When Fates Collide
written by Katherine Fugate
The Chakram Newsletter: Issue 26
SD: You knew the show before you were hired to write this script?
Katherine: Yes. I’m a feature film writer and that means that often you write a script and the movie doesn’t come out for three years. Feature writers get paid the bulk of their money on the day of principal photography. If you have a film that isn’t going to start shooting for years, it can strap you. The Writers Guild was about to go on strike which would put everything on hold. Because of that, television production companies were stockpiling scripts as a safeguard against not having material to film. So a lot of agents were telling their clients to try and get a TV show. I was asked what TV shows I could write for. What shows did I feel confident I could walk in, know the characters, and write for the show. I said the only two shows I could do would be The X-Files and Xena. They were the only shows I had ideas for from just watching them. When a writer watches a show, they sometimes think, “Oh, this is what should happen.”
I realized Xena is something I would feel more competent writing because I’m very good at melodrama - I like big epic stories. I told my agent I’d like to write for Xena. Then it was a big odyssy [sic] to get the job because there's a natural suspicion for writers switching genres - going from features to TV. The scripts have different structures, a different style of writing. You have to worry about commercial breaks. A lot of times TV companies feel feature writers can't do it. They won't know how to tell the story under these circumstances. And vice versa. Both sides are leery of the other.
We called Renaissance and they didn’t even want to talk to me. (laughs) And I had no sample of a TV script to show them to prove I could do it. I took it upon myself to write a Xena episode on my own. Renee and I laugh and call it the “lost episode.” (laughs) I wrote it and sent to them and said, “This isn't the story I want to do, but I wanted to show you I can do one.” That got the attention of Patrick Moran, the president of Renaissance, who called me in and said he was very impressed I took the time to write a script. Because of that effort on my part, he read my feature work and really responded to my writing. He asked me to meet Rob (Tapert) and R.J. (Stewart).
R.J. told me a very funny thing. He said, “You got in the offices because you knew to spell Xena with an “x.” (laughs) Point one for me! He said a lot of writers come in wanting the job and they write it with a “z.”
I would also like to say that, in features, no one is interested in the writer and how thankful I am for the fan response to this episode and how so many of them took the time to write and tell me they enjoyed it. It was very surprising and very gratifying.
SD: What was the genesis of this episode? What elements did they give you? What elements did you want to put in?
Katherine: They asked me to come into the first meeting with three possible story ideas. I wanted to do an alternate world time period and I wanted the main theme to be Xena’s redemption. I told them that one thing I’d noticed in the show was that she hasn't forgiven herself at all for the period of her life when she was bad. I said it was important to me that we all realize that every step we take in life means something because it gets us where we are. Had Xena not had that period in her life, she wouldn't be who she is now and you have to weigh that fairly to yourself. Who knows who she would have been had she not experienced the “bad Xena,” as the fans call her.
I said what I'd like to do is show an alternate world to both Xena and Gabrielle. Because I'm a writer, Gabrielle is the character I identify more with. There’s an earnestness to her, the character as well as Renee, that I respond to and find in myself. Gabrielle's dream was to be a playwright. I wondered what would have happened had she pursued that and never met Xena. Although it's not ever shown in the series, was there any part of Gabrielle that regretted not fulfilling what she thought was her professional destiny?
So my idea for a story was for both Xena and Gabrielle to get what they thought they wanted and for them to see that what they wished for didn't give them the love of their life. And yet I wanted to show that they would have still met.
Rob really liked my idea. Once we had that set up, the question was who would be the villain? Who was going to bring Xena back to this alternate world? Rob wanted to have Joxer be a ghost. He’d had this idea of a Topper character played by Joxer. He wanted to layer that into my story. I said I can’t do that because my idea for the tone of the episode was for it to be very melodramatic and I think any kind of Joxer/ghost would throw that off.
I told Rob I'd like to use Alti (Claire Stansfield) because it’s been established in the series that she is the link between other worlds. A lot of people have asked me why I didn’t use Callisto. I said if you look at the series, Callisto without evil young Xena wouldn’t have existed. Her village wouldn't have burned, her family killed. It would have been nice to bring familiar characters into the story so you could see what their paths would have been, but I couldn’t do that with everybody.
