Many thanks to Mayt for the transcript
"Xena" Ends 6 Season RunThe Associated Press
14 June 2001
No spoilers for Season Enders
'Xena' Ends 6-Season Run
By LYNN ELBER
.c The Associated Press
LOS ANGELES (AP) - A character on Showtime's ``The Chris Isaak Show'' is
fretting about how odd his Russian girlfriend's family seems.
When another character tells him he has xenophobia, he grows more disturbed.
What's THAT mean, he asks.
``Fear of the warrior princess,'' comes the reply.
``Xena: The Warrior Princess,'' which leaves the syndicated airwaves this
week after six seasons, can be secure about its place in popular culture:
It's become a reliable punchline.
It's also a show with a truly devoted following. Evidence of that could be
found on a Yahoo! online auction site of Xena props, including a velvet dress
priced at $4,250 (74 bids), a retractable short sword at $405 (36 bids) and a
go-go girl costume at $2,850 (38 bids).
Go-go costume? As viewers know, the series wasn't wedded to a consistent
fashion or world view. This, the producers liked to say, was a Xenaverse all
its own, filled with gods and monsters and shifting blithely from ancient
Greece to timeless hell to the modern world circa 1940s.
While fans dicker over mementos (with the proceeds going to charity), series
star Lucy Lawless is reveling in her release from breastplates, 12-hour-plus
workdays and enough stunt work to last a career.
``The best vacation of my life,'' she reports from Auckland in her native New
Zealand. ``The freedom of it blows my mind.''
The 5-foot-10 Lawless carried the weight of ``Xena'' on strong shoulders,
making the improbable mix of dark mythology, action, campy humor and sly
sexuality work with her charm and energy.
She was ably assisted by co-star Renee O'Connor, who as perky, petite
sidekick Gabrielle was part of one of television's more intriguing gal pal
duos.
``A big girl and a little girl and they're a mighty force together,'' Lawless
said, neatly summing up the appeal. ``It's about friendship, and nobody has
seen two females without a male boss telling them what to do.''
That approach made ``Xena'' a hard sell when it was first pitched to a studio
and TV stations, said Rob Tapert, co-executive producer (and, as of March
1998, real-life husband to Lawless).
``We were at Universal and (executive) Sid Sheinberg said 'Look, I was a big
champion of 'Bionic Woman' but it was never very successful, so I have this
fear people won't watch women action heroes,''' Tapert recalled.
There was an argument in favor of the genre - ``Hercules: The Legendary
Journeys,'' which first featured the character of Xena in spring 1995, was a
hit. A female hero provided a twist, Tapert said.
``This is a style of action we can't have with 'Hercules' because it looks
too stupid for a 6-foot-3 guy to do it,'' he recalled arguing. ``It will be
new and cool and something different on television.''
Vive la difference. In fine acrobatic form, Xena flipped nimbly over and
around her enemies before dispatching them with weapons ranging from sword to
frying pan.
Audiences, in turn, flipped for ``Xena,'' making it among the top-rated
syndicated dramas throughout its domestic run and with a worldwide
distribution that carried it to more than 100 countries.
The show made its mark in another way: Early studio and TV station fears that
Xena and Gabrielle might be perceived as lovers came true, with some viewers
celebrating what they saw as lesbian affection.
``It didn't matter one way or the other to me, or to Renee,'' Lawless said.
``It made no difference in how we played the roles. We just tried to play a
relationship of love and respect, and what people wanted to read into it was
fine.
``There were times we'd play up to the lesbian subtext. ... The producers and
writers weren't afraid to toy with that. But it was never meant to be an
overtone,'' she said.
The show's evolving emphasis was part of the reason for the speculation,
Tapert said.
``Originally, it was a story about Xena and Gabrielle confronting the world.
But the story shifted and it became about how the relationship between the
two of them was affected,'' he said. ``That became fertile emotional
ground.''
For Tapert, ``Xena'' was a chance to bring to life the kind of intrepid
heroine he admired years ago in ``The Avengers'' and ``Honey West.'' For
Lawless, it was a matter of right place, right time.
Another actress, Vanessa Angel, had been cast as Xena but then became
unavailable just after Christmas 1994. Lawless, who had made a good
impression in small roles in ``Hercules,'' was abruptly tapped.
``The studio said 'Gee, we just used her in an episode of 'Hercules' that
will air right before this.' We said 'OK, we'll just dye her hair black,' ``
Tapert recalled.
With a wave of the bottle, Lawless went from a red-blond mane to ``Xena''
fame.
``I'll never get a role like this again,'' she said. ``I don't think there
will be a role like this again. It caught a wave, the right place and the
right time for female action heroes.''
Both Tapert and Lawless, raising their 1 1/2-year-old son and Lawless'
12-year-old daughter, said they are ready to put ``Xena'' to rest.
Tapert has only one regret. When Universal sold most of its television assets
to Barry Diller in 1997, ``Xena'' became the property of Diller's Studios USA
and got somewhat lost in the shuffle, Tapert said.
Opportunities for TV spinoffs, a movie and a higher profile were lost;
``Xena,'' he said, never became a contender in the class of ``Star Trek.''
``I don't think they (Studios USA) were in a position, being the small
company they were, to exploit the franchise fully. I wish that we had not
moved off from Universal, which would have been able to,'' Tapert said.
On the Net:
http://www.studiosusa.com/xena
http://auctions.yahoo.com
Elsewhere in television .
EDITOR'S NOTE - Lynn Elber can be reached at lelber``at``ap.org