Just Walk Away, Renee
Just a few short months before shooting on Xena's sixth and final season wrapped, Kate Barker was fortunate enough to have the opportunity for a final exclusive, in-depth chat with Renee O’Connor before the Xena sets were dismantled. Here, Gabrielle's alter ego looks back over six successful years and ponders on a future away from the Known World…
Official Xena Magazine: Issue 19
Renee O'Connor is an accomplished actor, a talented director, an internationally renowned celebrity and, along with her character Gabrielle, an icon and role model for millions worldwide. That may sound like an incredible amount of positive exposure, and it certainly is; but that's because it's true...
As you read this article, the final episodes of Xena: Warrior Princess have now finished shooting, and Renee O'Connor and husband Steve Muir could be anywhere in the world. But at the time of this interview, during filming of the episode The Last of the Centaurs, with just four shows of Xena's sixth and final season left to shoot, the impact of an end to this phenomenal experience still hasn't really sunk in for O'Connor.
“It still doesn’t feel like it’s ending,” she admits. “It’s still hard to grasp.” That’s not surprising, especially for audiences for whom Xena has become a stable part of their lives. For over six years, the lives and loves of Xena and Gabrielle have slowly developed into an institution, not just for audiences being fed a constant diet of fantastic weekly episodes, but also for the show’s crew and regular cast members such as Renee O’Connor, whose chosen careers have made the universe of Xena a reality almost every day.
Speaking of institutions, O'Connor covers it neatly and with humour when asked whether or not she will go straight from Xena into other genres of acting or just lay low for a while and take a much-needed break. “I think I’m planning to rehabilitate myself!” she laughs.
Lucy Lawless has said very similar things with reference to her immediate plans, echoing O’Connor’s excitement al the prospect of being able to “let myself get used to the fact that I don’t have to be anywhere at a certain time, and can dictate my own hours and do what I want to do.”
O’Connor admits she’d like to take up some hobbies, and reveals that kickboxing is a particular past time she enjoys. “I love kickboxing,” she enthuses. “It’s self-defence and it’s great exercise, and I want to be able to know I can still do it. So I’ll keep it up for sure.”
It’s clear that O’Connor and Gabrielle share an interest in action sports. “When we first began the show, I had no idea how to use any weapon,” O’Connor remembers. “As she followed Xena, Gabrielle wanted to learn how to use weaponry, and I was quite curious as well. I would try and pick up various moves when I was on set, and I wanted to improve my fitness anyway, so that helped.”
A dexterity with weaponry isn’t the only thing O’Connor will take away from her experience of playing Gabrielle over the last six years. The character of Gabrielle has grown and developed a great deal since her days as a curious farm girl. O’Connor has grown as well, and it’s interesting to note the clear differences and parallels between the two women. “Because I'm older than Gabrielle, she goes through a lot of things in life just after I’ve experienced them,” O'Connor explains.
However, this particular example has been something of a double-edged sword. “When I first started the show,” she expands, “Gabrielle was going through adolescence. I had already been through that, so it was kind of frustrating for me, having to be patient with the mistakes she made and her growing pains.
“I can see it in different seasons,” O’Connor continues. “What I looked like, the way I was playing the character... I can remember how my personal life would affect the character. I suppose as my life has changed, I’ve fed that into Gabrielle. During most of the seasons up until the fourth, I felt I had to hold back and sort of let Gabrielle take over.”
Audiences have witnessed this change too, from the detailed exploration of Gabrielle’s personal growth through the events in each episode to the general development of the character within each of Xena's six seasons.
In the first season, Gabrielle is nothing more than that innocent farm girl with a taste for adventure and a headstrong curiosity that leads her into danger but ultimately back to Xena’s side. Season two sees a little more excitement for the bard: losing husband-to-be Perdicus at the hand of vengeful warrior Callisto; almost being turned into a vampiric bacchae; and learning to handle a weapon (albeit of the non-sharp variety). Her costume changes here too, another symbol of the character developing physical and mental abilities and becoming a more effective half of the team.
It’s the third season when things really start to heal up for Gabrielle - literally. Impregnated by the evil entity Dahak, Gabrielle gives birth to Hope, a baby girl who she refuses to believe is evil, and betrays Xena in an effort to prevent her from killing the baby. In the same season, Gabby is almost killed by the Warrior Princess, who becomes blinded by hatred for her friend’s child after Hope, now fully grown (and played by O'Connor) murders Xena's own son, Solan. Fortunately, and rather bizarrely, our heroes turn to the medium of music to forgive each other in Xena's first musical episode, The Bitter Suite.
Looking back, O'Connor regards this time as a significant turning point for Gabrielle. The character sheds blood and kills for the first time, and this horror is compounded by the birth of the monstrous Hope (and ultimately Hope’s son, The Destroyer). O’Connor admits that these events became instrumental in ridding the previously blood-innocent Gabrielle of some of her humour and “goofiness”. All this horror and mayhem reaches a climax when Gabrielle sacrifices herself in an attempt to destroy Hope, who she now sees as the evil she was forced to create.
