Interview with RJ. Stewart (Executive Producer)
The Chakram Newsletter: Issue 04
SD: Well, that was one heck of a season finale you gave the viewers! And the big discussion is what was going on between Xena and Callisto at the end. Some people are saying Callisto didn’t think Xena would kill her, so Callisto laughed deliberately to taunt Xena into killing her.
RJ: We played with that. But in the story session, Paul Coyle came up with the twist that Callisto did not want to die at that moment. He laid it out with Xena killing Callisto in a rage — completing the whole cycle between the two characters. We actually did discuss the idea that maybe it was a taunt, but the way it was written and the way it was played, I think Callisto had changed her mind about wanting to die.
SD: That's what I felt. She finally had a reason to live and then, “No more living for you!” I've heard discussions that Xena should not have killed Callisto. She’s supposed to be beyond that cold-blooded killer. Lucy said, “It's time to put this to bed. This is never gonna happen again." That was her take on how she played it. But the emotions on Xena's face as Callisto was dying seemed to run the gamut from rage to sadness to regret. Callisto's last minute change of heart, wanting to live, added a layer of protection to Xena's murdering her. If Callisto hadn’t started to laugh, maybe Xena wouldn’t have killed her.
RJ: If you want my take on it, Xena long ago made the decision, “With everything I did to Callisto's family when she was little, there's nothing I can do to go back and correct that. But she is dangerous. She is a deadly person who I've unleashed on the world and I have to destroy her.” I think she was going to kill her under any circumstances.
SD: No matter what’s been done to you, at some point you take responsibility for your life and your actions?
RJ: It’s not even that. It’s not even who’s responsible for it. I think Xena is very responsible for Callisto and she knows it. She’s also responsible for Ming T'ien. She's got to eliminate them, but she's not running around killing every person she sent in the wrong direction. However, there are certain people who are too dangerous to walk around no matter what the excuses might be for why they are the way they are.
Xena would have killed Callisto sooner, but she needed her to pull off this plan. Whenever we thought of a Callisto “kill me” story, it was always either Callisto needs Xena to do something heroic to kill her or Xena needed Callisto and that’s why Xena kept her alive long enough to accomplish her plan. Because if ever they were facing each other and Xena had the ability to kill Callisto, she would do it. The fact that Callisto’s bad because it’s Xena's responsibility makes it more urgent for Xena to kill her. Xena had a line in “The Debt,” “I've learned to clean up after myself.”
SD: When you made the decision to kill Callisto, was there much discussion about it?
RJ: We tortured ourselves. It was very hard.
SD: Was it harder for you because you created her? (RJ wrote the “Callisto” episode that introduced the character.)
RJ: Very, very hard. I understood the logic, though. It’s not that we couldn't come up with story ideas for the character. We could probably do a Callisto series! But Xena is not about just the villains, it's about our characters' reactions to the villains. And, by God, we played that out with Callisto. So it was a very painful thing to reach that decision.
SD: Can you tell me what led to this episode?
RJ: We actually wanted to do two different episodes. We wanted to do the return of Hope as Gabrielle and we wanted to do the killing of Callisto. The killing of Callisto would have been first and then the story with Hope would have been the cliffhanger. Hope was originally created for the purpose of the adult Hope being a recurring villain. We never got there because by the time she became an adult, we killed her. Rob Tapert said let's do a two-parter and combine them.
It was a very difficult story to work out because we really have explored Callisto and Hope and what Xena and Gabrielle think of them. The focus of our stories is always Xena and Gabrielle and their relationship with each other and with the characters we introduce. We don’t just do straight adventure stories. So here's Gabrielle’s daughter and Xena's arch enemy who helped kill Xena's son and Gabrielle’s husband and what have we not said about them? What was left to explore? The challenge was finding new things to say about these characters. Not finding new things to do because with villains you can always find a villainous thing for them to do. But we want to explore what Xena and Gabrielle think about them — how do they relate to them, how do they react to them.
SD: Did Gabrielle deliberately go into the lava pit with Hope? Or did she fall in by accident? Did Hope drag Gabrielle with her? And why didn't she just push Hope in?
