by Sharon Delaney
The Chakram Newsletter: Issue 16
I’ve described how I set up for these interviews, but neither Lucy nor Renee has ever seen me do it. The one other time I conducted in-person interviews with them in New Zealand, it was on the spur of the moment and I just had some scribbled notes on a pad.
But, if you've been in the club since the beginning, I once described how I lay out heaps of cut-up questions on a table. Then, like a jigsaw puzzle. I spend an hour or so arranging them in what I hope will be lines of questioning that will follow each other.
The reason for me putting this picture in your mind is that this interview was conducted with Renee the Tuesday after she and Lucy filmed the last scenes on Xena they would do together. Each had some pickup shots to do later that week, but they wouldn’t be working together again.
Renee came over to the hotel where I was staying in Auckland and settled herself onto the chair opposite me. There was a glass-topped table between us upon which I had spread out all my notes and the tape recorder.
We were mainly going to talk about “To Helicon And Back.” I started in:
“Gabrielle really went through some changes in this episode,” I stated seriously.
I couldn’t figure out what I had said, but carried on as if I hadn't noticed.
“There was all kinds of death and destruction and Gabrielle was in charge,” I added.
The giggle turned into a laugh and Renee tried to hide it by putting her hand over her mouth.
“Okay,” I gave in. “What did I do? What did I do?” I said, mimicking Katharine Hepburn in Bringing Up Baby.
Renee pointed to the table and said, “I love all the notes.”
“You're watching me at work,” I told her, blushing. “You've never seen me do this before.”
“It's great!” she chuckled.
“Pages and pages of them - all cut up,” I explained.
“Jeez,” she said, sounding a bit astounded.
“It works great,” I went on. “While you're giving your answer, I can let my eyes roam over them and see if I have a follow-up question related to what you're saying.”
She pulled herself together, missing the twitch around the corner of her mouth that kept threatening to burst into laughter again, and we plowed on.
“‘To Helicon And Back’ was Rob's take on Saving Private Ryan?” I asked.
“Actually,” Renee responded, “the way it was originally written, it was more Gabrielle being Patton.”
I nodded. “Liz Friedman, who wrote the script with Vanessa Place, is a Patton fan.”
“That definitely came through in the first version of the script,” Renee added. “But what Rob initially wanted, in the sixth season, was to balance Gabrielle by showing her more sensitive side. Especially after the fifth season where she was trying to be the warrior protecting the pregnant Xena. We needed to find the original Gabrielle and link those two parts of her life together. That was my goal after speaking with Rob on what his plans were for the character during the sixth season.”
“There was a trilogy of episodes dealing with Gabrielle and what she was feeling about killing and violence, wasn't there?” I said thinking back over the sixth season.
“‘Abyss,’ ‘Legacy’ and ‘Who’s Gurkan’ all dealt with that,” Renee explained. “When the script came for ‘Helicon,’ I felt this Patton-like character was too far like the Gabrielle we were trying to stay away from. And it was even more extreme than the warrior she had been during the fifth season. So we worked on the script to find a way to bring the sentimental quality of Gabrielle into the story.”
I had interviewed Liz and Vanessa earlier and they described some scenes that didn’t make the final cut of the episode. I brought them up with Renee.
“Liz mentioned a scene with one of Bellerophon's men in a forest?” I reminded Renee.
“We actually did film that scene,” she said. “The man is about to find Xena and Gabrielle and he would have given their position away. Gabrielle pulls out her sais and is about to kill him. Xena stops her and says. ‘Don’t - we can take care of him without having to kill him.’ She puts a version of the pinch on him to keep him quiet.
“We filmed quite a bit of this episode that didn't make the show.” Renee said ruefully. “There was more of the supporting characters, too, so you really had a personal relationship with them. You cared when they were dying and experienced the regret and loss that Gabrielle and Xena felt.”
One of the most surprising moments for me in the episode was when Gabrielle essentially had to order an Amazon to do something that would result in her death. They needed someone to make a run for it on the beach and draw the fire of the catapults while the rest of the Amazons ran for cover on the beach. I asked Renee about this scene.
“In the original version,” she started. “Gabrielle orders her to go out and be a target. Then it was changed to Gabrielle asking if anyone will volunteer. That's the way we shot it. Then, in the final version, Rob recut it so we went back to the first version. He thought, after seeing the final cut. that he needed to have something quite strong, a moment where Gabrielle realizes the situation she's in. She has to give that order.”
“Michael Hurst, the director, said on stage at a convention that the two of you didn’t really want to do it that way,” I told her.
“It was difficult,” Renee said thoughtfully. “We were trying to put a character into Patton and Saving Private Ryan that wouldn't function as heroically as they did.
