Background (01-22)
Joining the Xenaverse (23-28)
THE PRODIGAL (29-41)
Writing for the Show (42-44)
ALTARED STATES (45-50)
REMEMBER NOTHING (51-63)
A SOLSTICE CAROL (64-71)
HERE SHE COMES...MISS AMPHIPOLIS (72-83)
THE QUEST (84-93)
A COMEDY OF EROS (94-105)
MATERNAL INSTINCTS (106-111)
THE BITTER SUITE (112-123)
KING CON (124-127)
TSUNAMI (128-133)
A FAMILY AFFAIR (134-139)
Rest of the Fourth Season (140-141)
DEVI (142-147)
Biography

Background

BRET RUDNICK:
^[01] If I've done my research correctly, I believe Xena is not your first television writing job. I've seen credits for you for Arthur Hailey's Hotel (1983-1988) and V (1984-1985).

CHRIS MANHEIM:
^[02] V was the first and only time I ever wrote for the sci-fi world. But it was a lot of fun to do.

RUDNICK:
^[03] Did you find that as a genre show, did that whet your appetite for something like Xena?

MANHEIM:
^[04] All I can remember about that V period was they kept saying "Use this actor, use this character" and then they'd call me at home and say "No, no, you have to write it a different way" or "He's not available we have to use someone else". There were many changes. It became their Christmas episode so I had to shoehorn in those references. It was a very confusing experience. [laughs] But I had the best time. I never read science fiction, never have. As a younger child I was into fairy tales, but I never was really into sci-fi. But I got that assignment from V and just went to town over the "star child" thing and the cloning. All that seemed so cool.

RUDNICK:
^[05] It must feel really good when that happens.

MANHEIM:
^[06] It did for me. I had such a good time writing the story and I felt very validated. I didn't revisit the whole genre or anything close to it until I came here, not that you could call Xena sci-fi. Xena is fantasy but there are similarities. There's a lot of action. But after V, I ended up turning into a mystery writer. I really like mysteries. I don't read a lot of them, but I was a huge Nancy Drew fan.

RUDNICK:
^[07] That certainly comes in handy because you did Murder She Wrote (1984-1996), is that not right?

MANHEIM:
^[08] Yes, for a long time. I also wrote a Columbo (1971-1997). Back then, Peter [Falk] used to develop four stories for every one he shot. He has a whole shelfload of things, mine among them, that never got shot but were developed.

^[09] He bought some of the Ed McBain books, the 87th Precinct books. I was given a book to read to see if I could adapt it. I just hated it. [both laugh] I thought there was a lot of gratuitous violence. I said "I appreciate being considered, but I just can't do it. I just don't find these characters appealing at all and I don't know how I'd turn it into a Columbo." They said "Well here, try this one," and they gave me another one. Once I weeded out half the story, the other part made a lot of sense. It was old, it was written in 1957 or so. The technology had to be updated, because you could solve that mystery in a heartbeat given today's technology. Once we brought it up to date and made a few changes, that's when it got interesting. I had a real good time there.

Peter 'Lieutenant Columbo' Falk.

^[10] But boy, oh boy, he [Peter Falk] is *so* much like Columbo! He really knows the character. You do appreciate his input. But those meetings would go on five to seven hours! I thought everything would be wrapped up and as I headed for the door he'd pull one of those "Chris, just one more thing..." [both laugh] And I'd be there for another hour. But he's a great raconteur. He can tell you stories that make you laugh and laugh. It was quite an experience. I think one of those Ed McBain stories made it to television, but not mine. It was fun, it just never got made, which was disappointing.

RUDNICK:
^[11] It's very clever, though, to develop so many stories and then pick from what you perceive as the best to make. I wonder how common that is in television.

MANHEIM:
^[12] It's not usual. Back then, though, he was the ratings king and he certainly used it.

RUDNICK:
^[13] I don't know if you know about this or not, but there was a Murphy Brown (1988-1998) episode...

MANHEIM:
^[14] [starts to laugh... she knows!]