SD: Do you think Alti is a real person with an evil spirit or do you think she’s not human?
Katherine: I think she’s a real person. I think Alti’s goal in every world, including in “Fates,” is power. In the real world, she didn’t get what she wanted. But in “Fates,” she went straight to the source of power in ancient Rome - Caesar. Rome ruled everything at that time, it was the epicenter of power on the planet.
SD: Do you think Caesar would have been interested in Alti the same way Xena was?
Katherine: Yes, it’s likemindedness. They were both seeking power. And I think Alti does have a supernatural talent in every incarnation and Caesar can use that. That would certainly be attractive to him.
SD: Claire said you’d asked her for some input in regards to the character.
Katherine: I said to Claire, “You scare the hell out of me.” (laughs) That character was far scarier to me than any of the other villains. I asked her, “What do you think would have happened if Alti had had a different path?” She said, “Alti was so dark and ugly. I wondered what would it be like if I’d used my beauty?” Because Claire was a supermodel in real life. So I wanted to find another outlet for Alti that was still true to her evilness, but different.
SD: Power from allure rather than fear?
Katherine: Right. Also, the fear of “I know things no one can.” The soothsayer was the most powerful person in a village. They were taken very seriously. Maya, a soothsayer in Pompeii, predicted something was going to happen. Because of her warning, 5,000 people packed up and left and their lives were saved. The Alti in “Fates” mixed that knowledge with beauty and a hunger for power and went straight to the top. Her future was limitless. The only thing in her way was Xena. Which was the same thing in the real world. (laughs)
SD: So Xena and Caesar were already together and Alti is a recent arrival?
Katherine: Yes. She’s worked her way into his graces, gotten him to trust her and her predictions and now it was time to get rid of the missus. (laughs)
SD: Was Xena afraid of Alti?
Katherine: Fear is probably not the right word. I think Xena had stopped sleeping with her husband which we saw from the scene where she turned him down. That relationship wasn’t about passion, it was about power. In one of Alti’s memory flashes, she knows Alti is sleeping with her husband. Xena’s willing to tolerate that. She doesn’t fear for her life. It’s just a power struggle over who’s going to have the most influence over Caesar.
SD: When Alti gave Xena those visions, did Xena assume they were from the past? What part of her life did she think they were from?
Katherine: There are different kinds of visions in the episode. At first the visions are from the “Fates” time. The others aren't. And that’s when Alti knows something’s wrong, too. That’s when both of them figure out there's something else going on here and start putting it together. (laughs) “These visions don't fit this world or anything I’ve experienced.” They piece together the progression of puzzles in understanding what exactly occurred.
SD: Why did Alti kill Caesar?
Katherine: What did she want? Power. Why share it? She got rid of Xena. She got rid of Gabrielle. She got Caesar to say to Brutus, “I’ve told the troops, Alti rides with us. Do you have a problem with that?” Caesar’s handed over the reins to Alti. So if she gets rid of him, she’s next in line. Now they will follow her.
SD: I was thinking if you’re the power behind the throne, why get rid of the throne? But the ground work was laid for Alti to take over.
Katherine: Yes, Caesar had publicly declared it. With Xena and Brutus gone, if she kills Caesar, she’s it. Claire liked that part. (laughs)
SD: The cross-cutting of the scenes of Alti killing Caesar and Xena being crucified was quite a mixture of sex and violence.
Katherine: I didn’t write it that way. It was still violent, but the sex was not in it. Those two scenes were intercut, but I wrote that Alti kills Caesar on the platform as Xena is being crucified. Alti wanted Xena to know what she’d done. Alti knows what their history in the other life was like and this is the first time Alti has beaten Xena. So she kills Caesar right there on the platform. Those were the scenes I had intercutting.
When I got down to New Zealand to watch them film the episode, John Fawcett, the director, said, “Look, a lot of what you’re mimicking is “Destiny” and “Ides Of March.” You're taking that throughline of Caesar and Xena and you’re creating a new world. “Ides” opens with Xena straddling Caesar and stabbing him.”
