Entertainment Weekly has an article about Xena and looking back on twenty years. The print version has an interview with Rob, Lucy and Renee - see below for scans. You can read the online version here
Aside from the anguish over — 15-year-old spoiler alert! — Xena’s death in the series finale, one of the biggest questions that came out of Xena: Warrior Princess is why the titular hero (Lucy Lawless) and her bard Gabrielle (Renee O’Connor) never become a couple.
As discussed at length in our Xena oral history in this week’s issue of Entertainment Weekly, soon after the show’s 1995 debut, fans of the syndicated series, particularly those within the LGBT community, breathed life into the relationship. “The name Xena means ‘stranger,’” Lawless says of the former warlord spared by Hercules (Kevin Sorbo) to embark on a journey of redemption. “She felt she was irredeemable. That friendship between Xena and Gabrielle transmitted some message of self-worth, deservedness, and honor to people who felt very marginalized, so it had a lot of resonance in the gay community.”
Entertainment Weekly issue #1414
May 13, 2016
