- Pat Reilly releases EP Prince of the Night - 13 November, 2020
- How are our sex lives adapting during lockdown? - 17 October, 2020
- The launch of the first ‘Fashion Run’ supporting the British Fashion Council Foundation and other UK charities - 1 September, 2020
The reboot of Xena: Warrior Princess for NBC will honour the lesbian undercurrents of the original series with the hero openly queer from the start, producers have said.
Xena: Warrior Princess originally starred Lucy Lawless as the leather-clad hero. The show was very popular in the LGBT community, who warmed to the series’ lesbians themes between Xena and Renee O’Connor’s Gabrielle.
Producer Javier Grillo-Marxuach (who writes for CW drama The 100) said, ‘Xena will be a very different show made for very different reasons [compared to The 100]. There is no reason to bring back Xena if it is not there for the purpose of fully exploring a relationship that could only be shown subtextually [sic] in first-run syndication in the 1990s.
‘It will also express my view of the world – which is only further informed by what is happening right now – and is not too difficult to know what that is if you do some digging.’
In 2003, Lawless said her character was ‘definitely gay’. In the series’ final episode, Xena revives Gabrielle by transferring magical water mouth-to-mouth.
‘There was always a “Well, she might be or she might not be” but when there was that drip of water passing between their lips in the very final scene, that cemented it for me,’ Lawless said. ‘Now it wasn’t just that Xena was bisexual and kinda liked her gal pal and they kind of fooled around sometimes, it was “Nope, they’re married, man”.’