What I was trying to say was that the irony was that Caesar was still going to get killed by someone he trusted. He thought he'd crossed everything off this time - kept Xena alive and next to him, kept Brutus happy then killed him. Now it’s happening again only with Alti. It was meant to say that certain things are meant to be. So John came up with the idea of recreating the opening scene of “Ides” using Alti in place of Xena.
SD: Quick clarification of when this episode takes place. Caesar cuts the timeline when Xena is seducing him on the boat?
Katherine: Yes, this takes off directly from that moment.
SD: So they've lived those ten years?
Katherine: Yes. Time doesn’t change, it just starts over from that point. Caesar changes one act in his life and that’s his crucifixion of Xena on the beach. He took her back to Rome, married her and made her the Empress. None of the things we saw in the series happened.
There's only one change in the entire timeline and it shows the rippling effect. For example, Lao Ma is the ruler of Chin. Not just Xena, although this is her story, everyone doesn’t realize that everything in their life is the right choice because it has meaning. Change one thing and you change everything. Caesar didn’t crucify Xena and look how different the whole world is. Joxer is a Roman soldier, married with two kids, (laughs) Callisto’s not bad. Xena’s not evil. Xena never met Gabrielle. Everybody's lives are affected by one change. It’s that It's A Wonderful Life thing. We don’t realize the ripple effect of any change.
SD: Some good changes, some bad. Callisto didn’t lose her family in the fire. Everything happens as it should?
Katherine: Yeah. That's what I think. That was the spiritual point I was trying to make. It’s the best way to accept the wholeness of your life otherwise you’re always judging it and hating it, you hate yourself. You’re always wishing you did something differently.
SD: How did Caesar capture the Fates?
Katherine: Caesar says in the beginning of the episode that everything is in disarray because of the Twilight of the Gods and Hades has left Hell. It's the story from the fifth season. The gods aren’t manning their posts. Caesar is running around in Hell in his toga with the blood stains. There's no guard at the door! (laughs) That's what allows him to get the jump on the Fates.
SD: We’ve seen in previous episodes that if you cut someone's thread, they die. Why didn't Xena just die?
Katherine: Caesar cuts the timeline of the Loom of Life, not an individual life thread. It’s the tapestry of the world, the orchestration of events. Which is what a lot of people believed in. This is why they had the Fates. They believed there was no free will. Caesar literally cut the fabric of time in the space/time continuum if you want to use a Star Trek analogy. And then he put that strand back in the Loom and let it create a new life. Actually, you could say he was changing his strand, not Xena’s. He went back to his point in time where he made a decision and took a different path.
SD: Now that I think about it, when we’ve seen the Fates before, it was visually different. Individual strands being spun, not that big Loom.
Katherine: Yes. In the description of the Loom in the script, I said we’ve always seen a person's individual lifeline and this is the Loom of Life. This thing we see has to be big! The prop was actually more impressive than it was on the screen. It was the size of a room. It was huge! I have a picture of me standing in front of it. It was three-dimensional and had individual plates that went in and out. It had rows and rows of threads that were interwoven. They never could quite shoot it so that you could see the intricacy. It was the most expensive thing in the episode! I wish they could have shot it internally. It was the entire Tapestry of the Universe. (laughs) It was not one person’s strand.
SD: How good or how bad was Empress Xena? Gabrielle says, “All of Rome talks about you. The country thrives. The people adore you. They say that the army would follow you through the gates of Hades.” Brutus says, “She's very popular. The troops look up to her.” And yet Xena charges through the gates in the opening scene and knocks her soldiers over like tenpins!
Katherine (laughs): Oh, she was being playful, not nasty. Nobody was hurt. I talked with Lucy about this Xena. I said, “I’m seeing this Xena as Queen Elizabeth in the movie Elizabeth starring Cate Blanchett.” If you’ve seen that, she started out young. She wanted the power. There was a naivete about her. But ten years later, she realized what she could and couldn’t do and the responsibilities were heavy. As Xena said to Gabrielle, “Be careful what you wish for.” If she’d never had the evil side we saw, she was still a powerful young girl and would have grown to be a leader anyway. That’s who she is regardless.
SD: You could have made her bad.
