The New Xena, A Fab Black Lesbian?

By Samuel Leighton-Dore

With news that Xena: Warrior Princess, which originally aired between 1995 and 2001, is expected to be relaunched next year, the show’s former star has come out in support of producers shaking things up a little.

Lucy Lawless, AKA Xena, has this week said she thinks the show should go further than a love affair between Xena and her best gal-pal, Gabrielle.

“Now they need to make them an interracial couple,” she said.

“Black Xena!”

In the original series, Xena and Gabrielle never actually became romantically involved, although there was always a cheeky subtext.

Executive Producer Javier Grillo-Marxuach has previously suggested that because social views have changed so much since the mid-90’s, there will be a romantic relationship this time around.

Xena writer Liz Friedman admitted to After Ellen that the romantic relationship between the two characters wasn’t really something the network wanted to deal with.

She said: “It came up all the time.”

“The studio was very worried about it, and I was the one saying to them ‘Guys, no one’s ever gonna think they’re gay.’”

“Because my now wife, then girlfriend, and I would go to the supermarket and I am a white Jew, she’s Creole and people would look at us, and it was clear that we were connected in some way, and they’d go ‘Are you two sisters?’ That f*ck each other!”

“It was bizarre to me that lesbians were so invisible in the real world, but then something just happened and I just assumed no one would ever think that about Xena and Gabrielle.”