| Steve Sears Convention Notes |
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| So far, one of the best things about both the Burbank and London conventions, for me (Alicia) has been getting to meet and listen to Steve Sears, one of the main writers for Xena: Warrior Princess. Here are some of the fascinating things he said about Xena in London: |
| * Lucy Lawless and Renee O'Connor both came into their own as actresses on the show. Renee was studious, making notes on her cripts, while Lucy said things like, "okay, bring the camera on, mate!" The two became best friends. * "We looked forward to what they performed; they looked forward to what we wrote." * Gabrielle wasn't a typical sidekick. Anyone watching the first episode would think she was going to be, but for anyone watching the last episode, there is no way he/she could have thought Gabrielle was just going to be a sidekick. * "I adopted the character [Gabrielle]. She was coming from a place of innocence, and going into the darkness. Would she stay, when the darkness became overwhelming? * Everyone wears masks. With great writing, the authors take those masks and put them in front of their characters, then make those masks familiar. |
| "In my version of Amarice's story, she was an Amazon from a very Spartan tribe. Her mother was one of the tribe leaders. They'd lost a battle with the Horde. She and her mother were going to die gloriously in battle, as they were supposed to. Then Amarice was in the water below, seeing for the first time her mother smiling at her. Since for her it was better to die in battle than to live in shame, her recklessness in the show is due to the shame she feels." |
| As I write this, Brittany Powell is onstage doing her traditional bra auction. *laughing* As charming and funny as Brittany is, I thought I'd use these few minutes to write down the conversation I just had with Steve Sears! He'd mentioned the origin of "Dreamworker" during his last presentation, and how one of the aspects of Gabrielle's character he explored was blood innocence. I've been hoping since to have a chance to ask him what blood innocence was. "When you kill someone, everything changes. Everything." Mr. Sears said that although most people think they know what those who have killed go through...98% of people have no idea. There's a private hell that people who have killed carry around inside themselves. It goes beyond that with women, Mr. Sears said. Women go through the same things men do, but there's also the added dimension that there's a level on which a mother has taken a life. I said that I also thought it was just a bit different for women because women tend to talk about it more. There's this expectation (at least, from what I've read about soldiers in Kyrillandra's journals) that men will have the ability to endure whatever they are asked to endure without complaining or mentioning it. Women, on the other hand, have this expectation to solve things by talking about them, and that's even true for Xena, if you pushed her enough. (Well, if Gabrielle pushed her enough, she'd talk...it didn't seem like any other character on the show earned that right.) Mr. Sears said that Xena had lost her blood innocence in a siuation where people were dying all around her. He'd deliberately written in and named the first man she'd ever killed, and the latest. But Xena had never come from the position of innocence that Gabrielle did. Xena killed again and again, and somewhere crossed that line from seeking justice to seeking power, and she never knew when it happened. So when Xena saw Gabrielle flirting with her blood innocence, skirting closer and closer to that line, she tried to protect her and warn her away. She couldn't believe what had happened when Gabrielle actually killed. Gabrielle's own loss of innocence followed a progression. "The Deliverer" was written so that you couldn't tell whether she stabbed Meridian, or whether she just held the knife and Meridian was pushed on to it. In "When In Rome," she, by inaction, deliberately allowed a human to die. In "A Good Day," she tried to kill in battle and couldn't. Xena had no idea how to help Gabrielle when Gabrielle killed Meridian. I have long thought that Xena had less experience than Gabrielle did at communication--Xena tried, but she'd never had close rrelationships before. Mr. Sears explained too, how there was this connection inside Gabrielle that made it impossible for her to see Xena's point. Xena was acting logically; Hope actually was evil. But Xena didn't connect the dots and realize what it was that Hope was to Gabrielle. Hope was both a fresh start (a child to protect and guide, and a source of joy) and a way for Gabrielle to take the good and put it outside herself. "This child can't be bad. I'm the one who's bad. This child is my chance to take that bad and change and redeem it. To Xena, those things--that Gabrielle believed about herself during that time--were incomprehensible. Xena didn't think Gabrielle had beeen destroyed. Gabrielle had only been changed. But Gabrielle was torturing herself. There is a kind of killing that's not wrong morally. Sometimes it's necessary. From the outside. From the inside, Mr. Sears said, it all feels the same. |