RUDNICK:
^[15] ...where a character played by Mary Gross was named Chris Manheim ["He-Ho, He-Ho, It's Off to Lamaze We Go", episode number 23, season 4, first released 04/27/92)]. Is that in any way connected to you or is it total coincidence?

MANHEIM:
^[16] One of my best friends, he and his partner ran Murphy Brown and he did it as a joke. [laughs] We actually got Steve [Peterman] into the writing business. He had been an actor, and when he hurt his knee, he was sidelined with the injury. My former partner and I had been after him to write and said "Now is the perfect time." He got a partner and started writing. That was all it took, boom, he was off and running. I don't know why he did it, I didn't know it was coming on the air. He said "You might want to watch tonight's episode" and I did. Sure enough, there I was. I don't know why they picked that *character* but... [laughs] But it was just a goof.

RUDNICK:
^[17] It was great to open up a whole new career for someone that way.

MANHEIM:
^[18] I'm always asking people to write. I think we need good writers. I'm constantly asking people to pick up a pen and grab a piece of paper. That's the way I write, I don't write on computer. Eventually I have to put the story on computer, but that's the last thing I do.

RUDNICK:
^[19] So you do all your notes and sketching and such with pen and paper?

MANHEIM:
^[20] Mm-hm. It makes me a day or two slower than everyone else. I have to take an extra day or two just to put it into the computer. I have a better link with my brain and hands that way. With a keyboard, I just freeze up, I really do. It intimidates me quite frankly. I know just how to get things in and out of a computer and I know nothing else about them. I probably could just use a word processor. But I do have a big computer. I keep saying during a long hiatus one year I'll learn how to use it more, but I just haven't done it yet.

RUDNICK:
^[21] Things are made a lot easier nowadays with "point and click", especially if you have a MAC as I do. You don't really have to know how it works so much.

MANHEIM:
^[22] [hesitant] Yeah, but... I'm still reluctant. I still keep wondering about things like this Y2K thing.

Joining the Xenaverse

RUDNICK:
^[23] Now how did you come to the world of Xena from the other television shows you'd been writing?

MANHEIM:
^[24] Frankly, I had been unemployed for about three years. When Peter Fisher left Murder She Wrote it was kind of a clean sweep out of there. I took a year off to write a screenplay, and when I came back...

RUDNICK:
^[25] "Who are you?"

MANHEIM:
^[26] Yeah, it was amazing. I was really astonished because up to that point I had taken time off before. I had taken a year off about ten years prior to write something and had no problem getting back in. But the business has changed since then. Now you get short orders, like six episodes for a new series, that kind of thing. There is no freelance world. When there was, I loved being a freelancer. I just didn't like being stuck on one show. That was a glorious time. You could switch genres, you could go all over the place. Nowadays that's just not the case.

^[27] I ended up writing a spec Picket Fences (1992) because I really liked the show. That started getting me noticed again. I sent it over here and Steve Sears read it and recommended me. That's how I got in the door. We pitched around ideas and they had been looking to do a Gabrielle show, Xena-lite they called it. That fell to me and I did the show. They seemed to like it but they weren't sure I could write Xena since she hadn't been in it much. That was THE PRODIGAL (18/118). They had me back in to see if I could write Xena and that was ALTARED STATES (19/119).

^[28] You just don't know if you're going to be able to write for a show until you try it, no matter what other things you've written. You may not be right for this particular show. We see that here. We have freelancers come in and they seem fine and their stuff seems fine, but unless you have a knack for the show, it just doesn't work out.

THE PRODIGAL

Gabrielle props up a soused Meleager in THE PRODIGAL.

RUDNICK:
^[29] As you were doing THE PRODIGAL (19/119) and you were focusing in on the Gabrielle character, you also had the wonderful creation of the Meleager character as well.

MANHEIM:
^[30] Tim Thomerson did a wonderful job.

RUDNICK:
^[31] You also gave Gabrielle some of her idiosyncrasies we see for the first time. She's a bad pan pipe player, for one thing.

MANHEIM:
^[32] That was funny, because the tune she was playing, if you go back and look at it real hard, was not the tune I was hearing when I wrote it. It's been so long since I've seen it. The tune was so much in contrast to what I had written her mood was supposed to be. To me, it was jarring. But as a freelancer, as I was at the time, you have no say as to what you're going to see on the screen.

