War Stories
He may present a macho exterior on the screen, but Kate Barker discovers there’s a softer side to Kevin Smith, a.k.a. the God of War Ares. On the set of his final ever Xena episode, Soul Possession, the actor gets all but teary-eyed about the end of an era for him and his popular alter ego…
Official Xena Magazine: Issue 21
In the words of the late John Lennon, ‘Merry Christmas, war is over…’, and uncharacteristically of his Xena alter ego, Ares, Kevin Smith is just a little emotional.
Smith is taking time off to talk to Xena Magazine on the set of his final ever episode of Xena, Soul Possession. And while many of the cast and the entire crew still have three episodes to shoot at the time of this conversation, Smith’s stint in the Xenaverse is at an end, and he’s rather choked at the prospect.
“What got me,” Smith recalls of a particularly sad incident during filming the previous day, “was when I took off my Ares costume for the last time. I hung it up and did this reverential thing: I sat and looked at it for a minute or two going, “Gee, man…’ It caught me unawares.
“I got to go through this a little bit before, because I was in the last episode of Hercules,” Smith remarks, referring to his appearance in Full Circle, although he recalls that filming that episode wasn’t as sad an occasion as this one. “It didn’t seem to have quite the same impact and there wasn’t that same sense of finality because I knew I was going to carry on to do Xena,” he explains. “But I absorbed some of Kevin [Sorbo] and Michael’s [Hurst] feelings. There’s that scene with the three of us on the beach which did catch me,” he adds in retrospect.
“With Xena, there were gaps in between the episodes I was in, and sometimes it would be a couple of months and I’d shoot a movie or something. But I knew the show was always there waiting for me. With Hercules, it was like the feeling you get when you move out of home for the first; when you go flat hunting. There was the cleaning out of my room, of all the posters on the walls, all the drawings I did… So it was that kind of feeling. But this - finishing Xena - is kind of weird.”
What’s also seemed weird to Smith is the celebrity status that has been bestowed on him as a result of what he sees as simply doing his job. “In the early days I looked at fan sites on the web, just out of curiosity,” he says. “When they set up the Kevin Smith Fan Club, that in itself was a trip, you know? In those days there were just a couple of sites and I didn’t know what sort of things people would put on there. I didn’t initially know the enormity of it because, being here in New Zealand, I really wasn’t exposed to its full impact. I’ve had this other life in the US and it’s separate from my life here - there’s a bit of that here but not to the same extent - but ever since I started going to the US to do conventions, I’ve realised the extent of the show’s popularity.”
Smith cites as an example the Armageddon Pulp Culture Expo in Auckland which he attended just weeks prior to this conversation. “I thought maybe three people would turn up to hear me speak at the convention,” he says, “and I was really surprised at the size of the turnout. It was really nice.
“Now when I go online, there are just pages and pages of sites, although I think it would be said if I just sat there trawling through them all going, ‘What have they got… Ooh! That’s a good picture!’ Sometimes I’ll have a look because I’m interested in people’s feedback to episodes, or I might go and read a review to see what people think. Quite often, if we don’t see the final episode cut together, we don’t get an idea of the whole shape of the thing. In some things you can be too close to it to judge. Sometimes I’ve thought, ‘I wonder if this is going to work,’ and it’s been received favourably. But there have also been episodes where I’ve thought, ‘This is a killer show. It’s going to rock!’, and it hasn’t gone down quite as well. It always amazes me how wrong I can get it!”
It certainly helps when you enjoy your work, and Smith isn’t the only Xena actor who feels like that. “Lucy was telling me the other day that someone asked her how she felt about her success and sudden fame, and she said, ‘Well, this is just a result of turning up to work every day and working hard,’ and that’s really the basis of it. I mean, I come to work every day like everyone else does and I do the best I can. I was going to say I have a pretty good work ethic, but I don’t normally! But I do work hard at something that I enjoy, so the enthusiasm of audiences seems a little out of proportion in that respect. I do realise that anything that has an effect on people will make them want to respond in some way. It’s like sonar; it shoots out, bounces off something or somebody and comes back… and that’s good.”
So does that mean Smith has got used to the fame? The answer seems to be yes, although he’s clearly embarrassed by the amount of fan adoration he’s received for his work on the show. “As far as I’m concerned I’ve had a blast doing this,” he says, “and it is fun. But it’s also hard work. Like I say, even though I know the fandom is out there, I’m still surprised when I go over to the US and am greeted by such enthusiasm. I really haven’t done anything out of the ordinary.
“But I’m glad that it does give people pleasure, and if my going and speaking with fans in some way communicating with them, then that’s cool. I realise too that it’s important for people who do want to say, ‘We like you’, to have a venue for that, so that they can do it.”
Fans have certainly had many opportunities to express their admiration for the actor and the character… or rather, characters. In his time on Hercules and Xena, Smith has had the opportunity to play a few other supporting roles in the series. These include Hercules’ half-brother Iphicles, Bacchas, the god of hedonism, the modern-day Hercules writer Jerry Patrick Brown, and of course Ares’ counterpart from the mirror universe: the white satin-clothed God of Love.
