by Sharon Delaney
The Chakram Newsletter: Issue 21
Going up into the attic and uncovering a box of childhood photos is the best way to spend an afternoon. Everyone looks so different, so young, so innocent. There are the faces of people you haven’t seen in years and the memories come flooding back. When I decided to do this with Renee, the box contained old Xena episodes! Actually, I made up a videotape of clips of all the Gabrielle and Gabrielle/Xena scenes strung together starting with the first episode, “Sins Of The Past.” It turned out to be a great way to catch Renee’s memories before they fade away. We started at the beginning.
“What did they tell you about Gabrielle when you got the part?” I began before we turned the tape on.
“They said she was feisty,” Renee said. “And young and naive. Then I read the script and started to get different hints about the character. Especially the scene with the Cyclops where Gabrielle talks him out of eating her. That was a hook into who she is, a storyteller.”
“She's a teenager,” I said.
“Yes, but I didn't realize she'd be going through such adolescent angst later on in the series,” Renee laughed.
We popped the tape in the VCR.
“Who’s got the remote?” I asked, looking around. Renee burrowed down into her chair and pulled it out with a triumphant, “I do!” The show began to unfold. There was Gabrielle defending the village girls before Xena came to their rescue. Then Xena was in Gabrielle's house surrounded by the villagers and Gabrielle’s fiance. Perdicus.
“I remember this scene,” Renee said. “I remember being in this room filming this in front of the crew and being nervous because we were all new and you didn’t know who anyone was yet. It takes time to get in sync with a new production. You eventually lose that fear and it becomes a family environment. But this was one of the first scenes we filmed and Lucy and I were a bit nervous. At least I was. You should ask her about it.”
“You'd done plenty of TV and movie work before,” I stated. “Is it always difficult on the first days?”
“For me, this was a bit different because it was a character that was going to stay on a series for a long time as opposed to just going and doing a story and then leave,” she said thoughtfully. “I knew this character was staying for a while and I was trying to figure out who she is and establishing the relationship with Xena.”
“You sure didn’t know it would last for six years, did you?” I chuckled.
“I thought I was staying for nine months!” Renee chuckled. “Have I told you that before? Just for the first season.”
“You've mentioned it in passing, but you never said why,” I told her.
“For one thing, I was not 18,” she explained. “I think Gabrielle was supposed to be somewhere between 16 and 18 years old. I was older and playing young. The studio was going to wait and see if I turned out to be too old by the end of the year. So I kept my apartment in Los Angeles,” she laughed. “I didn't pack much. Just went over and thought I'd have a great time as a visitor in New Zealand. After the first season, when I realized Gabrielle was staying, I closed everything down in LA and put my stuff in storage.”
The tape moved on to the moment where Xena is telling Gabrielle not to follow her. Xena walks out the door leaving Gabrielle sitting there, thinking, plotting. I remembered a pivotal moment for me concerning the character of Gabrielle and Renee's acting.
“I’d been watching the show for 3 or 4 months and happened to see that scene with the mute button still on - those closeup shots where Gabrielle is listening to Xena,” I told her as they went by on the screen.
“Where? Should I rewind?” Renee asked as she went back and forth on the tape trying to find the right spot, curious to know what I was referring to and how it affected me. “There?”
“Yes, that's it,” I said as the scene played out before us. “Up till then, I'd only been watching the Xena character. That's who all the talk was about and I wasn’t paying much attention to anyone else in the scenes. With the sound off and the camera on your face, I was caught by the intensity of your listening. I'd never been aware of how important listening was. I was fascinated seeing all the expressions on your face reflecting Gabrielle's thoughts.”
“Really? Wow! Thanks, Sharon, that's very nice,” she said as her face lit up with a soft smile. “I had been taking a Sanford Meissner acting technique class just before starting Xena. They emphasized listening in your scenes because you can’t manufacture an emotion. You have to respond to how the other person affects you. Basically it's about them. Stop the navel gazing. What’s happening to the other person is what should affect you. If you're open and honest with your surroundings, then you are empathetic to what's happening in a person’s life.”
“And that will induce the appropriate response?” I queried.
“Right. You don't have to pretend to cry or worry about crying if the other person is truly suffering. If you're the kind of person who’s empathetic in real life, if you open yourself up to being affected by people, that’s going to bring out the appropriate response in you. That's the theory behind it all. So I guess that’s why I was listening,” she laughed.
