena) - Production

Production

"Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" is a comical Halloween episode which was filmed in Auckland, New Zealand. After shooting for two days, director T.J. Scott went to producer Robert Tapert and asked permission to alter the episode's artistic style to stylised rock video horror. Scott said, "I got the crew together and said, 'Okay guys, here we go. This is going to be a lot more vampy and fun,' and cranked up the ghetto blaster with rock music and away we went." Because of the subject, Scott was able to increase the episode's level of sexual content. Scott said, "we did two takes that were on the edge of tasteful vampire sexuality, and we did a third take where Lucy really let loose. Of course, we all died laughing and said, 'Okay, that one is never going to make it to the screen'; we definitely pushed it too far!" Ultimately, Scott felt that "if you pull it too far out of context and try to take it seriously, it's a bit too rock video at times."

In one scene, Orpheus's head is attached to a scarecrow body. According to Matthew Chamberlain, the actor who portrayed Orpheus, he was told to jump on a horse while wearing the scarecrow costume. Chamberlain said he "just gave the horse a quick pat before hopping on" but found himself "getting tugged the other way as the horse was munching away on the straw poking out of the end of my sleeve!" An animatronic version of Chamberlain's head which operated by remote control was used in some scenes. Some of the actors had to only pretend to look at the animatronic head during their scenes, because if they looked at it while it responded, they would laugh and break character.