“I mean, I'd love to play Patton,” she laughed. “I think that would be so much fun. But it's not Gabrielle. I understand they wanted to put Gabrielle into a situation that made her uncomfortable and see how she would react to it. But she's not Xena. We had to find a balance between what she's been through in the beginning of the season up until this point.”
“Gabrielle’s not a general,” I said, “a battle leader who's used to making that kind of decision.”
“There was a scene where she was supposed to rally the troops,” Renee explained. “That was really a Patton speech. It was changed to make it more of an uplifting beat rather than cheering the Amazons on into battle. They took out the ‘Kill 'em all’ attitude. The aired version showed the Amazons realizing the loss they'd shared and brought them dignity. ‘The Amazon Nation will continue even if we all die. Like our sisters, we'll go in and do our best.’ That was the feeling we were trying to convey.”
“I read that speech in the script,” I told her, “and it was very gung ho. The way it was rewritten and the way you played it was…”
“...more somber,” Renee finished my thought. “I don't know if that was the best call. It could have gone either way,” she thought out loud. “I think maybe there should have been a moment when Gabrielle was tougher. But it was so hard with the character.”
There was a really emotional scene between Xena and Gabrielle right after the speech. Xena sees the pain this is causing Gabrielle and comes up to her. Gabrielle says, “Xena, don't. Don't try to make me feel better about this. Half of my tribe lies dead on the beach. Now I have to be as cold and ruthless as I can be.”
“I remember Michael really wanted Gabrielle on the verge of breaking,” Renee remembered. “She’s trying to hold it together. If Xena comes up and tries to comfort her, she would feel the loss too much.”
“Did you break down during that scene?” I asked.
Renee chuckled. “Oh, we just do the scene and go on to lunch afterwards.”
It was an amazing image. Xena and Gabrielle raw with pain, the wounded souls of both open for us to see - someone yells, “Cut,” and Lucy and Renee return to themselves and toddle off to lunch. If I hadn't seen it myself while filming “Who's Gurkhan,” I wouldn't believe it was possible. I will never cease to be enthralled by this facet of the acting profession.
“The Amazons didn't seem to be the warriors we've come to expect them to be,” I commented. “I wonder if, faced with fitting Saving Private Ryan into a Xena story, they had to play the part of boys just off the boat who had never been in battle before?”
Renee laughed. “This was the extinction of the Amazon race,” she began. “These were the last few Amazons in the world. Maybe that affected them. Maybe only the young, inexperienced ones were left.”
Okay, I thought. I can buy that. Teenage Amazons, yeah, that'll do it. Nah. they still seemed wussy. Oh well, that's Hollywood — can’t keep their Amazons straight.
Now we get to the sticky part. I had not read the scripts before doing this interview and had no idea what was going to happen in the finale. I thought it was a simple question when I asked, “If someone asked you what Gabrielle’s life would be like in the future, what would you say? You know, the stuff we're not going to see because the series is over.”
Renee looked at me a moment. “Do you know what happens in Japan?” she asked.
“No. I haven’t asked and no one has told me,” I answered.
She thought for a moment. “Let’s just say Gabrielle has some newfound skills I’m sure she'll want to play with. ‘Wow. I didn’t know I could do that!’” she chuckled. “I think she’s going to keep traveling and righting wrongs.”
“She'll stay out and be an adventurer? She hasn’t had enough?” I queried, wondering what Renee wasn't telling me.
“No, she hasn't. I think Xena's rubbed off on her too much. I can’t imagine her sitting back and not getting involved,” Renee explained without giving anything away. Drat!
I thought I’d dig a little more. “Geoff Short told me about some interesting photos dealing with the ‘waters of life,’” I said slyly.
“‘Waters of life,’ ha!” Renee chortled.
“He said something about you not having a cup,” I tried again.
“No cup, right. There was a funny moment during that scene. The take was actually quite wide, so you really couldn't see the detail on Lucy’s face. I went up to her and I had a bit of water in my mouth I was supposed to put into her mouth. I went to put it on her lips and she started making this grimace and turning away from me,” Renee laughed. “I'm trying to pull her face back, forcing her, so I can put the water on her lips. And she’s squirming and squinting and blinking - trying to stay away from me.” The laughter increases. “Finally I just started laughing. She didn’t realize we were filming.”
“What did she think you were doing!” I asked in amazement.
“Just trying to drool on her, I guess,” Renee laughed harder. “She finally looked toward the camera and said, ‘Oh, are we rolling?’ It was hilarious.”
“She didn't remember the kiss between the two of you in ‘Return Of The Valkyrie,’” I told her.
“She didn't remember the kiss!” Renee said, outraged, eyebrows heading for the ceiling.
“No,” I said.
Renee burst into laughter. “I love it.”