O'Connor felt that the show’s fourth season was a little more relaxing for her as an actress, at least for a while, until she was required to embody the character of Gabrielle’s daughter, Hope, yet again. It can’t have been easy playing a hero everyone knows and loves at the same time as playing her evil offspring, physically identical but mentally her mother’s complete opposite.
“Actually, I found playing Hope very difficult,” O’Connor agrees, “because even though she was a different character, she always wanted to act like her mother. I was always limited playing Hope, who always looked and acted like Gabrielle. To me, that’s not as enjoyable as playing a whole new character where you can just create affectations that are unlike your own.”
Mentally, the role was a little easier; it was just a matter of playing out Hope's motivations. “Often, you don’t have a lot of time to prep these characters; you usually have about a day's notice,” O’Connor reveals. “So every time I played Hope, I tried to make her seem more comfortable in her skin. I think every time I played her, she became more specific and a stronger character in my mind.” Of course, let’s not forget the Elmer’s glue that O'Connor was covered in as she played Hope rising from her cocoon!
Season Four has recently started airing on New Zealand’s TV4, and O'Connor admits that “watching some of the episodes certainly brought back memories,” memories which confirm her observations of these changes in her character. “The episodes are just far enough away that I can’t remember the process of filming, but I can remember that I enjoyed making one particular episode over another. Or I can maybe remember some bizarre thing that happened in a certain scene. Plus I remember that each episode was a little gem!”
Of course, season four ends with the rather horrific image of our heroes being crucified in Rome, but the actor associates the change from season four to season five of Xena with a rather more down-to-earth event. “They cut my hair,” she recalls, laughing. “And suddenly in season five I felt I could just let loose a bit more and again feed more of myself into Gabrielle.”
The debut episode of season five, Fallen Angel, is one of the most popular and ambitious Xena episodes to date. O’Connor, Lucy Lawless and Hudson Leick get to play angels and demons in an episode in which almost all of the settings are computer-generated. The episode is a great start to an incredible season, in which Gabrielle continues to grow and develop the confidence, physical skill and love to both believe in herself and become a devoted ally to the Warrior Princess, even protecting Xena and her unborn child when needed.
“That was another big turning point,” O'Connor says of this development. “When Xena became pregnant, Gabrielle felt she had to protect her and the baby. That was another definite transition for the character.” It seemed quite a challenge to the actor and the character, who had to continue to follow the prophet Eli's Way of Love while exercising her new philosophy to fight and protect Xena and baby Eve. It is this turning point which O’Connor refers to: Gabrielle’s unwavering loyalty and bond to the people she loves.
In the end, despite being cursed with temporary insanity by the Fates and driven to try and kill Xena’s daughter Eve during their climactic battle with the remaining Greek gods, Gabrielle and Eve are saved - by an uncharacteristically selfless Ares - and by the beginning of season six, that bond between Gabrielle and her loved ones, specifically Xena, has only been strengthened.
So we come to the sixth and final season of Xena, in which Gabrielle is immediately back in peril: she’s dragged down into a watery pit to hell in The Haunting of Amphipolis; buried up to her neck in sand for killing an innocent man in Legacy; and covered in mud and about to be basted in The Abyss. Yet her inner strength and loyalty is now stronger than it has ever been, and the Warrior Princess recognises this growth in her friend.
The love between the two women takes centre stage in the early part of the year, and is brought to a head in Return of the Valkyrie, in which we discover that only a kiss from Gabrielle’s soulmate can bring her out of her reverie - that soulmate is Xena.
Fans can count a number of high points for the character of Gabrielle and her relationship with Xena over the show’s six seasons, so what moments stand out for O’Connor? After all, like the rest of the Xena cast and crew, the show has been a significant part of O’Connor’s life for the last six years. Are the events that are most memorable to viewers the same events which the cast and crew count as highlights of their time on the show?
Some particular fan favourites, for example, have been the musical episodes of Xena. How much did O’Connor enjoy working on season three and season five's musicals, The Bitter Suite and Lyre, Lyre, Hearts on Fire, respectively? “I felt that The Bitter Suite was like an extension of an episode,” O’Connor says simply, “it was just highly stylised. Lyre, Lyre, on the other hand, more resembled a rock concert.
“I did enjoy both,” she admits, but by the look on her face, it’s obvious that the actress enjoyed Lyre, Lyre the most. “Lyre, Lyre was a stand-alone version of a comic episode,” she remarks. “Even though they dubbed my singing voice, I love to sing and dance, so I did like that. I'm such a ham on stage!”
Speaking of hamming it up, if O’Connor had had the opportunity to play any character in the Xena universe other than Gabrielle, who would she have picked? It’s a question the actress has to think about for a while, but she eventually settles on a reply. “I think Callisto would have been fun,” she says slyly. “That would have been something completely opposite to Gabrielle!”
So what, in her opinion, have been the best and worst episodes of the show? The first answer is easy: “The best episodes were the comedies,” she enthuses. “And any times when I was warm and dry!”