Katherine: I didn’t want her to be bad. I think she had to be betrayed to have become the person we saw in the series. There was nothing in her makeup that said she was going to become so evil until that betrayal. That is what caused her to be who she became. And had that not happened, there's no indication she would have been bad.
I think that's the truth of life. Xena is always going to be a powerful woman and a leader of some sort. The question is, is she going to be a bad guy or a good guy? That is circumstance determined. Especially for her. This time, it didn’t happen.
The point was, as Xena said to Gabrielle in the jail cell, “It brought me to you.” The core of who Xena was always recognized Gabrielle. That core was able to recognize love and the purity of another person and to love someone else - with or without a bad Xena period.
SD: You made reference to the fact that Xena and Caesar are sharing different bedrooms. And yet Xena seemed annoyed that Caesar went away without argument when she turned down his offer to go to bed together.
Katherine: I don't think she was annoyed. She wasn't going to sleep with him. Especially after seeing Gabrielle and experiencing whatever confusion she was having over that. I didn’t view it as being annoyed.
SD: That’s what I thought I saw in Lucy’s face.
Katherine: We just had to get him out of there because she had to go see Gabrielle on the balcony. (laughs)
SD: Xena says to Gabrielle: “In the third act, you had your hero throw himself over the cliff with no fear of dying - all for her. Do you really believe that kind of love exists?” Is Xena looking for love?
Katherine: I think Xena had never been in love. Not even with Caesar. Their union was about power, not love. I've been talking about how, looking back, you can see what relationships in your life were for. Meeting Gabrielle was so Xena could experience love. That’s who Gabrielle is to her, above all things, to give her the face of love.
SD: Do you think Gabrielle would have become a playwright if she hadn’t met Xena?
Katherine: Yep. She would have pursued her dreams and at the point in her life where the timeline was changed, that’s what she wanted to be. You have to assume she was never caught by the slavetraders, her village never was invaded by warlords - nothing that was shown in the series happened.
SD: Some people thought she would have been feistier. They’re hooked on the Gabrielle that stood up to Draco’s men. They think being a playwright is kind of tame.
Katherine: I think, contrary to popular opinion, writers write about things they don’t really experience as much as people would like to think. We write epic love stories, epic adventures, but for most writers, it’s our fantasy. It's a way to live a life we don’t actually live.
If Gabrielle came into Greek aristocracy as a playwright at the time of Sophocles, Plato, they were revered. And you become very proper. She says, “I wrote my plays. I lived in a vineyard by the sea, but I never fell in love.” So she never became feisty. She never had any travels and adventures to become a warrior.
Which is why I used “Fallen Angel” as the play. There’s something in us that yearns for what we haven’t experienced, but maybe we’re going to. And we know that’s what’s missing in our lives. I wanted to use an episode of the show that was a pinnacle moment. I didn’t want her arbitrarily to write a play. I wanted the play to show that a part of Gabrielle did know something was missing in her life besides love. It was adventures, like what happened in “Fallen Angel.”
SD: Xena and Gabrielle have lived lives we’ve not seen.
Katherine: They’ve pursued things we haven’t seen and that’s made them different people. I was in law school in my own life and I quit. I quit when I understood that 95% of the time I would be defending a guilty person. I was going to be a public defender and I thought I can’t get rapists, murderers or molesters off because I'm clever. So I stopped. I think who would I look like if I'd stayed that course? Who would my friends be? What music would I like? Where would I be living? My whole life would be different. But a part of me, the core of me, would remain the same and that’s what I tried to do with Xena and Gabrielle.
SD: How did Ted Raimi wind up in the episode?
Katherine: There was a longer version of the script when it was going to be a two-parter and that role was already written. Gabrielle went to the guard and they were going to break Xena out. Loyal soldiers were going to help her. It added to the final jail scene where Xena said, “No, I’m going to be crucified.” And it was so frustrating to Gabrielle. She said, “We have the means to break you out! What do you mean no?” And when Xena says, “This is what I’m supposed to do. I don't know why. I have to get back up on that cross.” So the guard had a bigger scene that was cut out for time. But we realized the more people we can show as affected by one singular change, the better. We thought of showing Lao Ma. Ted happened to be there about to do the next episode, so we decided to make him the guard. We tweaked the character to be Joxer - still slightly in love with Gabrielle. And that means he would have been willing to help her break out Xena.