“But, over the course of six years, I found this technique to be a hindrance to me because a lot of times I was working off balls, sticks, tennis balls on sticks, a black cross made of tape on a big blue screen. You can’t react to what someone else is doing in that situation because they're not there! I found that to be hard,” she said ruefully.
“The special effects removed the human element and left you with nothing to respond to?” I asked.
“Exactly,” she agreed. “I found that to be a hard, hard lesson. But I learned how to fix it through Lucy. Because Lucy creates, I think, a world while she’s acting in a scene. She can play every character if she wanted to, you know,” Renee chuckled.
“She could play the tennis ball?” I quipped.
Renee laughed.
“That came out funny,” I said sheepishly. “What I was trying to say is she can play what the tennis ball stands for.”
“Right. She knows what response each character should have in order to get to where they need to be. I learned from her how to adjust in situations where I didn't have anyone to work with,” Renee explained. “And I've been dying to go back to my teacher and say, ‘Okay, this is all good in theory, but what happens when you play opposite a tennis ball?’ I want to see what she says,” Renee laughed impishly.
“Is your teacher still here?” I wondered.
“Yeah. I started taking class again with her daughter who's just wonderful.” Renee said excitedly. “But I want to go back to my original teacher and ask how she would deal with situations like that?”
“Who was your teacher?” I queried.
“Her name is Janet Alhanti,” Renee answered. “And her daughter's name is Iris Klein. I'm taking a scene study class with Iris right now. I'm working with Iris instead of Janet because you need to try out different teachers for fresh input and ideas. I’ve always had a good relationship with Iris as a friend so it’s nice to go back and see her and work with her.”
We’re at the scene where Gabrielle is tiptoeing out of the house to run away with Xena. She trips over a table and wakes up Lila, her sister, played by Willa O’Neill.
Renee smiles when a closeup of Willa comes on screen. “She’s so sweet. I can’t believe how young we both look! Geez!” she chuckles in amazement. “What was I? 23 or 24 years old. It’s funny, it seems like a lifetime ago. Truly, it does. Especially moving back here and, I guess, being a mom. This just seems like a different decade. And it was!”
“You’ve done an awful lot since that time with work, marriage and motherhood,” I commented.
“Yeah, life experiences definitely change you,” Renee nodded thoughtfully. “I've always played younger than I am. But especially with Gabrielle since they wanted a younger character than I was going into it. I really strived to try to find her innocence. Of seeing things for the first time and being open to every possibility.”
“I've said this to you before,” I began. “They would give Gabrielle the most cliched lines and somehow you managed to make it sound as if you were saying and thinking them for the first time. And I would wonder, ‘How does she do that!’”
“I always found it amusing when they would give me those types of lines. Like, ‘Once upon a time.’ I remember that one. When Gabrielle said that, I thought she was making it up for the first time. Just coming up with those words. It made me laugh to think that Gabrielle would be the one to invent that opening for stories,” Renee's face lit up mischievously.
“Are you an adventurous person like Gabrielle?” I asked. “It's very similar - your life and Gabrielle's. A young kid wanting to be an actor - which is a risky occupation and certainly one parents frequently frown upon. You get up and go out to California and here's Gabrielle going off with a Warrior Princess.”
Renee laughed at the analogy. Then thought about it for a minute. “I think so. I think I'm the type of person who likes to observe people. So I may not be the first, ah, it depends,” she said, working this out in her mind. “I guess I go back and forth. Sometimes I like to sit back and see what people are doing and how they interact with each other. But other times I'm the first one going, ‘All right. I'll do it first.’ Just to get things moving.
“I've never been afraid to try new things. And one of the joys of acting on film and TV is that you can go from place to place and explore new cities and new cultures and that's always been a huge interest of mine. So that is very similar to Gabrielle. She wanted to go off and see the world. I think that's probably a truer link between us.”
“You might do a bad movie in Ireland cuz you want to go to Ireland?” I teased.
“I don't know,” Renee laughed. “A lot of actors do that. I think there's a gypsy in us, we want to travel. I'd love to see Spain and Portugal. That’s probably next on my checklist. I want to go to Barcelona to see the work of the architect Antoni Gaudi. That’s my main desire. Then I’d like to see the rest of Spain. Yeah, I'd go to Spain if there was a job,” she said with a twinkle in her eye.
