| June-9-00 Lawless claims love for lesbians `Xena' star Lawless says lesbians set stage Lucy Lawless and Jeri Ryan have much love for lesbians. Lawless, of Xena: Warrior Princess, credits gay women for her show's popularity. ``The lesbians were our first fans,'' Lawless says in the new issue of TV Guide. Ryan, who plays Seven of Nine on Star Trek: Voyager, says she would like to see her character explore same-sex issues, but ``I don't know that mainstream America is ready for it.'' |
| 10-27-00 Fairwell from the Beacon Journal `XENA' Warrior Princess, we hardly knew ye After six seasons, Xena: Warrior Princess will call it quits when the current season ends next summer. The syndicated show, which had a cult following, enjoyed high ratings in its early seasons. Lucy Lawless plays the title character. |
| June-9-00 Hot series blurring genre lines..Prime-time shows blend comedy and drama BY KINNEY LITTLEFIELD Orange County Register Hurts so good, John Mellencamp once sang about the sweet pain of love. Now a new rash of critically acclaimed prime-time series is taking that anthem to heart, stirring tears and laughter together to explode conventional notions of drama and comedy. Call them dramedies -- the traditional appellation -- or traumedies, mutants, strange brews, genre-blasters or genre-benders. Shows such as ABC's Sports Night, HBO's Sex and the City, the coming HBO series The Sopranos (premiering Jan. 10) and Fox's wacky Ally McBeal play a three-octave range of emotions that seems almost out of control. They have the exquisite allure of really good sex. Sex and the City, returning for a second season next June, is an explicit sitcom of sexual mores with a realistic moral undertow. Two other new series this season -- ABC's Cupid and CBS' To Have and to Hold -- are light dramas that flirt with both warm-comfy vibes and menace. Of course, sly syndicated action shows Hercules and Xena deliver their own brand of well-muscled tongue-in-check camp. And Ally -- a one-hour legal series -- is already legendary for its cosmically warped comedy. The Freudian slips and unthinking social gaffes of addled lawyer Ally are hurtful and hilarious. Ally once kicked another attorney who was a petulant, manipulative kid -- a child prodigy -- thinking he was the dancing baby of her obsessive imagination. In fact, despite the compelling, topical cases they try, almost everyone in Ally's loopy law firm is a menace to mental health. Say ouch to political incorrectness and hello to a pioneering comedy-drama hybrid. ``Whoever said you can't mix comedy and drama?'' Ally co-executive producer Jeffrey Kramer said recently. ``Like all the best comedy, Ally has strong dramatic underpinnings. Ally is very much like all of us, men and women alike. We can all relate to the time we laughed and it turned into tears. Some of the best episodes of Frasier and Mad About You have very strong dramatic motifs.'' At 9:30 p.m. Tuesdays, Sports Night brews its deft blend of serio-comic repartee. Its pit-a-pat rhythm -- the give-and-take of characters so comfortable with one another they can wound and heal one another in the same breath -- comes from the double-edged mind-set of creator Aaron Sorkin. He wrote both the stage and screen versions of genre-blending A Few Good Men and the movie The American President. Whistling in the graveyard seems an ancient compulsion, a universal tic born of hope and fear. Yet Sorkin and Chase like to credit a few specific predecessors -- The Rockford Files, M*A*S*H and The Larry Sanders Show -- with inspiring their own emotional duality. |
| Lucy Lawless ~ Personal Interview on being "Xena." Growing up in New Zealand, Lucy Lawless was as free-spirited as many young residents of the small island nation. She sought adventure, excitement and when bit by the proverbial acting bug, Lawless would have to admit that fame had its definite attraction. As the star of Xena herself puts it, All New Zealanders kind of escape their tiny little country at the bottom of the world and go on their OE, their Overseas Experience, to see the world. Australians do it too, before they go home and pay off their student loans and get serious about the world. Lawless appeared in a number of television shows in Australia before moving to Vancouver, Canada to study at the William Davis Center for Actors Study (an institution that should be familiar to X-Files fans). Eight months later she returned to her native home where she spent two years co-hosting a New Zealand travel show before being cast in what was supposed to be a small, supporting role of the internationally syndicated series Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. An American actress had been cast as Xena, the female counterpart to Hercules in three episodes of the series. However, when that actress became ill, the producers turned to Lawless to make additional appearances on Hercules. A three-part storyline turned into Xena: Warrior Princess, the series that is now in its fourth successful season. In discussing the irony of how she captured the role, she says, I thought it was going to be a raging success. She chuckles before adding, When youre a kid from the sticks you have no expectation other than its an American show. Why wont it be huge? So it was just a bliss of naivete and ignorance, and its been just marvelous, a once in a billion lifetimes experience. From that experience, the actress says shes learned Discipline, I guess. I dont think of Xena as a character. See, when you say Xena to me, well, shes part of me but shes not all there is. I think shes certainly rooted in truth, and shes who I would be if I grew up in that situation. Yet, when asked if shes afraid of being typecast due to the role, she responds with a resounding, Im not! Why am I not? Because thats a state of mind. I wont buckle into that one. Besides, Xena offers me a lot of scope. I get to play slapstick and I get to do musicals for goodness sake and play a lot of different characters. Plus, there are no other roles out there with this much complexity. As one guy said, Its a smart show that pretends that it isnt. And it is. -Jean Cummings |
| Xena Articles |
| Articles from '96 to '99 Here |
| Articles from'99 to '00 Here |
| Courtesy of Tom's Xcellent Xena Page |
| Courtesy of Xena Print Media Arts |
| Articles from '96 to '01 Here |
| Courtesy of Whoosh! |
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