SD: His line about Gabrielle's play, “It coulda used a few more fight scenes.” Was that a tip of the hat to Rob? (laughs)
Katherine (laughs): Yes.
SD: Why is Caesar the only one who remembers the original world?
Katherine: Because he’s the one who did it! And he didn’t know Alti because she was never in any scenes with him in the series. So here comes someone we know from the show and he's never heard of her. He sees this powerful shamaness who can show him the future, give him more power. Great!
SD: Ironically, she’s the linchpin that sends him right back to the end of a knife! (laughs)
Katherine: Right, because that’s his destiny. No matter what he does. (laughs)
SD: You had Xena using a bow and arrows instead of the chakram.
Katherine: Yeah, I did two things. I put her in pants. I wanted her out of that dress. Lucy thanked me. (laughs) So did Claire. She said she liked being sexy. My aunt's Barbara Eden from I Dream of Jeannie and Claire said, “You put me in a Jeannie outfit.” (laughs)
And I thought long and hard about Xena’s weapons. I decided to give her bows and arrows. It had nothing to do with the finale. Someone asked me if I had her using the bow and hit by the arrows as a foreshadowing of the finale. That is a complete coincidence. It was just my idea.
SD: She hadn't met Ares and he's the one who gave her the chakram.
Katherine: Right. At that time, that was kind of the weapon of choice - or a dagger or sword.
SD: They’re the two stars of the show so they have to get together. But what do you think draws them together under these circumstances?
Katherine: I believe they're soulmates and destined for instant recognition.
SD: Xena did seem instantly smitten.
Katherine: Yes. I have yet to experience that feeling in love, but I have experienced it with friends. Someone you're drawn to, a connection you feel right off. However someone looks at the show, it's that feeling when you walk into a room and think I don’t know what it is, but you see someone and light up.
SD: Someone wrote, “Was Xena really moved by Gabrielle's play or was that just a pickup line?”
Katherine: I think Xena had never heard anyone talk like that. She’s never been in love, she hadn’t been exposed to that kind of writing. You don't get the idea Caesar had been quoting her love poetry. (laughs) She thought the play was going to be just another long, drawn-out, farce like every other one she'd heard and in walks this beautiful woman writing about a deep love that transcends time. I think the whole night was astounding for Xena. It was a night of emotions and a way of being she'd never experienced. That's why when Caesar saw the playwright was Gabrielle he thought, “Oh my God!”
The lines I wrote for the end of Gabrielle's play were the ones from the shooting script of “Fallen Angel.” During filming of “Fallen,” the lines got changed. I'm not sure how or why. So I took the lines directly from the script. I didn't want them to be exactly the same as what aired because that would be too coincidental. But because I wanted it to be close, I used the shooting script version.
SD: Xena's looking for love like everyone else.
Katherine: Here was Gabrielle, completely disarming, and with utter honesty saying to Xena, “Isn't that what we all dream of? That someone would love us that much, that they would jump off a cliff, a love that’s worth dying for?” That has never occurred to Xena. (laughs)
SD: Some people were wondering, after viewing the balcony scene, if the feelings of attraction were stronger in Xena than in Gabrielle?
Katherine: Definitely. Gabrielle had touched a side of Xena that she’d never known existed up to that point. I think, for Gabrielle, here is this woman who is the Empress of Rome, who is part of the most powerful couple in the world. And this woman loved her play! There was something in Xena that Gabrielle could see and admire. Just like what happened in “Sins Of The Past.”
SD: It was funny to see Xena step out onto the balcony, then she sees Gabrielle and darts back into the shadows and then comes out again. It was almost like a teenager.
Katherine: That’s how I wrote it. She’s completely overwhelmed and does not know what she’s feeling. Someone got right past her defenses and she doesn’t know what to do. (laughs)
SD: Gabrielle seemed confused.
Katherine: You can’t discount the fact that a playwright is in a room with the Empress of Rome. And the fact that this woman, the modern-day equivalent of a celebrity, finds something in you so compelling they’re drawn to you - that's a lot to handle! (laughs)
SD: Were you meaning to portray a same-sex love?
