Farewell to Xena
At the end of June, Lucy Lawless, Renee O'Connor, Rob Tapert and R.J. Stewart gathered at Beverly Hills' Museum of Television and Radio in Los Angeles to watch A Friend in Need and give an exclusive talk on the show's final episode. Xena Magazine reporter Abbie Bernstein was there to witness the historic occasion.
Official Xena Magazine: Issue 23
The exclusive screening of A Friend in Need at the Museum of Television and Radio on 19 June 2001 was attended by several hundred fans and media personnel, who turned up to view the episode before it officially aired on television.
Following the screening, the Xena panel took the stage to answer questions; series stars Lucy Lawless and Renee O'Connor were joined by Lawless' husband and Xena's Executive Producer Rob Tapert, and Tapert's fellow Executive Producer R.J. Stewart.
Foremost in everyone's minds was the dramatic series climax, and Stewart was eager to discuss the producers' reasons for opting for such a shocking ending. “No tough decisions there,” he quipped, before becoming serious. “The reason we did that is when this series began, it was unique. Xena was introduced on Hercules as a villain with a very high body count behind her, and the first thing I pitched to Rob was the burying of the weapons, but [a heroine who doesn't fight] is not a series. [Xena] finds her mission, which is to redeem herself. We've always withheld that [ability to] forgive herself for what she's done. She's had to pay a great price - she was a war criminal, as painted on Hercules.
“So flash forward to six years later. We wanted to do a Japanese ghost story, and if we do, hell, Xena is gonna be the ghost! We thought, ‘How are we gonna bring her back to life again for the 78th time? Wait a minute - ultimate redemption may be here if she's not brought back to life!’
“I weighed what it was gonna do with the fans and what it was gonna do with the series,” Tapert continues. However, the executive producer doesn't feel that Xena is truly and sincerely dead.
“In our universe, if there's a way to bring Xena back, there's no better task for Hercules and Ares and all our other heroes.”
Xena didn't survive in any of the versions of the script for A Friend in Need. “There was a version where Gabrielle dies with her,” Tapert reveals. “We were pretty - ” He makes a straight-ahead gesture, indicating decisiveness.
“You waffled about it many times,” Lucy Lawless disagrees.
“I did waffle,” Tapert admits.
“‘Oh, can we do this?’” Lawless quotes. “‘I think people are gonna hate it.’”
Lawless certainly doesn't hate the finale, however. “It was the strongest choice dramatically. This show never took the easy way out,” she point out. “I don't know why people expect us to…”
“... walk off into the sunset,” O'Connor supplies.
“Or just to cruise,” Lawless continues. “I don't know why people want a neat, pat, set ending. It's not the way we started the show; it's not the way we did it on a day-to-day basis.”
While she enjoyed Xena’s dramatic conclusion, Lawless admits that she always preferred the lighter episodes of the show. “I always liked the comedy better,” she remarks, “because we would just laugh all day long. We would just goof around, clowning with our friends.”
“Comedy was always much more entertaining for us,” O'Connor agrees.
Stewart implies that the choice to end Xena was not ultimately his or Tapert's. “We made the decision,” he remarks.
Tapert adds that even if he didn't make the decision, he didn't disagree with it either. “I think it was time to end the show. It had been 134 episodes - it had been incredibly demanding on everyone involved. There's a Kiwi expression, 'spitting the dummy,' which means,” Tapert mimes a fussy baby, “He won't take that pacifier anymore. It would’ve been really hard on [the actors]; it would’ve been really hard on us to maintain quality. So it was time for the show to end.”
A question as to whether Tapert and Stewart had any unproduced Xena episode plots they wished they’d made prompts the tantalizing suggestion that our heroine is only as dead as she appears at any given time. “There were a bunch of stories I would have liked to tell,” Tapert says, “and some that I’m still gonna find a way to tell one way or the other... I know she’s dead - she’s been dead [before],” he notes with a laugh. “Renee was dead at the end of third season.”
“She’s not dead, she’s just old!” Lawless interjects jokingly.
“But we worked very hard this season,” Tapert continues. “We were chasing a musical - it would’ve killed Lucy and Renee, because they [would have] played four roles, every single scene, in different outfits, and we worked really, really hard, [but] the rights [to the music] just proved too hard to get.”
Looking back on the development of the characters over six seasons, the first thing that springs to mind for O’Connor is how much Xena changed. “To begin with, Xena would have nothing to do with the sympathetic side of the people she was helping, and then as she was with Gabrielle more and more…”
“... you changed her,” Lawless interjects with a laugh.
“She softened up,” O’Connor agrees. “I [had] the reaction the audience would have to Xena, of how do you live with the Warrior Princess? Obviously that affects people like Gabrielle - she became more and more pragmatic.”
“For those of us on the writing staff, Gabrielle was a great character,” Rob Tapert adds, “because Xena couldn’t change. She could soften a little, but she’s still Xena. It was Gabrielle who was allowed to pose all the questions and moral choices, travelling with this Warrior Princess where a lot of people get killed and hurt. Renee bringing that to life not only allowed us comic relief, but mainly an avenue to [depict] growth in the character.”
Turning to the creative process involved in series television, Stewart reveals that he and Tapert would have long discussions in preparation for each new series of Xena. “Rob and I would talk about the season and I’d want to write every episode, and Rob would say, ‘You can’t write every' episode!’” he laughs. “Then we’d assign it [to other writers].