RJ: Hope had to die in order for Xena to live. Gabrielle felt there was no way in the world she could let her daughter, who's already murdered Xena’s son, also be the cause of Xena’s death. Life would not be worth going on for Gabrielle if that happened. She was thinking, “Hope has too many powers. I can’t just go up there and push her in. She'd knock me out and Xena would kill her and then Xena would die because of my deal with Ares.” And all this is going through her mind in a matter of seconds. Maybe when she grabbed Hope is the moment she realized she was going to have to die too.
And then there was the shot of Gabrielle, realizing she’s going to die, looking at Xena over Hope’s shoulder as Gabrielle and Hope are falling into the pit. You’ve got to give Rick Jacobson, the director, and Renee a million pounds of credit for that look. It was awesome!
SD: I was caught off guard by the scene when Hope approached Gabrielle to join Dahak’s followers. She seemed to want Gabrielle to come be her mother.
RJ: Why were you surprised at that?
SD: I guess I assumed she’s all bad.
RJ: You don't think bad people like their mother? It's her mom. She wants her mother's love. She loves Dahak, she loves her mother.
SD: A lot of the conversations seem to be Xena forgiving Gabrielle and Gabrielle never really speaking up or saying, “I forgive you for forgetting about me in ‘The Deliverer.’” Or getting mad at Xena for trying to kill her at the beginning of “The Bitter Suite.” We haven’t seen Gabrielle confronting Xena about any of the things that have gone on this past year.
RJ: That’s a good one! There’s a scene in there.
SD: Is Gabrielle holding back her feelings and emotions?
RJ: I would say the reason she has held things back is because Gabrielle is ultimately a very positive, optimistic person. To go back and dredge up the past when the future is so full of hope is just not her way. She’s a seeker, she’s not a look- in-the-past kind of person.
SD: She is a person who starts with the “now”? Dredging up the past doesn’t serve any purpose for her? She thinks, “Whatever happened, happened and we’re going to start from now between us”?
RJ: I think that’s definitely who she is. And as for Xena’s actions, the way she’s been portrayed and the history we know she has, this is what she does. She had become the evil Xena. Gabrielle lied to her! The person she cares about most in life lied to her! And the result of that lie was the death of Xena’s son. Xena trusts her more than anybody she’s ever trusted in her life and that trust resulted in the death of her son. I always thought the opening of the series, in “Sins Of The Past,” was Xena getting ready to kill herself when she’s burying her weapons. She’s chosen life because of Gabrielle and Gabrielle betrayed her.
SD: Xena’s life is Gabrielle and to lose that…
RJ: Obviously, if Solan hadn’t died and Xena found out Gabrielle had lied about killing Hope, Xena wouldn’t have tried to kill Gabrielle.
SD: Having done interviews over the past year with most of the people working on the show, it keeps coming up that this is a very satisfying place to work.
RJ: I have an enormous amount of gratitude toward Rob for three reasons. Number one, he created this entire world that I’m having so much fun in. The Xena/ Hercules world came out of Rob Tapert’s brain. Number two, he runs the most impressive show I’ve ever seen. That we continue to make such great shows not only here but on Hercules, is a tribute to him. And three, he’s a constant source of new ideas and different directions. It’s a joy and you don't run into that often.
SD: He has a wide variety of interests.
RJ: He does.
SD: Somebody said, people are comfortable in the story meetings to say whatever comes into their minds. No one’s afraid to throw something out for possible use in the story.
RJ: Absolutely. That's very accurate.
SD: There’s a comfort zone?
RJ: Rob's an extremely collaborative personality and brings a lot to the table.
SD: I’ve heard that the fourth season opens with a two-parter called “Adventures In The Sin Trade.”
RJ: Do you know where I got that title? Dylan Thomas wrote a short story called “The Adventures in the Skin Trade.” Then William Goldman wrote a book about the movie industry called “Adventures in the Screen Trade.” And there is something in the opening episodes that you'll see that will make sense of the title. Also, we started the series with an episode called “Sins Of The Past.”
SD: We’ve seen Xena do some incredible physical feats, i.e. jump about a quarter mile from land to a boat in “The Lost Mariner.” Why didn't she jump after Gabrielle into the lava pit to try and save her?
RJ: Perhaps we’ll see what happened when we start the fourth season.
SD: To be continued, right?
RJ: (smiling)