RUDNICK:
^[33] At the time, did you have any thoughts about the Xena/Gabrielle relationship?

MANHEIM:
^[34] I saw the pilot. When I wrote THE PRODIGAL (19/119) only a couple of episodes had aired. Certainly there was a much more complex relationship as the season progressed. Back then I was so focused on who Gabrielle was, her relationship with her family, I didn't think much about Xena. I know the rest of the staff here was concerned with whether or not I could write Xena and I had similar concerns. I had never written a character as abrupt as Xena. Remember, I had last written the character Jessica Fletcher, who was the soul of discretion, putting things so politely. Xena struck me as incredibly abrupt and quite rude, to tell you the truth.

RUDNICK:
^[35] The other thing I remember from that episode is that there's almost a mini-homage to It Happened One Night (Frank Capra, 1934) when Gabrielle is doing the hitch-hiking scene. In the film, showing the leg got the ride, but Gabrielle had to work a bit harder.

MANHEIM:
^[36] You're absolutely right. I certainly had that in mind.

RUDNICK:
^[37] She had to pretend to be "ten months" pregnant, which I thought was hilarious.

MANHEIM:
^[38] [laughs] That was a fun show, I'm glad to revisit it.

RUDNICK:
^[39] It's a favorite of mine, personally.

MANHEIM:
^[40] That's rare, because without Xena in them, many don't like those episodes.

RUDNICK:
^[41] I liked the themes of shame and failure under pressure. That worked well for both Meleager *and* Gabrielle. Was there anything specifically that inspired that episode for you? I ask that because I notice in your work you seem to do a lot of "family oriented" themes.

Writing for the Show

MANHEIM:
^[42] Sometimes that's just the luck of the draw. Whoever's up next to do the next show gets it. COMEDY OF EROS (46/222), for example, was a show I'd wanted to do for awhile. It was a stand-alone episode and so that was fine. But in terms of things like the "Britannia" cycle, it was pretty much the luck of the draw I got MATERNAL INSTINCTS (57/311). Pretty much. I do tend to gravitate toward family issues because my favourite kind of writing is that layered, intricate, complicated relationship. How do you come to terms when you have diverse feelings for a person? That's the kind of thing I love to write.

RUDNICK:
^[43] There are themes that hit home very hard when you watch these episodes. You do a very good job of bringing these things out and getting people to think about them.

MANHEIM:
^[44] That's very nice of you to say, I'm very glad you respond that way because that's certainly my intent. It's all about feelings and emotions of heart. I think we all have our strengths, and I think a strength of mine is the relationship type stuff.

ALTARED STATES

Gabrielle, whacked out on henbane laced nutbread in ALTARED STATES.

RUDNICK:
^[45] Getting next to ALTARED STATES (19/119), there's one thing I have to ask about or I'd be doing a large part of the audience a grave injustice. That was the first episode that seemed to openly acknowledge the subtext in that first scene where Gabrielle and Xena are in the lake and they're fishing.

MANHEIM:
^[46] [devilishly] Yeah!

RUDNICK:
^[47] You've got double entendres flying thick and fast all over the place. I was curious as to the background of that scene and what were you thinking about as you wrote it. Was this an issue in your mind or did it just happen to come out that way?

MANHEIM:
^[48] No, it was definitely in my mind. Those were kind of marching orders, too. The scene originated with Rob [Tapert] if I remember correctly. He's a huge fishing fan. He wanted to put that in, and it gives us a good sexy start to a show that is not a sexy show when it comes down to a father attempting to kill his son. So it gives us a little spice to start off with. I think it got a lot tamer.

^[49] When I first wrote it I didn't know how far to go so I really went with it. They said "You know, we want to pull back a little bit." [both laugh] Those were the days when we were really having a good time with it. We were just discovering the subtexters and having a lot of fun with it. It was very deliberate, but it wasn't my idea. I had started the show with the smaller boy running through the woods. Rob was the one who put them in the lake, fishing. You definitely have to credit Rob with that. He... he has a vision. [both laugh]

RUDNICK:
^[50] I've been told that ALTARED STATES was one of, if perhaps not the only episode, to actually run under time originally. We got a lot of scenic vista shots to fill in the needed time.