Actually, and perhaps not surprisingly, Smith’s part as Brown in Yes, Virginia, There is a Hercules was one of his favourite ever roles. “I got to wear army fatigues and just be a total redneck,” he recalls. “There are rednecks all over - I’ve met these sorts of guys here in New Zealand, Australia, England and and the States - and there’s this single thread running through their view of the world. I love playing that.”
Speaking of wearing contemporary clothes, a large chunk of Smith’s last Xena episode just happens to be set in the present day (at a Xena convention, no less!), and this allowed a radical change in Ares’ threads. It’s not a change in mind-set though, because, as Smith says, “war is just as at home now as it was back then.” With that in mind, Ares may well be more at home in this particular century.
“In my head,” Smith explains, “Ares has always been a contemporary character. Given the way he and everyone else speaks, using modern vernacular - apart from obviously having a sword and having horses and things around - I’ve never really thought of him as being in any particular time frame. Perhaps, as I said, that’s just because of the timelessness of his job.
“Also,” he continues, “I’ve always felt really lucky with Ares; I’ve been able to cover all the genres with him. I mean, he’s a villain, so there’s that, and there are episodes where I’ve played him as a romantic lead opposite Lucy, and I’ve had times - like in Old Ares Had a Farm - where he’s been the comic relief. The beauty about Ares is that I’ve been able to do a little bit of everything, and I’ve been lucky that I’ve got to have a little piece of everyone’s world in this part. I mean - he’s supposed to be the bad guy! So it’s interesting that my last ever episode should be a contemporary comedy.
“As I said, I’ve always viewed Ares as a contemporary character, anyway,” Smith emphasises, looking down at his modern-day costume for Soul Possession, “so these swanky-danky Armani gigs are no different for me than being in the leathers. I quite enjoy this, because I think if Ares was in our world and he had to dress himself, this is what he’d wear.”
Steering the conversation away from the subject of costumes, Smith returns to reminiscing about his days on the show, something he’s happy to have an excuse to do. “The other day I looked up a Hercules/Xena episode guide on the net,” he says almost wistfully, “and it was a laborious task because there have been so many. I couldn’t remember the names of all the episodes I’d been in. I finally realised that between Hercules, Young Hercules and Xena, I’ve done over 80 episodes. That’s just such a huge chunk.
“The thing that used to really get me was that because of the nature of an actor’s job, things constantly finish. But for someone like me, who’s been in these series as long as I have, I still become emotionally involved. It’s like you become fully in love with the thing you’re doing.”
Of course, many of Smith’s Xena co-stars have also been involved in the show for quite a few years now, and Soul Possession marks the final episode for another very popular regular. “Ted [Raimi, Joxer] finishes in this episode too,” Smith reveals, “while Alex [Tydings, Aphrodite] finishes in the next one [Many Happy Returns]. Lucy’s seeing all her playmates dropping off, one by one! We did this scene all day - with just the two of us in the forest - and she said, ‘Man, that’s the last Xena/Ares scene; that’s the last scene we’ll ever do!’ Again, that’s kind of been my staple for six years; I’ve worked with these people for so long. And there are just silly little things I think about too, like the fact that my Ares boots are the same age as my son… There’s this whole collective pool of emotion that you can’t escape.”
“Everyone has changed slightly from the people they were when the show started,” Smith adds. “Being a part of something this regular is still kind of new for us in New Zealand, and I think that’s one of the things I’m going to miss the most. I’m going to miss the courageousness of the creative decisions that were made here, and hand in hand with that, I’m going to miss the freedom that I got with these shows. I hope it’s not the last time I get to work like this, but I am definitely going to miss this particular experience.”
Immediately following his last Xena episode, Smith will step into the two-handed erotic play The Blue Room with fellow Xena actor Danielle (Ephiny) Cormack. By the time this article is published, The Blue Room will have finished its season in Auckland, but right now, Smith says it’s exactly what he needs. “I’m rolling from Xena straight into the play, and if there was any gap - like even a week - before my finishing on Xena and starting The Blue Room, I think I’d be in such a funk.”
Still amid the change in pace, there’s no easy way for Smith to sum up the importance of Xena and Hercules to the last six years of his life. “It almost seems that to encapsulate it all into a single thought would be to diminish all the things it’s meant to me over the years,” he says earnestly, trying to look stoically Ares-like for a moment.
“Not to get too misty about it, some people have been quite cynical and have said, ‘Oh yeah, it’s all bodies and swords; it’s a bit of a laugh; you’re really just playing around, aren’t you?’ But Xena really does have a life of its own, and I owe a lot to it. Since I started this show, my family has grown and I’ve sort of moved to another phase of my life where I’m making important long-term decisions. This has all been a part of it; I can’t separate it at all.
“In this business, every time something finishes, something new steps in to take its place, so I’m executed by the opportunities which lie in front of me.
“But you can’t be around people this long without making strong emotional connections with those people and the entity itself,” Smith acknowledges, “and that’s why I’m always going to miss Xena.”