Chakram
newsletter #12, 2000
Turkish
Baths and Dancing Xenas
by
Sharon Delaney
I had
never done an interview in a Turkish bath. And I still haven't. But
Reneé and I came really close during this one. We're on the
Xena set in New Zealand. The crew is filming an episode called
"Who's Gurkhan," that takes place in North Africa.
One of the sets is a Turkish bath. Reneé and I are sitting
on the edge of the pool while Lucy is rehearsing a scene in which
she will dance before Gurkhan.
During our interview, the cameras will be shifted and we have to move
behind the wall so that we're not in the shot. But our attention is
so focused on the interview, we don't notice they've actually begun
to shoot the scene. And I guess our voices didn't carry because no
one asked us to move. So when you see Xena's dance in the episode,
look at the wall on the left side of your television and know that
Reneé and I are sitting right behind it!
In this exotic setting, the first episode I decide to bring
up is "Anthony & Cleopatra." "Can
you remember that far back?" I ask Reneé.
"I remember the fight scene where Gabrielle kills Brutus," Reneé
said thoughtfully. "Michael (Hurst - the director) wanted me
to scream with rage. After we did the shot once, I said, 'That felt
so over the top.' Michael told me, 'No, you can go more, really, trust
me.' And I trust him completely, so I did it again even bigger and
when I saw it later, I realized what he was saying. When you take
an emotion and put it into slow motion, it becomes surreal."
"For me as aviewer," I told her, "the longer
you screamed, the more I was pulled into the emotion of Gabrielle
killing Brutus."
"Right," Reneé agreed. "I felt like I was doing something
in that episode - slow motion works!"
When Gabrielle last saw Brutus, she was being nailed to a cross
in "Ides Of March" and he was partly responsible.
"What did Gabrielle feel toward Brutus," I wondered.
"We tried to throw in some of the history between the
two characters because that wasn't established in 'Anthony &
Cleopatra,'" Reneé explained. "At the readthrough,
we talked about Gabrielle reminding Brutus what happened. She says,
'You should have been there.' We wanted to show her resentment."
"That fight between them was vicious," I said, remembering
the blood all over Gabrielle.
"I don't think Gabrielle planned to kill Brutus," Reneé
stated with conviction. "That fight was so brutal, it was the
most violent fight I can remember being in. Everything was to Gabrielle's
face."
"Did she kill him because of the beating?" I asked.
"After she had sliced his throat, I thought I saw a shocked look
on Gabrielle's face."
"Gabrielle is not a cold-blooded murderer," Reneé said.
"Killing someone so viciously in a hot-blooded fight threw her.
It was an absolutely primitive reaction to being beaten to within
an inch of her life."
"Brutus would have killed her," I stated.
"That's what Michael wanted to establish. That she was going
to die if she did not retaliate," Reneé agreed.
"It didn't even seem as if he were hitting her with any
recognition of the fact that she was a woman," I thought out
loud.
"Right, but then, when have we ever done that on the show?" Reneé
reminded me. "Whenever we have a fight, it's person to person,
without reference to gender."
"Yeah, the bad guys never say they were beaten by a woman.
They say, 'Xena beat me,'" I agreed.
I remembered the shocked looks on the faces of Anthony and Brutus
when thay realized they'd been betrayed by Xena and Gabrielle, women
they had trusted. And the look between Xena and Gabrielle standing
over the bodies of these men conveyed so much hurt over what they
had to do.
"Michael was very specific about making sure this was a love story
and having to kill Anthony ripped Xena's heart out," Reneé
said. "Gabrielle's look showed her understanding of the loss
Xena had just taken."
"When Xena and Anthony were making their plans - you know,
with the grapes - why did Gabrielle come over and interrupt them?"
I asked teasingly.
Reneé laughed. "That's my role at times. To remind Xena
there is a plan and she is deviating from it. Xena was enjoying herself
too much. 'Stick to your vision.' Gabrielle reminded her. It was great,
wasn't it? I enjoyed watching that. I loved the episode; it's one
of my favorites."
"The woman coming in and handing Xena the orchids made
for some beautiful stills," I told Reneé.
"It's funny," she mused, "the entire episode felt so still
while we were filming it. Michael kept reassuring us the music and
visual language of the scenes would hold the weight."
