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General Rumors about XWP Archive
DECEMBER 1997
Here is the archive!!!
CONSIDER THIS A WARNING!
These babies cover December 1997...that's why we call it an ARCHIVE!Last update: 04-01-98
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Here is the archive!!!
CONSIDER THIS A WARNING!
These babies cover December 1997...that's why we call it an ARCHIVE!Last update: 04-01-98
12-17-97. When Hudson Leick
was down
under shooting HTLJ's "Yes Virginia There is a
Hercules", playing
a producer named Liz no less, she was asked to stick
around for
two more Herk episodes! Perhaps we can look forward to
Hercules
switching bodies with Callisto? Hey!!! It worked with
Xena!
12-17-97. As reported in
ZENtertainment
#89: "TV GUIDE reports ENTERTAINMENT TONIGHT's Julie
Moran will
guest star, and sing, on a musical episode of XENA:
WARRIOR
PRINCESS that will air next February. She'll play a
friend of
Gabrielle's who welcomes Gaby home to her native
village." As
most HCNB's know by now, this episode is BITTER SUITE,
and ET has
already aired their two episodes covering Moran's
experiences.
12-17-97. As reported in
ZENtertainment
#89: "UNIVERSAL STUDIOS Home Video will release YOUNG
HERCULES, a
new live-action movie featuring pre-LEGENDARY JOURNEYS
adventures, on February 17th, 100 days before its
broadcast on
TV." Outtakes from the movie were used in HTLJ's 4th
season
episode "Regrets I've Had a Few". There is buzz that
more
material will be taken from "Young Hercules" later on
in Herk's
4th season. Also, the news is that Young Herk is still
looking
for a buyer for broadcasting. So, if you need a
half-hour
original first-run strip show for youngsters, just call
Renaissance Pictures. They are waiting for you!
12-17-97. From an
interview with R.J. Stewart that took place on July
3, 1997:
WW: What is XENA's dark past?
RJ: The details of the back story, we
continue to
create. A lot of it we're exploring next season. I'm
not gonna
tell you anything about that.
WW: No sneak previews?
RJ: No, but I will say that an important
part of it
takes place in China. We're doing XENA goes to China,
and we got
a great actress, Jacqueline Kim, to play her mentor.
WW: What about incorporating time travel?
RJ: One idea that I had for a while is with
a villain
named Callisto. I've played with the idea that Callisto
escapes
from the ancient world into New York.
WW. Modern day New York?
RJ: Yeah, and XENA has to chase her there,
but we
haven't gotten to that. That would be fifth season when
we're out
of ideas. (Laughter)...
WW: Is the character XENA striving or
searching for
something?
RJ: We decided not to give her a specific
goal, you
know, like 'the-one-arm-man' in the The Fugitive. She's
a knight
errant looking for places to do good and people to
help. She
lives her life as a service to others to redeem herself
for all
the terrible things that she's done in the past.
WW: Is she aware of her path?
RJ: Oh yeah. XENA 'is' searching for
something, she's
searching for peace, and yet she's resigned that she's
never
going to get that. She could never just give up
everything and go
live in the mountains someplace, because the things
that she's
done in the past require her to keep getting out there
and trying
to do good. What makes our show unique and HERCULES to
a certain
extent to, is that our characters are just there to
help people.
They're not hired guns. They're not marshals. They
don't have an
agenda. What makes XENA an exciting character to write
is that
she feels driven to help people because of the bad
things she's
done in the past.
WWDo these past ghosts come up in certain
episodes?
RJ: Oh yeah, very serious ghosts.
WW: In your opinion, what is the mass
appeal about
XENA. Is it the mythology, the woman lead?
RJ: An article I read the other day asked
'Is XENA a
guy show? Is XENA a girl show? Is XENA a gay show? Is
XENA a kids
show... We appeal to so many different sorts of people.
I have no
idea why we're successful; who the hell knows. But I
know what I
do and what we do and hopefully that makes it
successful. The
simplest answer is Lucy Lawless. She's a great star and
a
wonderful actress. You can't underestimate that. Also
the
uniqueness of having a woman warrior. I always wanted
to do a
woman hero.
WW: Is it hard for you to write a woman
hero?
RJ: I don't think so. It's hard to write
any good
character. But I don't think it's any harder to write a
female
hero. I think it's easier in some ways. Not that I want
to
diminish our great efforts, but you can do things with
a female
character, that would be old hat with a male character,
but
suddenly you do it with a female character and it looks
fresh and
different. I'm passionately in love with the Gabrielle
and XENA
characters. I want to protect them and nurse them and I
want
audiences to understand them. I'm also conscious of the
broad
appeal we have; I never want to get too specific.
WW: Do you read your fan e-mail?
RJ: I didn't for the longest time, but I
interviewed
recently for a fan magazine called "Whoosh," which is
[named
after] the sound that the weapons in Xena make when
they swing.
It's a XENA fan magazine. In it a woman wrote a
critical review
of my work. At the end of the article was the e-mail
address of
the author. So I sent her e-mail. This lady has a
love/hate
relationship with me, you know loved my work, hated my
work. She
called me an Agent of Evil, which I thought was really
funny. So
I e-mailed her and signed it, 'Your Ever Loving Agent
of Evil.'
She and I have had a pretty funny correspondence.
WW: Do you ever go specifically online to
look for
what audiences are saying about XENA?
RJ: I don't look for it. When I discovered
Whooosh
Magazine, I stumbled on a whole bunch of it. I found
this
'Rate-A-XENA' page where the fans rate the episodes.
It's kind of
fun. But just to keep it in perspective, "Rate-A-XENA'
gets about
400 fans voting. They're 400 great fans. I wouldn't
want to ever
lose them, but let's face it, they could all ascend to
heaven in
the same day and it wouldn't hurt our ratings. You
can't take it
too seriously. The woman that I correspond with, the
one that
calls me the Agent of Evil, she's very funny and I
enjoy the
correspondence, but we don't talk much about the show.
We created
the show and we've run it for two years without taking
that
feedback very seriously. There's another guy on the
show, STEVE
SEARS (supervising producer), who's really into net. He
keeps me
informed as to what's going on on the net. I kind of
get a kick
out of it when I hear that they're lynching me. When
they love
me, I like that too.
WW: It's great if you can get immediate
feedback.
RJ: Yeah. Although, it is not great if you
make the
immediate feedback a part of your day. It can be a
distraction.
It's fun if you say once a week "I'm bored. I want to
know what
the feedback on the net is."...
WW: Is XENA accepting unsolicited scripts?
RJ: No. We have pretty limited freelance
opportunities. This season we'll give out maybe two
more
assignments at the end of the year. We're pretty filled
up right
now. It's not that we don't use a fair amount of
freelancers. We
have me and two other writers on staff. Plus we have
two
freelancers we use quite a bit. One of the painful
things about
getting really good freelancers is that if they're
really good,
they don't stay freelancers very long and somebody
hires them.
One of our aces last year was a writer named Paul
Coyle, who got
hired by HERCULES. He was writing XENA episodes and the
producer
(ROB TAPERT is the Producer for both shows) says, "Oh,
this guy
is good for HERCULES." Rob does a real good job of
balancing it
out....
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