Lucy Lawless has reunited with her former Xena: Warrior Princess co-star Renee O'Connor in new images from Lawless' Australian crime show My Life is Murder. The cult show ran from 1995 and 2001 and followed the adventures of the eponymous warrior princess and her travelling companion Gabrielle, played by O'Connor, as she tried to redeem herself from her dark past by using skills as a warrior to help people. Xena was a spin-off of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, where Xena initially appeared as a villain, but the spin-off series' popularity soon grew to eclipse that of its predecessor and still has a significant fan following.
While Lawless is best known for her role as Xena, she is currently appearing in her own crime dramedy series in Australia, which also airs in US on Acorn TV. Lawless plays private investigator Alexa Crowe who investigates a number strange murders in order to placate her frustrations with everyday life. The second season will premiere in the US on August 30th, and will see Alexa return to her (and Lawless') native New Zealand after years away where she finds herself drawn into investigating various murder once again.
The premiere episode is set to see Lawless and O'Connor reunite once again, but this time around they will be on opposite sides as O'Connor plays the wife of a murdered self-help guru who leads Alexa on a game of cat-and-mouse. Ahead of the premiere, everal images were released hyping up the Xena reunion in My Life is Murder, with Lawless revealing to Entertainment Weekly that she had tried to recruit O'Connor for the show's first season but plans didn't work out. She added that: “The [Xena] fans are just gonna love it. It’s a huge gift to them". You can check out the images below:
O'Connor isn't the only member of the Xena cast to reunite with Lawless in My Life is Murder's second season with Jay Ryan, who played Zortis, and Bruce Hopkins, who appeared in a number of minor roles, both set to appear in the series. The show is seemingly leaning heavily into Lawless' backlog of iconic roles in recruiting talent as both Anna Hutchison and Graham Vincent are also set to appear, having previously appeared alongside the actress in Spartacus where she played Lucretia. Of these actors though, O'Connor is undoubtedly the most well-known from the pair's work together in Xena.
Lawless and O'Connor appeared together in every episode of the show's six season run, with the relationship between Xena and Gabrielle being key factor in the series. Starting as a small-town bard, Gabrielle's naivety perfectly balanced against Xena's more jaded cynicism. The pair quickly became best friends, with Gabrielle developing into a talented warrior in her own right under Xena's tutelage. Xena and Gabrielle's relationship has also been read by many to have been a romantic one, with the writers featuring a number of innuendos and a great deal of subtext within the show, with the pair becoming Lesbian icons in the process. Lawless herself has entirely endorsed this reading of the characters stating that, by the finale, the pair are married.
Both O'Connor and Lawless clearly have a great deal of fondness for one another from their time on Xena, and they were evidently eager to work together one again on My Life is Murder. It's good to see that they had the opportunity to do so, and hopefully they reunite on other projects too. Fans of Xena are likely just as keen to see how the pair play off of one another come the premiere of season two of My Life is Murder and thankfully they won't have long to wait.
Source: Entertainment Weekly