"There wasn't so much choreography in the blocking and no fight
scene until the very end. It's a very unusual-looking show and felt
strange for us to do. Michael was very adamant about trusting him
and, in the end, it was perfect!" She smiled.
"You're enjoying this episode; -'Who's Gurkhan'?"
I queried.
"The underlying story is so beautiful to me. It's revenge! There's
so much I can play with. I've thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it,"
she smiled happily. "Michael and I were talking about the similarities
to 'Hamlet.'"
"Really?" I said, surprised.
"Yeah," she said excitedly. "I pointed out to him when Gabrielle
goes to kill Gurkhan, it reminded me of the scene when Hamlet goes
to kill his stepfather, the king. We latched on to that and started
talking about other scenes where Gabrielle is in similar emotional
states to 'Hamlet.'"
"I've been trying ro find things in 'Hamlet' to motivate me.
I'll read bits of the play before a take. It's been a huge source
of information and emotional energy."
Rob had been talking to me about the episode needing more heart
and they came up with a bit for Gabrielle and Xena in a dungeon. Xena
has been tortured and she sees a vision of Gabrielle who reaches out
and touches her cheek. It reminds Xena why she's allowing herself
to be tortured - she's trying to protect Gabrielle. "Did you
know Rob's original title for this episode (he wrote the story) was
'The One I Love'?" I said to Reneé.
"Really! That's interesting. That's why Rob constantly said to try
to find the love in all the scenes," Reneé said thoughtfully.
Silence -- she's obviously thinking this over. I comment about
being able to see the wheels turning and Reneé laughs.
"I'll have to apply that," she adds. "I knew it, but we
have some great scenes coming up where Lucy and I are together waiting
for the opportunity to kill Gurkhan. We haven't filmed those yet.
That's when we show the love more so than we have in the entire episode."
We weren't scheduled to film the last two days, but I made a
decision then and there to extend the shooting time. A decision I'm
forever grateful for. It resulted in some incredible footage between
Xena and Gabrielle as well as Reneé and Lucy. And I promise
you'll see these moments in the video.
Reneé, who is facing the area where they are filming Xena's
dance, starts moving across the floor so that we're deeper into the
hallway leading to the bath. I follow as she tells me she noticed
the cameras were being reset and we would have been in the shot.
Settling in, I ask a few questions about "Motherhood."
"Does Gabrielle know many of the gods are dead? She was rather
indisposed for much of Xena's battle with them," I pointed out.
"Oh, sure, absolutely," Reneé said.
"I know this hasn't been dealt with in the show,"
I said, "but, knowing Gabrielle the way you do, do you think
there'd be any jealousy in her because of the relationship that Xena
has with Eve? Either because someone new has entered into their lives
or because Xena has a daughter and Gabrielle lost hers?"
"It's hard to know what they might do in the future, but we didn't
touch on Hope at all except for one scene where Gabrielle says, 'At
least your daughter's alive.' That's the only time I remember verbalizing
Hope in any way. There were scenes where I would play the subtext
that Xena should be thankful that her daughter's alive and can be
fixed."
Reneé laughed. "Fixed - that's a terrible word. It's the
classic debate, conditioning versus genetics. In our scenes it's about,
is Eve who she is because of Xena's genes or because of the environment
of Rome?"
"We don't really know why Eve turned so vicious,"
I mentioned. "Octavius was not played as particularly bad."
"That was the source of Xena's anxiety, I believe," Reneé
said. "That it was her fault."
"And Eve has Callisto's soul inside her. This girl's got
a lot to work through," I chuckled.
Reneé laughed along with me. Then continued, "I hate the
times when Gabrielle is jealous. To me it's such a petty trait. But
I know it's a common feeling. Especially when it pertains to Eve because
I've felt, throughout this season, that Gabrielle thought of Eve as
her own daughter. For her to be jealous in any way was not something
we explored."
"Gabrielle would be glad that a good thing had happened
to someone she loved?" I queried.
"Absolutely! We know how much Gabrielle loves Xena. And after the
death of Solan, Gabrielle's quite pleased to see Xena happy with her
baby," she said with satisfaction.
"I asked Rob if he introduced Xena's daughter (Eve), Gabrielle's
niece (Sarah) and Joxer's son (Virgil) because he needed to populate
the future time that Xena and Gabrielle are now in."