Katherine: That's always a difficult question because I don’t think of it as a same-sex love as much as I think of it as these are two people in love. If that makes sense? They will be in love in every single time they meet, in every lifetime. That’s how the show was set up. They will always find each other, they will always mean something to each other. This particular time, they’re two women.
Some people get nervous about that. I was explaining this to someone and I asked if they’d ever read Orlando by Virginia Woolf? People live many lifetimes, in many videos and have many experiences. All of it is valid and beautiful and wonderful. It’s just a body. In this particular space and time, in these two souls’ lives, they dropped into these two bodies. I don’t care if they were two women, two men or a man and a woman. They were two souls who were destined to be in love.
SD: What thread is Gabrielle to Caesar?
Katherine: He doesn’t want to lose any control over Xena. Xena was his downfall and Gabrielle was part of it. Caesar thinks, “I’m controlling all my little chess pieces and here comes the X factor, the wild card.” That's why he’s watching them. He decides, “You know what, we’ll just eliminate this problem.” (laughs) He also thinks Xena hasn't felt anything, hasn’t connected yet with Gabrielle. “We kill her now, right now!” (laughs)
SD: He could have sent Gabrielle home and assassinated her on the road and not killed her in front of Xena.
Katherine: Actually, that did happen in the first two drafts. And we just had to condense it.
SD: If you had had her sent away and killed out of Xena’s sight, how did you have Xena discover what happened?
Katherine: Xena sees guards, she sees things happening. I ended up liking this way better. Plus, Caesar thinks at this point Xena has no reason to defend Gabrielle. He hasn’t given them any time together. But it does start unravelling.
SD: You’ve said that it was Xena’s destiny to be crucified. Some people thought Xena was perfectly capable of getting down off that cross and, in the past, she’s never given up without a fight.
Katherine: I think they’re misinterpreting her actions. I would ask them to look at it this way. All Xena knows is that the point in time Caesar changed should not have been changed and that was her crucifixion. He stopped it. She knows that path was the right path and she accepts that now. She was supposed to be on that cross. That led to the bad Xena which led to the Warrior Princess who fought for good and that led to Gabrielle. That was Xena’s destiny. That’s how she met her soulmate. “Caesar changing the Loom so that he never crucified me is the mistake in this whole world and I have to get back up there.”
That's all she knows and that's what she had to trust and believe in. So she allows it to happen. This is how this world started and this is how it will end. She’ll go back to what was meant to be. And that is what changes the world back. That’s what ignites Gabrielle who goes to the Fates and destroys the Loom. Gabrielle doesn’t know she’s going to bring the world back, but she does. So Xena was right.
SD: It’s similar to the leap of faith Xena took in “Fallen Angel” when she dived off the cliff into Hell to save Gabrielle.
Katherine: It’s the same thing. It wasn't a passive act. It was an act of extreme courage, faith and belief. This life was a mistake and she’s going to undo it. Getting up on that cross is the only thing that would put things right. She couldn't get out of it by fighting. She had to accept her destiny, accept her choices in life. She had to go back to the point in time she had always hated - being crucified, being betrayed.
SD: If the Fates are Greek, why are they located near Rome? (laughs)
Katherine (laughs): Oh, they're just everywhere. My favorite question was how did Gabrielle know how to get to the Temple of the Fates? And I answered, “Yahoo maps?” (laughs)
SD: I love it. I’m putting that in. (laughs) Speaking of that moment, why was Gabrielle mad at the Fates? It wasn’t their fault what Caesar did. Was she just so angry she had to blame someone?
Katherine: Right, they couldn’t fix it. “You f***ed this up for me! I found my soulmate! You did this! You gave us this godforsaken world!” And they say they can’t help. But that was the point I was making. The Fates never controlled anything. It's only our belief that they did. Look - when Gabrielle destroyed the Loom, the world went on. (laughs) My question is, who put the Fates there? Somebody’s in charge of them. Who made us believe in them? There’s always something bigger and that was what was ruling the world.
SD: They’re just window dressing?
