From The Rocket "Reel Life" section: 50 FOOT QUEENIE by Gillian G. Gaar "Xena: Warrior Princess" is, without a doubt, one of the most subversive shows on television. And I'm sure you know I mean that as a compliment. Set in an appropriately vague "time of ancient gods" (which looks like medieval England, where everyone has American accents and they talk like it's 1997), Xena and her plucky sidekick, Gabrielle, are ostensibly on a quest to find Xena's long lost father. But invariably, distractions arise every week. Helpless villages have to be protected from marauding warlords. Xena has to fight a giant. Gabrielle gets turned into a vampire. It's all in a days work for an action hero. Xena began life as a character on "Hercules: The Legendary Journeys" before spinning off into a series of her own. She was originally a marauding warlord herself, but over the course of three "Hercules" episodes came to see the error of her ways. So when she was given her own series, the producers decided to make Xena a tortured anti-hero, haunted by her past, determined to make amends by doing good, week after week. And, as executive producer Rob Tapert willingly admits, the fact that their hero was a woman gave the series a different twist. And this is where the fun starts. They finally found a way to have women wearing tight, revealing leather outfits and have it be perfectly logical! But don't write Xena off as an all-style-and-no-substance warrior babe. She's smart, resourceful and derives her outrateous fighting skills from the "Gravity? No Problem!" school of Hong Kong action pics (think of the Swordsman series). Tapert and fellow executive producer Sam Raimi know a thing or two about action and adventure themselves; they're responsible for the Evil Dead series. Xena herself is portrayed by striking, 5' 10 1/2" New Zealander Lucy Lawless, who won the role through the time-honored show biz cliche of the understudy being pushed into the limelight on opening night in place of the original star. When the actress originally cast as Xena fell ill before shooting began, the role (then just a guest starring appearance on "Hercules" was offer to five other American actresses who all turned it down. The producers then thought of Lawless, previously in both a "Hercules" episode and a made-for-tv movie and, best of all, a resident of New Zealand (where the show is filmed). Lawless got the role, and the rest, as they say, is history. "Xena: Warrior Princess" made its debut in September '95, and now, in its second season, is enjoying increasing acclaim as a syndicated show (i.e., a program not on the "big three" ABC/NBC/CBS networks), regularly besting "Baywatch," "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" and, yes, even "Hercules" in the ratings. Ironically, when Lawless injured herself rehearsing for a "Tonight Show" sketch last October (falling from a horse and fracturing her pelvis), the resulting publicity undoubtedly helped give the show more exposure. A native of Auckland, New Zealand, Lawless had her sight set on acting from a young age. "I didn't seriously entertain doing anything else," she says. When I was ten I was in my first play. And I realized halfway through it- I remember where I was standing in the school hall- that I really like this." After leaving school and appearing in commercials, Lawless' career was put on hold when she became pregnang. "But the week that I had my baby [a daughter, Daisy], I just got really fired up to get on with it," she says. "So I wrote a whole lot of skits and went out and filmed them. They're kind of embarrassing, but they are funny. At least they show somebody who has the guts to get out and do something really hideous just to make it happen!" Lawless went on to be the co-host of the travel TV magazine show "Air New Zealand Holiday" before winning the role of Xena. And though she didn't know a "Xena" series was being consedered when she filmed the "Hercules" episodes ("That would've seemed like an impossible dream."), she was thrilled when the dream came true. "I never had a doubt in my mind-- absolutely it was gonna work!" she says. "I just had this feeling that it was gonna be a phenomenon, a popular media phenomenon." And now it is. But Lawless is disingenuous when she says, "The fact that Xena's a woman is incidental to me," for it's the fact that Xena is a woman that's helped make the show a phenomenon. The number of serious female action heroes on TV (those that don't "make excuses for her being a woman," in Tapert's words) can be counted on one hand, which is a key to the character's appeal. how many women walking home from a club haven't wished fora Xena to be on hand-- or to be Xena themselves-- should they run into trouble? And the fact that Xena only attacks bad guys means men can delight in her fighting as well. "The best thing is that young men are tuning into the show," agrees Lawless. "It means that they get to have another perspective on women in drama, and, hopefully, will have a different attitude to women in general." Xena's relationship with Gabrielle (Renee O'Connor) adds another dimension of interest. As their friendship has grown, so has the playful innuendo between them, leading to the innumerable debates about the "true" nature of their relationship. Liz Friedman, an openly gay producer of the show, told The Advocate, "We never wrote Xena to be a lesbian. But it's not our show, it's the audience's show. If the fans want to read Xena that way, great." Though the show's writers have recently been stretching the boundaries of what's delicately referred to as the show's "subtext" (e.g., "A Day In The Life," in which Xena and Gabrielle spend the entire episode bickering like an old married couple on a bad day-- and then there's the now-notorious "hot tub" scene), the dialogue itself doesn't "prove" anything about the relationship either way. Indeed, the fact that viewers are teased while being kept in the dark is what seems to irritate people the most, if posts on the innumerable "Xena" online sites are any indication (there are close to 200). Subtext fans chide the nay-sayers with having no sense of humor, while nay-sayers ring their hands in dismay, saying the very idea of a romantic relationship between Xena and Gabrielle "ruins" the show for them. Now, though fans might be dismayed at the obvious ploy of having Mulder and Scully get together on the "X-Files," would it "ruin" things if their heterosexuality was confirmed? Hardly. But the reaction to "Xena" shows how mainstream audiences still have difficulty in accepting a gay hero; as film critic Vito Russo said in The Celluliod Closet, "The hero has to be 'a hell of a nice guy or the audiences won't go for it.' The hero still could not be queer." Lawless herself has no problem with whatever gray area "Xena"'s writers come up with. "you can't be safe all the time," she says. "our watchword is 'feel'; we want to make people feel something. So that no matter what the nature of the relationship is between any of the characters, you are taken on some sort of emotional journey. We want to find pockets so that you feel something, you get a little tug on your heartstrings. Rob Tapert says, 'You can make 'em laugh, you can make 'em cry, but don't bore 'em.'" And if the last two season are any indication, there's no fear of "Xena" becoming "boring" anytime soon. Battle on, Xena.