“In the good-bye scene, I can hear your voice getting tight as you're holding back the tears of parting from Lila,” I said. “Have you always had easy access to your emotions? Is it easy to
bring them out, let them rise to the surface in a performance.”
Renee thought for a moment. “I think before I went to New Zealand it was easier for me as an actor to find those places once I'd learned how to do it,” she said slowly. “The culture of New Zealand is that you really try to be a strong person. You’re not supposed to be overly emotional. I think, after a while, I started to show less emotion as Gabrielle if I could. You’re effected by the environment around you.”
“Lucy has said the culture's personality is reserved, British,” I told her.
“I was going through my twenties as well,” Renee mused. “Where you get older and learn more about life and people expect you not to just burst into tears at any little situation. They’ll say, ‘You're getting older, you're more mature than that.’ It could have been that more so than being in New Zealand, but either way, they both affected me. I think I started to learn more about trying to pull back the tears in a scene or in life. Be stronger. More stoic. (Renee straightened up in the chair and put her shoulders back and giggled.) There are still times I will burst into tears. I think I'm affected pretty easily by things.”
“Have you noticed a change in your acting since you're been back in the States?” I queried.
“I definitely think since I’ve become a mother and not had to work on acting every day that I've become a little more relaxed and open to being emotional. I hadn’t thought about that,” she said sounding surprised.
“An actor has to have control of their emotions during the day because they need this emotion for one scene and another emotion for the next one. I never thought about what that does to them as a person,” I said.
“I think actors are always looking for ways to be honest,” Renee explained. “For me, with Gabrielle, I was always looking to try to find issues in my life that were close to what Gabrielle was going through. It's amazing how things keep coming up that you're able to use to emotionally connect with what the character is going through. Not so much the situation as the feeling that you had being in a situation that was similar to what Gabrielle was going through with Xena. Sheer joy or frustration or anger. Anything like that. You are able to match it.”
“With the scene of the day,” I threw out with a chuckle.
“Yeah,” Renee laughed, “the scene of the day. I'm amazed by actors who stay fresh in a TV series that lasts a long time. Especially a science fiction show - trying to create realism with all the heightened imagery.”
“Would the emotions be easier to tap into if you were on a show set in modern times?” I asked.
“I don’t think the setting makes the difference,” Renee answered. “It’s what you tap into inside yourself. I remember the tape you gave me of Sally Field on Inside the Actors Studio. There was something she said that I identified with. Sally said her teacher had given her grief about using some source inside her to understand what the character was going through that made it realistic for Sally. The teacher said, ‘You’ve used that before.’ He knew her work so well he could tell what she was using. I could understand that.
“What I'm trying to say is that if you keep using the same sense of loss, of frustration, of love, of fresh sexual encounters, all these things that you know and that you use for your acting, it brings forth the same response with the same nuances. You need to have life experiences that are new and fresh to draw on. It gives your work and your life more maturity and more layers. I think what Sally was trying to say is you need to find ways to explore all aspects of your personality and your life to create art.”
“Hey, there's the Cyclops,” I pointed out, excitedly. “I loved that scene. That's a good example of what you were talking about before. You're not acting with the Cyclops because of the trick they used to make him big. He’s not standing in front of you, but off to the side.”
“Yeah and I was just saying inside my head, ‘My God, Renee, what were you thinking!’” she laughed. “It's so easy to look back on what you were doing and be critical. To me it looks like I wasn't talking to anyone. Do you know what I mean? I was talking at him, not to him.
“And, as you pointed out, I wasn't talking to another actor, but maybe a tall stick to give me a sightline. That's probably why I'm lacking that sense of ‘there's a real person there,’ because there's nobody there! And I had a real problem with that for a long, long time.”
Still thinking about Gabrielle talking the Cyclops out of his Bard hors d'oeuvre, I asked Renee, “Did you like that chatty aspect of Gabrielle?”
Renee chuckled. “I did at the time. Actually, I really wished we had carried that through all six years. I think we lost that aspect of her being able to talk herself out of situations. I remember doing this episode and I referred to her in my mind as being like a lawyer. I wish we'd kept that.”
“Gabrielle got really quiet as the series went on,” I commented wistfully.
“Yeah,” Renee agreed. “I think she became more reflective. Gabrielle was the audience's eyes and showed how everyone was supposed to react to what was happening in the episode. The audience was living the adventures with Xena through Gabrielle.”
“I know the fans missed that aspect of the character. They wished it had been used more,” I told her.