REMEMBER NOTHING

Xena remembers something from her past in REMEMBER NOTHING.

MANHEIM:
^[51] Another one of mine also ran short, REMEMBER NOTHING (26/202). That was my first script as part of the full time staff. I had to go back in and add scenes. In one sense it's challenging, but in another it's no fun, because everything you write in that case is padding. If it wasn't, it would have been in there to begin with.

^[52] I was told I could not use Xena and Gabrielle, they were off doing other shows, and I had to make use of her brother and her betrothed. I had to fill three minutes. I wrote two scenes with them. That worked out so well only because I got to explore the relationship between those two best friends and their relationship with Xena. I think the actors enjoyed working with each other. They were two very relaxed, nice scenes.

^[53] Sometimes I think our actors get nervous working with Lucy because she's the star. But these were just two guys having fun together and I think that shows. I don't think that hurt the project to have those two extra scenes. They could be deleted and the story wouldn't suffer, but I thought it filled it out nicely and gave you a shot at seeing who that younger brother of hers was.

RUDNICK:
^[54] REMEMBER NOTHING (26/202) seemed like a great homage to It's a Wonderful Life (Frank Capra, 1946), the Frank Capra film. I don't know if you're familiar with fan interpretations of this episode, but some fans have used this episode to develop a theory that Xena and Gabrielle are soul-mates of a sort, that their relationship transcends time and space. No matter where they were at, or when, those two would get together because they were meant to. If you buy into that interpretation, you can see this "Uber-Xena" effect in this different timeline.

MANHEIM:
^[55] That's very interesting. That is very definitely something you will see toward the end of this season. It's just the way it turns out. I don't think anyone will look back at REMEMBER NOTHING (26/202) and say "Ah, that's where it all started." I didn't know that was anyone's interpretation, but it's a good one. It's certainly one we've brought to fruition toward the end of the season. You'll see that this is played out.

RUDNICK:
^[56] That's good to hear. This episode was quite popular with many fans.

MANHEIM:
^[57] I have to tell you -- let's stop right here -- that was a story idea that Steve Sears had the first season. I don't know why it never got done but they shelved it. When I came on board, a script fell out but it didn't work and no one could figure out how to crack it. It just did not work. They needed something in a hurry so I went back to this idea of Steve's and made some changes. But what I never touched, because it was brilliant, unlike It's a Wonderful Life where everyone forgets him but he knows where he was, she remembers but everyone else doesn't.

^[58] It was a stroke of genius. I had the best time and I had to do it really fast. While I have gotten faster on this show, I had not, up to then, been a very fast writer. I like to take a full two weeks to do a script. I did not have that luxury. I just caught fire with the idea. They gave me the story one day and I came in the next day saying "This is how I want to do it!" I was really jazzed. It was wonderful to write.

RUDNICK:
^[59] Was there a significance in one scene where Xena looks lovingly at a piece of jewelry when she returns to the village?

MANHEIM:
^[60] When she's looking in the jewelry box? [thinks] There was no particular significance to it that I remember. I do remember writing the scene but I can't remember why. I think it was more to do with her homecoming than it was anything else. A sense of being home again.

RUDNICK:
^[61] We've seen before how close she was to her brother, and how terrible it must have been for her to have to live that moment to be responsible for his death.

MANHEIM:
^[62] Oh, boy, I tell you. I'm a pretty easygoing person. But that was one area I felt very strongly about. I had lost my own younger brother and that was another thing that made the episode so special to me. It made me real tenacious about hanging on to the fact that this is an enormous, momentous decision for her. She can't blithely say "Well I'll sacrifice my brother because I love Gabrielle." I just could not, no matter what, make it that cavalier a decision.

^[63] To me, that was the most important, pivotal moment. She had to understand what she was doing for her brother's good as well as Gabrielle's and for the Greater Good under all circumstances. We went round and round over exactly what should be going on there. I said "You have to keep the brother paramount, you just can't kill off your brother and not have it mean something." I think it came out pretty well. It was a good moment, I certainly intended it to be in the writing.