“That's okay,” I said consolingly. “She also doesn't remember biting Kevin Smith's chest in ‘Amphipolis Under Siege.’”
“She didn’t remember that either!” she exclaimed. “Selective memory. I should try that.”
I continued. “I casually asked her, ‘How was the kiss with Gabrielle’? There was this puzzled silence. ‘Did I kiss Renee? When did I kiss Renee?’ she asked me. ‘The Valkyrie episodes,’ I said trying to waken her memory. And she just roared with laughter.”
“That is so funny,” Renee said, shaking her head at her absentminded friend.
In an earlier interview with Renee (issue #10), we talked about the difference, for an actor, between kissing a stranger and someone you know. “Was it easier to do that scene with Lucy than it might have been with an actress you’d just met?” I asked.
“To be honest, it wasn’t much of a kiss,” she said thinking back. “Wake up Sleeping Beauty. Lucy probably didn’t remember it because we don’t make a big deal out of it.”
Speaking of big deals - I pictured the explosions going off behind Gabrielle as she ran along the beach in “Helicon.”
“How close were they?” I queried.
“Close enough so that I could feel the heat,” Renee laughed. “But I wasn't in danger. They were just big.”
“Geoff caught some shots of you diving into a somersault in front of the explosions,” I told her.
“I saw one of those where I look like I’m in midair!” she said in amazement. “That’s hilarious.”
“I was wondering what they use to simulate bombs?” I asked.
“It’s some sort of liquid combustible, liquid,” Renee explained.
“Did you have to do a lot of running?”
“The first time I stayed too far away from the flames,” she laughed. “The second time I was close enough. It was really quite exciting. They time the explosions after the speed of my run. Once I cross a safety line, they set the explosions off.”
“So the explosions aren’t chasing you, they're going off as you go past?” I clarified.
“Yeah, otherwise the timing could be disastrous,” she said with the wisdom of six years doing stunts on Xena.
Another traumatic moment in the story for Gabrielle, Xena and the viewers was Gabrielle arguing to leave the wounded behind. Gabrielle's battle leader's logic was they would just slow them down. Xena's humane logic was that Bellerophon would kill them.
As a viewer, I was stunned at the words coming out of Gabrielle's mouth. As what she was saying registered with Gabrielle, you could see her confusion. The pain on Xena's face, as she watched this situation tear apart her kind-hearted soulmate, was heartbreaking.
As I described the scene, Renee nodded. “There was so much debate about that scene,” she explained. “Liz and Vanessa had written the dialogue with Gabrielle wanting to leave them behind. Then it was changed to Xena making that decision. I can't remember why we changed it back. I had a hard time with Gabrielle leaving the wounded. That was my stance. But I lost out on that one because Gabrielle has to keep thinking and moving ahead.
“In my mind, it was so against the character of Gabrielle and maybe that's what I was having trouble letting go of,” she added. “Gabrielle is a healer. She's the one always nursing the sick. Why would she leave the wounded behind if they're alive. It just didn't make sense. And yet, being in the scene, once I went along with the decision, it seemed to work.”
“Was it a hard scene for all three of you?” I asked curiously.
“We had a hard time filming it,” she nodded. “Lucy, Tsianina and I didn't really figure out what that scene was about until halfway through. It was really bizarre. Finally we realized it was Gabrielle in the heat of the moment and Xena realizing how far Gabrielle has gone. Normally you have an idea how to play a scene. That one was strange, very strange.”
“Gabrielle was furious when she found out Varia had tried to kill her,” I reminded Renee.
“I didn't see Tsianina's beat as truly being sorry. I was just so outraged. ‘How could you try to
kill me!’” Renee laughed. “But when I saw the finished episode, I thought that's actually quite sweet because she was truly regretful of the incident and the position she was in. But I didn't pick that up while we were filming.”
Renee had to head off to do some ADR work on a previously filmed episode that was still in post production. As I looked at her curled up on the chair, dressed casually and looking quite relaxed. I wondered what the past six years had been like for her.
“More than anything. I learned about my own level of tolerance and perseverance,” she said thoughtfully. “How to get through six years of physically demanding work. It's been a great film school, but also personal training. I remember telling one of the people who was there that last day that it was like boot camp,” Renee laughed. “And in many ways it was. We're out there working in the rain and mud and cold. It brings out the strength you have within yourself to keep going. That was really good for me to learn.”
“Not something you would have gone through on a sitcom,” I chuckled.
“No, not even on a drama, which I'm ready for now. I just want to sit somewhere in an office and speak with real clothes on,” she laughed. “But I would do the whole thing over again if I knew then what I was going to be going through for the next six years.”
“You would?” I said, somehow feeling good that she'd said this.
“Definitely,” Renee said with conviction. “Because it's taught me so much about myself and working with other people. It’s been really good.”