“It’s funny because I didn’t miss it at the time,” Renee explained. “When you're functioning day by day in a series like this, you don’t realize how the character has changed over the course of the years.”
“Now we have Gabrielle trying to hitch a ride to Amphipolis by laying down in the middle of the road,” I commented as the clip came up on the screen.
“Oh, I love this scene,” Renee said happily bouncing in the chair. “I had such a good time doing it. Scenes like this and also the one in the cave?”
“With the nutbread?” I prompted.
“The nutbread!” Renee grinned. “Stuff like that I just hammed it up. Oh boy! I was right in my element. It was so fun,” she chortled. “I always found it to be entertaining about the show when you had characters that knew all the people from mythological stories as if they were real and they interacted with them in their everyday lives.”
“Like the wagon driver who can give you the lowdown on Oedipus?” I laughed.
“Yeah, that's great, it cracks me up,” Renee smiled.
We were at the part in the episode where the villagers in Amphipolis wanted to stone Xena and run her out of town. Gabrielle comes to Xena's defense.
Renee pointed to the screen. “This is where I thought Gabrielle became the defense attorney.”
Renee stared at the screen and began to laugh. “Look at Lucy looking at Gabrielle thinking, ‘What the heck?’ It was funny, too, because I had just come from the Hercules telefeature before I did Xena. The style on Hercules was much more comedic. That’s what I remembered, playing Deianeira, being around Kevin Sorbo and Michael Hurst. I came to Xena thinking that show was the same. It's really interesting to watch how I started off playing Gabrielle and then how Lucy was so complicated and complex as Xena. And dark, really, really dark. It took me most of the first season, maybe not that long, but it took me a long time to come to Lucy’s level of where she was playing the show, in terms of style.”
“How did what Lucy was doing as Xena change how you played Gabrielle?” I asked curiously.
“You see how animated I am in this scene trying to talk the villagers out of stoning Xena?” Renee asked. “I've got the hands going. That was who I thought Gabrielle was and I thought the style of the show was animated and comedic. But Lucy was so still, I had to balance that. Make it more realistic. I had to come to play in her field.”
“Without losing the difference between the two characters,” I added.
“True,” Renee nodded.
“When I included this scene on the tape, I made a note that you were very physical with your body,” I began, “and I remember you saying, during our interview about Macbeth, your use of your head was a holdover from when you played the Porky Pig big head character in an amusement park.”
“Right,” Renee said. “Those costume characters who can't show any facial expressions. You have to use your body.”
“And you were doing that during the ‘lawyer’ scene?” I asked.
“I thought Gabrielle was like that,” Renee explained. “I thought she was perky, full of energy. On some level, I was very much aware I was bouncing around. They even called me the bouncing ball on set,” Renee laughed. “I just thought, well, that's who I think she is and it felt right for me to do it that way. But then I started to see it wasn't quite right with what Lucy was doing. We didn’t discuss it, I just became more subdued.”
“How did you make the change?” I queried.
“‘Callisto’ was a big episode for me,” Renee said, going back in her mind. “I remember - especially during the campfire scene - working to make it more realistic. Lucy and I had to be real because everything around us was so stylized. We had to find the truth in the scenes.”
“Were you as stunned as I was when Lucy, during the filming of Coffee Talk 2, told you what she was using as motivation during that campfire scene - the smell of burning flesh?” I asked in amazement.
“Oh yes!” Renee said softly. “I couldn’t fathom knowing what that would smell like. What a strong choice.”
We were coming to the end and the campfire scene came up on the TV as Gabrielle finally convinced Xena to let her stay and travel with the Warrior Princess.
Renee looked at the screen, puzzled. “I remember this scene was changed from the shooting script. It took a while to figure out how to end the first episode. I think, in one version, I went back to Poteidaia? For some reason, I think I went back.”
As Xena and Gabrielle walked over the hill together at the end of the episode, Renee sighed and smiled wistfully. “I miss Lucy. I miss seeing her every day.”
I smiled over at her. “It's not like you guys got to hang out all the time on set. People don't realize how much like an office it is and how much work goes on. It consumes every minute of your day. If you’re not in a scene, you're having a costume fitting…”
“...and you can’t talk on set during blocking, rehearsing, shooting,” Renee chimed in, laughing. “But we always found our moments. Waiting before the camera rolls to have our little giggle.”