“At the beginning of season four we knew exactly how we wanted to end it,” Stewart continues. “Other times, it was, ‘What are we gonna do?’ And it doesn't always work that the [episode] you planned out way ahead is the one that’s the great one - sometimes it’s the one that’s thrown together.” Stewart credits the hard-working staff for making it possible to have enormous changes at the last minute. “Eric Grundeman did a great job for four years producing the show.”
The cast and crew all have different favourite episodes or moments of Xena. “I always liked Doctor in the House,” Lawless opines, “where Gabrielle comes back to life. Maybe it’s for a personal reason - it was the first time I had given it all up on screen - you have to let go of all control; you can’t think about how you appear. You have to be really real and really raw, and I think that was my first time I was able to do that as an actress.”
“I always loved the musicals,” O’Connor reveals. “Especially because we would usually work with Ted Raimi. The three of us had such a ball!”
Lawless momentarily takes on the role of interviewer with her colleague: “Your favourite moment?”
“I just keep remembering the Cinderella episode,” O’Connor replies, referring to If the Shoe Fits. “We did all these different versions of Cinderella. Ted and I had a dance number, and he broke into disco!”
Tapert has trouble choosing. “I like comedy moments, but there was the moment [in Sacrifice] with Gabrielle falling with Hope down the shaft. It was this big, frozen moment of her about to fall, and I’ve always loved that moment.” He also cites something that’s not from Xena at all: “The way Jose Perez shot Xena on a hilltop for one of the Hercules episodes - it was such a powerful introduction to the character. I thought, ‘I know how to make a series with that’.”
Stewart has fond memories of seeing something he’d written on the page come to life on screen: “My favourite moment was in the pilot, in the teaser, when [Xena] spins around the poles and kicks everyone in their faces.”
So what about their memories of the most difficult episodes and scenes? “I found [the finale] the hardest of all,” Lawless says. “Because we were mentally, emotionally, so tired already, and I think because we knew there was a break coming, your body starts to go into a decline - I can see myself trying really hard, but I just want to curl into a ball and go to sleep for months. I can see, in this episode, me just grinding away, trying to get the job done.”
O’Connor says her view is similar to that of Lawless, but with a different focus. “It's more the environmental elements that we would be faced with. In the winter, with rain machines or getting in the ocean, when we were suffering from hypothermia - to go beyond that and still keep the job working for you, making sure every moment is true, that was a huge challenge.
“One episode that was probably the most challenging was The Abyss. There was just every element that I would have to face - it was like boot camp. But it was wonderful, because I learned more about myself than I ever thought I possibly would on a television show.”
Tapert feels that each episode had its own difficulties, but most were addressed successfully. “They were all challenges. I’m trying to pick what didn't work for me,” he says thoughtfully. “Sometimes we did clip shows I didn’t like, but that was about it.”
Stewart cites a real-life calamity as providing the toughest Xena obstacle. “The hardest part for me was when Lucy fell off the horse and hurt herself,” he says. “It was emotionally hard because my friend was in hospital, and then we had to redo everything — it turned out great, but that was very challenging.”
In comparison, dreaming up the show’s plentiful special effects was a breeze. “It’s easy to write that shit,” Stewart laughs. However, Tapert’s insistence on trying to perfect certain effects meant that, in US syndication, one version of an effect might be in an episode playing Tuesday through Thursday in one part of the country, while an improved effect might be inserted into the Friday-Saturday run of the same episode. “Rob was always [saying], “We can make it better’!”
If and when there will ever be more Xena is a question no one can definitively answer. “The fate of Xena after this is out of our hands,” Tapert explains. “I think there’s some seven-year-old out there who’s gonna play Xena someday. Lucy and Renee will be two old travelling bards…”
“... in the background,” O'Connor adds.
Lawless adopts a quivering voice: “They should’ve asked me to play that character!”
So what about life after Xena? “We’re gonna settle down and have babies,” Lawless says playfully.
“You’re well ahead of me,” O’Connor observes.
Joking or not, Lawless isn’t giving up acting. “You haven't seen the last of us,” she promises.
“It’s nice to have a life, though,” O’Connor admits. “We devoted everything to the show, and now it’s nice to relax and see your family. I’d like to do plays and continue the directing field, so there’s plenty of opportunities out there - you just have to educate yourself.”
“I’m really proud of the way we held it together,” Lawless comments. “I don’t think people can understand, nor should they, that making a show like this is killingly difficult and that [in spite of the stress] we never treated one another badly. There was a great ethos on the show, and we're all friends.”
Lawless and O’Connor are such good friends, in fact, that they are already thinking about what they can work together on in future. “Comedy, I think,” Lawless specifies. “It's almost like we grew up together - your late 20s is a period of tremendous growth, and Renee and I went through it side by side, and there’s a lot unspoken between us. We don’t have to explain certain things to each other. So I think we'd do great in a comedy.”
In conclusion, the cast and creators are keen to express gratitude to Xena's many fans. “One of the great fringe benefits of the show that I never could have foreseen at the beginning,” Tapert says, “was it brought a group of people together who liked the show, who watched the show, who were truly generous with each other and in helping people. The show made them - and I can’t say I had anything to do with it - want to do things for other people.”
“The fan response has been truly amazing,” Lawless agrees. “They galvanize together and raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for different charities - a quarter of a million US dollars to the National Child Abuse Hotline, and [they] raised a lot of money for Starship Hospital in New Zealand, which is the children’s hospital we’re affiliated with. They stick together and help one another out with health concerns.
“That’s the most amazing thing - that people remote [from the actual production] can be touched.”