A SOLSTICE CAROL

RUDNICK:
^[64] Then you got selected to do A SOLSTICE CAROL (33/209).

MANHEIM:
^[65] You notice most of the softies get thrown to me. "We can't have a lot of fighting and it's gotta be a six day show." Yes, that was our Christmas episode. That was another fun one. It has everything but the kitchen sink in it. Christmas, the very first Santa Claus. The donkey story was from R.J.'s childhood, "Here, throw this one in." Once I got the key to the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future being the Fates, the mythological hook into it, that really opened it up.

RUDNICK:
^[66] I had heard that John Kretchmer, the director, was taking credit for a lot of the funnier bits in the script.

MANHEIM:
^[67] [laughs] It was a pretty good collaboration. I really like John and he did an excellent job. He was constantly on the phone, which I really appreciated, asking "What if we did this, could we do that?" He was always in touch with me.

RUDNICK:
^[68] I also heard from other people that John Kretchmer does not like violence and he's very sensitive to that.

MANHEIM:
^[69] This would be news to me, although he's a very sweet man. I believe he has children, but I hadn't heard that quite honestly. But it wouldn't surprise me.

RUDNICK:
^[70] A SOLSTICE CAROL (33/209) for Christmas and GIRLS JUST WANNA HAVE FUN (28/204) for Halloween are really the only two holiday-themed shows we've seen.

MANHEIM:
^[71] We wanted to get A FAMILY AFFAIR (71/403), your generic monster tale, into the Halloween spot this last year but that didn't quite work out. I always wanted A COMEDY OF EROS (46/222) to fall on Valentine's Day.

HERE SHE COMES...MISS AMPHIPOLIS

The Miss Artihpys character was inspired by Chris Manheim's late brother, Keith Walsh.

RUDNICK:
^[72] Next on your broadcast list is HERE SHE COMES...MISS AMPHIPOLIS (35/211). I personally love this episode.

MANHEIM:
^[73] You're among the few, I believe.

RUDNICK:
^[74] I've heard that, and I can't understand that, because there's so much to like here. Gabrielle has a chance to do something different and she's fabulous as the Contessa. It's wonderful to see Salmoneus again. And I believe Miss Artiphys was a character inspired by your brother, is that right?

MANHEIM:
^[75] Yes. My brother was gay, and when we were growing up, he'd go to these clubs in Daytona Beach and do drag acts. It just kind of fits that Keith [Walsh] would inspire a character like that in a beauty pageant. [laughs]

RUDNICK:
^[76] When I grew up in England we had this thing we'd do at school called "pantomime" where all the guys would dress up as women and to the tableaus and plays and such. That wasn't regarded as terribly unusual, but perhaps you had to be there.

MANHEIM:
^[77] [laughs]

RUDNICK:
^[78] This episode shows that care that you take and that sensitivity that you have for people's feelings and people's relationships not just to relatives but to friends and each other. It's a theme for tolerance, acceptance, and so forth. I thought that was handled really well.

MANHEIM:
^[79] I must say, all my gay male friends like that episode best, and it's the only episode we were nominated for a GLAAD [Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation] award over. I went to the GLAAD awards that year. We didn't win, but it was a fun thing to go and be a part of. We also got an award from a transsexual group. It's probably the most awarded show of the series. [laughs]

RUDNICK:
^[80] Interesting and kind of ironic, too, since it's the ultimate feminist action episode. You wrote it, and you had a female director. It was also kind of an indictment of the Baywatch (1989-) type shows too, since Xena wasn't going to let that happen.

MANHEIM:
^[81] It got me into ASCAP [American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers]. I got to write a couple of corny songs. Joe [LoDuca] did the music and that's what made it terrific, but I did the lyrics.

RUDNICK:
^[82] What about that scene where you had that kiss between Miss Artiphys and Xena? Was that deliberately scripted?

MANHEIM:
^[83] Oh yes. Very deliberate. It was a way we could get away with a full kiss looking like it was between two women.

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