She smiled and I pictured two naughty girls in school whispering behind their books. “And now, we each have our families and we're living in different places. We see each other occasionally, but it's hard to catch up…”
Thinking of Xena coming into Gabrielle’s life, I wondered if Xena had ridden into Renee's neighborhood, would she have been intrigued with the Warrior Princess.
“If Xena, a woman in black leather, rode into my neighborhood!” Renee laughed.
“If you lived in that time period?” I explained sheepishly.
“Oh, absolutely,” Renee stated. “I don’t think I would have given up everything and followed her. Especially if I was getting married. But I wouldn't have gotten into an arranged marriage. So I probably wouldn’t have made the same decision Gabrielle did. That’s kind of harsh, isn’t it, but Gabrielle didn’t have a choice, did she? She had to get married back then.”
“Perdicus looked a lot older than her, too,” I chimed in.
“Yeah! Wouldn't you have run,” Renee laughed. “Pack the bags!”
“Because Xena was such a formidable presence on the show, I wondered how you thought you might have been affected by someone like her,” I continued.
“I'm trying to relate it to something in my life. You know,” Renee said after thinking for a minute, “if I could go and change my life in a drastic way for the good of other people - if it was that significant - then I think I would definitely consider going off with Xena. But I’d want to make sure my whole family could go,” Renee added, laughing.
“Gabrielle tells Xena, ‘I'm not the little girl my parents wanted me to be.’ How did your parents respond to you wanting to become an actor?” I asked.
“I started taking theatre courses about age twelve. That's what I wanted to do after school. I wanted to go and join the theatre troupe, the church group putting on Alice in Wonderland. Anything I could do - making the costumes. So I don't think they were that surprised,” Renee chuckled.
“You started breaking them in early,” I teased.
Renee laughed. “Yeah.”
“I remember Kevin Sorbo saying he waited until he was out of college to go into acting. He never said anything to anyone before that,” I told Renee.
She thought for a moment and then said, “You wonder if there's that kernel of wanting to perform in there somewhere and you just keep pushing it down. You try to fulfill what your parents or friends expect of you. It's such a strange profession. In many ways, people think it's flaky because it's intangible, the craft of acting. But it's so addicting for the actor to be in front of an audience and be carried through the telling of a story. When it's effortless, there's a magic quality you don't get all the time. When you have that fix. you want to find it again.”
“How about the lure of directing?” I asked.
Renee leaned forward eagerly. “I think the joy of wanting to direct is having that nervous anxiety knowing your film is about to be shown and you're sitting right there with everyone. You're going to hear the response. To me that's a scary feeling I need to address. It's one of those urges I have at the moment. To start from the beginning and finish a story as a director. To tell it to the best of your ability and then to actually have it screen in front of a large amount of people and see if they understand what you're trying to do.”
As we were waiting for the clips of the second episode, “Chariots Of War” to begin, Renee looked over at my clipboard and saw a photo I'd brought along to show her of Lucy at the recent New Zealand Fashion Show. On a dare from Sex and the City stylist, Rebecca Weinberg, Lucy came dressed as a man complete with moustache!
Renee looks at the photo and laughs delightedly. “She's constantly amazing me. I love that. Lucy just having a good time. Who would have even thought of that. I'd probably do it, but I wouldn't have thought of it. I think that's brilliant. Living large.”
“Chariots” starts to roll, no pun intended, and we come to the scene of Gabrielle in the tavern asking for milk and then changing her mind and ordering water.
Renee hits the pause button on the remote and comments, “This scene was tough because it was my first introduction to a hard TV schedule. The director had spent all his shooting hours on other scenes and was running out of time. So he had to shoot all my stuff in one setup - with the camera in one position - all at one time. If you notice, there's only one angle. He didn't have time to turn the camera back around and get my response to the bartender. The director told me, ‘Renee, I need you to turn around as much as you can to the camera. Try to find a way to play it to us.’ I probably could do a better job now knowing what he meant, but I didn't really understand how to do what he wanted and make it natural.”
“He's shooting from behind you. How can you deliver your lines to the camera?” I asked trying to picture this.
“I could have leaned back against the bar and talked over my shoulder,” Renee explained.