Katherine: Yeah. Maybe what happened was part of the Fates’ destiny. Whoever was in charge of the Fates was in charge of this whole thing happening and was still looking over on things. Who’s that? Is my question.
SD: Someone said when Gabrielle burns down the loom, why didn't everyone just die? Just burned the whole fabric of time.
Katherine: Everything was bigger than them in that world, including the Fates. Whatever was allowing the whole thing to happen was always in control. So when Gabrielle destroyed the Loom and the Fates, the lesson was learned and the world was restored back to where it was always meant to be.
SD: It's A Wonderful Life. Once you learn your lesson, everything goes back to what was supposed to be. The Loom was not in charge and had no real meaning.
Katherine: Right. I wanted to make a spiritual statement in the episode as well as tell a story. And that was that there is something in charge of everything and it’s bigger than we know. And it's bigger than the Fates and things that we construct to explain the world in mythology and stories.
Someone in the meetings said, “You're breaking the rules in Star Trek about how people think alternate worlds are.” And I said, “That’s what I want to do. I want to tell people to always look beyond.” It should show you that nothing orchestrates your life and you have freewill. I think certain things in every life are meant to be, but you are still in charge of having the courage and being brave enough to take the path in front of you. That’s your job. Whatever you believe in - divinity, God, the universe - can only do so much. You have to take action.
SD: Someone wrote, “Do not piss off the playwright! Did Gabrielle know what would happen when she burned the Loom?
Katherine (laughs): I think both Xena and Gabrielle don't know what will happen. All Xena knows is she has to have faith and get on the cross again. She doesn’t know what Gabrielle’s going to do. Gabrielle doesn't know that by destroying the Loom she will put things back the way they were. She could have destroyed the world. That’s why she said, “So be it.” Gabrielle believes this monstrosity is what caused this false world to be. She knew her real world was somewhere. She didn’t know how to get to it, but this is what created the mess, this has gotta go! (laughs)
SD: Did Renee have any problems with the fact that it looked like Gabrielle was willing to destroy the world and everyone in it if she couldn’t have Xena?
Katherine: I was on the set when that scene was shot. Renee came up to me and we did talk about it. She never had a problem with it. Renee knew Gabrielle could not allow this world to continue. I told her, Gabrielle can’t know at that time that she’s putting things right. Renee said she liked having Gabrielle be part of the solution, not just Xena. It took both of them, side by side, to take them back to where they should be. It was an empowering act for Gabrielle. Something she didn't get to do often. Similar to what Gabrielle did in “Ides.” I liked giving her that moment.
SD: There was much back and forth discussion about the very end when Xena and Gabrielle are back in their own world.
Katherine: How to play that scene was talked about a lot. Some people during the filming thought it should be emotional and weepy. There were different ways to play it. Do we go for the sensation of shock - which is what we all ended up thinking was a good choice. Not able to have any more emotion after what they’d gone through - that numb feeling. As for doing a weepy reunion, we thought, well, that seems anticlimactic. From the moment of Xena's crucifixion through Caesar’s death and Gabrielle’s torching of the Loom, the episode takes off so fast! How can you top that?
The real weepy scene was in the jail. We didn’t want to detract from that moment. We went for the shock of getting your bearings. They have literally just landed there. That's why the weird music and fog. It is supposed to be a surreal feeling. They didn’t know they were going to get back to their own world. They’re trying to assimilate what happened.
SD: Speaking of the prison scene, there was supposed to be a kiss? Where would that have been?
Katherine: It was in the last prison scene between Xena and Gabrielle. The guards were coming to get Xena to crucify her and Gabrielle was stroking her face. You can see that there's a cut there if you’re savvy.
SD: Did they film it?
Katherine (laughs): I'm not gonna answer that. I don’t know if I’m allowed. (laughs) No, no, they didn’t film it. (laughs) The scene was in the script until I got to New Zealand and it was changed, I think, a day before it was shot. It wasn't anything from Lucy and Renee. It was decided to save it for the finale.
Rob was a big believer in the love of these two characters. I have heard people say they believe Rob didn't support the relationship and that’s not true. He was so respectful of it and he did everything he could to give integrity to this relationship. Soulmates in love. That's how he wanted it portrayed, that’s how he believed in it and that came from his heart.