And what about the less enjoyable shows? “The worst episode would probably be The Abyss - the cannibal-cooks-Gabrielle episode!” she laughs. If readers haven’t seen this episode yet, be warned: it may put you off your food. “I was covered in some sort of cold mud - different colours so that it looked attractive on camera! - with my arms and legs tied together, and I had this pole in my mouth. It was horrible. It goes against every human instinct imaginable.”
So how long did O’Connor have to endure this predicament? “Too long,” she says with mock regret. “But then a minute was too long! So that would have to be the absolute worst episode of the series for me so far, from the point of view of what I had to go through.”
But O’Connor admits that the positive aspects of working on Xena have always outweighed the negative ones, something which she attributes in part to the wonderful camaraderie between all those involved. “I believe that we've had such an ensemble group,” O’Connor says of the Xena family she’s been a part of for so long. “Kevin Smith; Ted Raimi; Alex Tydings; Adrienne Wilkinson... we’ve been so fortunate to have had people with such good values and talent. Obviously Xena is the title character, but it’s such a wonderful group. It feels like a theatre troupe; everyone's become a part of the family.”
Of course, this troupe is about to be disbanded, and one can’t help but wonder how O’Connor feels about this imminent break-up. “What runs through my head every now and then is that some of the people that we’ve had on these episodes are people I may never work with again,” she says with more than a touch of regret. “There’s the fact that we’re working with Garth Maxwell [director of The Last of the Centaurs and other Xena episodes], for instance, who I adore. Then there are people like Ted [Raimi], who’s coming down for another episode, and Mark Beesley, another director who’s coming back soon.
“I'll miss things like talking with Rob [Tapert] about what’s up and coming, because he always keeps me in the loop,” she continues. “I’ll tremendously miss the crew members I’ve been working with, and their personalities. Of course, I’ll miss working with Lucy enormously. You start to think, ‘Oh no, it’ll never be like it is now.’ I’d love to work with them again in the future, but, you know, there’s no guarantee.”
However, O'Connor fully intends to keep in touch with the people she has become such firm friends with over the last six years. “Oh yes - I hope so!” she exclaims. “It’s nice that a lot of them live in Los Angeles, so I can catch up with them there when I visit.” The visit O’Connor is referring to is her highly-anticipated attendance at Creation’s May Xena convention in Los Angeles, which the actress believes will signify “the wrap-up of the show.”
Beyond that, O’Connor doesn’t know what the future holds. She knows that the next few months will give her a lot to think about, and her current plans post-Xena are to work on something a little less action-packed. “I definitely want to continue acting,” she affirms, “it’s just a matter of what the next project will be. I would love to play in a different genre, something that's more dialogue-driven, to challenge myself. But it’ll be hard to top the quality of this character.”
It’ll be hard to top the impression that Gabrielle and Xena - and their real-life counterparts - have left on fans, too. The impact of Xena has been fell around the world, tapping into very different markets, and O’Connor is keen to acknowledge the support and contributions that Xena audiences have made to the popularity and success of the show and its production company.
For starters, there’s one particular group of fans she is keen to thank, who pledged their allegiance to the show from the very start. “We wouldn’t have had such an interesting focus of attention if it weren’t for our lesbian followers,” she says. “They latched onto and described the characters to the media as being something that was truly unique; strong women who demanded respect.”
Of course, that particular group also raised speculation as to the true nature of Xena and Gabrielle’s relationship, and this is something which has taken centre stage in a number of recent episodes. As many people associated with the show - including O'Connor and Lawless - have said, the on-screen relationship is certainly depicted as one of loyalty, devotion and love, whatever definition fans want to give that love. However, the actress is keen to acknowledge that had it not been for that initial speculation, the show may not have become as successful as it is today. “That was probably the start of our success,” O'Connor admits. “If it hadn’t worked for them to start with, I think it might have taken Xena longer to become this popular.”
Popularity means support, too, and this is certainly true of people's generosity. “I think people have been wonderful in their charitable causes,” O’Connor says. “People have raised quite large sums of money for charities when they’ve acted in a unified manner, and they’ve helped many other people around the world. To me, that’s the most amazing effect of the show’s success - how it’s helped people. It's been wonderful, and thank you.”
As much as she is happy to praise audiences everywhere for their support, however, O’Connor regrets that she is unable to reveal to fans the ultimate fate of Xena and Gabrielle. “I still don’t know how the final shows will resolve the characters and their relationship," she says, tightlipped.
Nevertheless, O’Connor does have a clear view as to how she’d like Xena and Gabrielle to exit the show. “I’d like to see that the characters are going to grow old together, that they’re both comfortable with where they are in the world, and that they’re extremely happy.”
That sounds like the best ending we could all hope for. So what about the end for O’Connor herself? What would the actress like to do right at the very end of the show? It’s a plain answer, the kind that Gabrielle would approve of.
With a smile, O’Connor says, “Go to the wrap party!”