“There are ways you can do it and make it seem natural. At the time, I was so green. I was thinking, it has to be truthful. I was thinking I would talk to the bartender the way I normally would and that wouldn't be over my shoulder. I didn't understand playing the scene for the camera. I've learned since. Lucy was always good at that. She was really accommodating to the director. Find the camera, play to the camera. It always seemed natural for her to find a way to make it truthful. It's probably something that came to her. I don’t think she thought about it cause Lucy doesn't really analyze that stuff too much. She just does it,” Renee chuckled.
We were watching the clip where Gabrielle pretends the warlord's son is her boyfriend and she walks over and kisses him. “Do you remember your first screen kiss?” I queried.
“My first screen kiss? Hmm,” she thought for a moment. “I think it was on the Mickey Mouse club serial. Teen Angel. I know it wasn't on Xena. I haven't done that many,” she added. “The chariot race in this episode I remember. It was the first time I'd seen something like that! First kiss I can't remember, first chariot race I do,” she laughed out loud.
Gabrielle takes off walking next to Xena who's riding alongside her on Argo. Renee pointed to the screen and said, laughing, "Steve told me he always liked it when Gabrielle was walking behind Xena's horse. She had to walk while Xena rode. He thought that was hilarious.”
Before the chariot scene, Gabrielle, hanging on for dear life, is galloping by on Argo. “Look at that fake horse you’re riding,” I pointed out.
“Oh, yeah. I remember filming that part,” Renee said. “I remember wondering how in the world is this going to look? I saw the final cut, before they fixed the sound, and I didn’t sound like I was on a horse when I was yelling over the gallop. I was thinking, ‘I hope I get a chance to fix that in ADR.’ I didn’t realize we were going to be in ADR for every episode,” Renee chuckled ruefully. “I remember calling Rob and saying, ‘I really think I should fix that dialogue when I was on the horse during the chariot race.’ He said, ‘Don’t you worry, Renee. No problem.’ Little did I know how much time I would be spending looping dialogue.”
“Was there an average amount of time spent on ADR per episode,” I wondered.
“Oh gosh, an hour and a half was a short session for us. Meaning we had only about 20 to 30 cues. Normally there were about 60 to 80 cues and that would take about three and a half hours, depending on how tired we were,” she explained.
“How do you redo the dialogue for an emotional scene when the other actor isn't there for you to play off of the way it would have been on set?” I asked.
Renee sighed. “That's hard. That’s really hard. I have no answer for that. I had a hard time during ‘Friend In Need Part 2.’ I had to redo the dialogue where Gabrielle finds Xena's head and the dialogue in the rain with the samurai. All that was gone. And I had to redo the line where Gabrielle says, ‘Bring me her head!’ I had such a hard time because my voice cracked with emotion during the filming in New Zealand. I remember Bernie Joyce, during ADR in Los Angeles, making me do it over and over and over again until I got that same emotion. In my head I was going, ‘Argh!!!’” Renee laughed and mimed pulling out her hair.
“But I was so pleased she kept pushing because it was one of those moments you will never see again.”
“I know it doesn't apply to TV, but on a movie, is the director around during looping?” I queried.
“Usually the director is there and they’re the ones that keep pushing and pushing until they get the same performance as they did on the day. Bernie Joyce took over that role here in LA,” Renee explained.
“Did you learn something working with her that you can take with you when you direct a movie?” I asked.
“I don't know,” Renee gave a big sigh. “I know how hard it is on the actor. I wouldn’t want to put anyone through it if I had a choice. That’s why you always try to make sure you have really good sound for the actual shooting.”
“You don’t think you could be as harsh as Bernie was?” I prompted.
“I’m sure I would,” Renee laughed. “I would know that it can be done. It depends on the actor. If I think the actor can do it, you just have to keep pushing. But if they’re getting more and more frustrated, then you have to leave them alone.”
We continued watching the chariot race. The scene ended, the episode was over and we were out of time. Renee's son, Miles, was due to wake up from his nap. Renee hit the off button and sat back in her chair.
“You know what's funny?” she began. “I was talking to a woman the other day and she asked me, ‘How do you feel about Xena becoming so iconic?’ I never really thought about it while we were making the show. But now, you see so many television action shows and movies that are female driven. It's quite special to go back and think that Xena was the first of my generation. Now there’s Alias, Dark Angel, Charlie's Angels, the female lead in Matrix. It’s the leather,” Renee laughed. “It’s something about the dominatrix and the woman action hero. Wonder Woman was pretty clean cut,” she chuckled. “I think Xena was unique for its time. Strong, independent, no apologies.”