"What did he say?" Reneé asked curiously.
"That he did need new characters they could use occationally,"
I replied.
"That is interesting," Reneé said. "It's
a huge commitment for an actor to come to New Zealand. I can't imagine
Adrienne ('Eve') and Greg ('Virgil') would want to stay throughout
the whole season."
As I'm flipping through my notes for the next question, I notice
Reneé is looking over my shoulder toward where Xena is dancing.
She's just gazing quietly and then she says softly, "Doesn't
Lucy look amazing? I constantly think, 'I cannot believe she just
had a baby.' She's incredible!"
She watches for a minute and then turns her attention back to
me. "I assume the ice coffins in 'Livia'
were made of plastic?" I asked.
"You sure?" she said teasingly. "Actually, they
did look pretty good. I was quite impressed. Especially when I walked
on set and saw them for the first time."
"How was it inside?" I wondered.
"It was quite a claustrophobic feeling being in this plastic
container, because you have to be aware that you do run out of air,"
she laughed. "And you can vaguely see everyone through the plastic.
It was funny. You know, I started to compare it to situations in earlier
episodes and I was reminded of the time I dressed as a queen in a
coffin and Xena pulls the coffin out of the fire."
"That was 'Blind Faith,'" I remembered.
Reneé nodded. "That was much darker and more claustrophobic
and smoky. I couldn't breathe because of the smoke. It made this experience
now a breeze."
"And then there's 'Motherhood,'" she continued, "and
Lucy was dragging me along a hall through smoke made of dry ice. That's
carbon dioxide and there's no oxygen. I would be breathing one moment
and the take would end after I'd been dragged a few feet. Then I'd
need time to recover. Someone would say, 'You can get up now, Reneé.'
And the person near me would point out, 'She can't breathe!' It was
the funniest feeling. It surprised me how quickly it affected my head."
Reneé chuckled and shook her head.
The glamour of show biz, I thought.
In "Who's Gurkhan," Gabrielle wants
to avenge the death of her parents. Can she do it? Can she cold-bloodedly
kill the man who murdered them?
"Everyone would understand if Gabrielle was unable to kill
him," Reneé began, "but making a decision not
to kill him was a much stronger statement and a sign of her growth.
She's been in so many wars now, that to say she couldn't kill someone
wouldn't be true. How could she not have the courage and dignity as
a hero to stand up for her family."
"I've always tried to protect her truth in her journey as much
as I can. The key to Gabrielle's character is that she won't kill
in cold blood. To me, it's the perfect debate of how Gabrielle has
been affected by her environment of being with Xena to become the
woman she is. Because she would not be in a situation like that if
she were still living in Poteidaia," Reneé laughed.
I brought up the line in the episode where Gabrielle refers
to Lila (her sister) and Sarah as the only family she has left. And
Reneé said, "What about Xena?"
"What's wonderful about playing a character for so many years,
is you know what moves her emotionally," Reneé explained.
"The writers have an agenda to tell a story and they need to
remind the audience that Gabrielle wants to kill this man because
he assassinated her family. That's their goal. But then I said, 'Hang
on. There's a missing link here. The love between the two characters
is what unites every episode.' I felt we had to bring that back up."
We were getting close to lunchtime and
I wanted to ask Reneé how her scene study group was doing.
"What made you decide to get involved with the group now?"
I asked.
"I saw an ad for a workshop for actors based on a new technique
that was coming out of Australia," Reneé explained. "I
couldn't go to the workshop, but I called the two actor here who were
producing it. I wanted to get involved with a scene group to stretch
myself. There were a few other people interested and we began meeting
once a week."
"Is it getting any easier to kiss
strangers?" I teased, making reference to something Reneé
had said in our last talk.
"When we last spoke," Reneé said, "I was
doing Abigail from 'The Crucible.' And I was playing her quite
provocatively. I was exploring a character who was a touchy-feely
woman restricted by her environment and the time in which she lived.
That's where the kissing came in."
"Recently I've been working with David mamet works. Plays that
are dialogue-driven and totally different from Xena. It's a
great challenge. I wanted to know when the show's over, I could play
something else and have the confidence to know how to explore a character
again."
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