Lucy Lawless and Renee O’Connor, who costarred in the fantasy series Xena: Warrior Princess from 1995 to 2001, are reuniting in the upcoming season 2 of My Life Is Murder.
Lawless, who played the titular role in Xena: Warrior Princess, stars as Alexa Crowe in My Life Is Murder. Alexa is a former homicide detective who consults on particularly perplexing murders while trying to maintain balance in her personal life.
O’Connor, meanwhile, portrayed Gabrielle in Xena: Warrior Princess. Xena and Gabrielle had a popular subtextual relationship in the show, which notably presaged a revolution in same-sex couple depictions on mainstream TV. In an episode of My Life Is Murder season 2, O’Connor is guest-starring as Clarissa Klein, a wellness guru who tussles with Lawless’ Alexa.
“She’s a cult leader,” revealed O’Connor of her My Life Is Murder character in an interview with Entertainment Weekly. “It’s funny because I didn’t really know who I was playing until I was in quarantine. I had an idea, but I didn’t know what was in store for me until there was a meeting on Zoom with the producers, and that’s when I started really doing some more research [into cults].”
O’Connor said that when Alexa and Clarissa first meet in the episode, the latter is “leading a seminar, taking people to the most extreme elements of their highest existence possible with Michael Hurst playing the guru husband coleader [of the cult].”
Lawless added: “And you can imagine that Alexa is taking this with many pinches of salt. She’s there on a mission, she’s not there to improve herself. [There’s] lots of snark. Also, the person who plays Renee’s son in the episode is Renee’s [actual] son. It was so thrilling, the stars aligned just right. He’s a fine young actor and we managed to get him into the show.”
When asked how easy it was to slip into their rapport once again, Lawless said: “Like a warm bath, baby! It was so easy and so good and I suppose because Ren and I also, we’ve played a lot of different roles with one another. It wasn’t like we were stuck in a certain mindset with our relationship to one another as actors. We got to play dual roles and all kinds of things [on Xena]. So, it was just more play. It was cool, aye Ren?”
“Yeah, it was even better than I expected,” replied O’Connor. “Because these characters were so different from Xena and Gabrielle so there was more to play with in current affairs and relationships. And it was all there for the taking. I mean, as I said before, Lucy was throwing stuff out and we were just having more fun than we probably should have been having playing these characters.”
To wrap the interview, Lawless said that Xena and Gabrielle fans “will enjoy” Alexa and Clarissa’s “proximity” to Xena and Gabrielle. “It’s great, it’s like turning our old relationship on its head,” added Lawless of her TV reunion with O’Connor.
For her part, O’Connor said that Xena fans will “appreciate” their TV reunion “knowing that Lucy and I are having as much fun as possible working with each other.”
The first two episodes of My Life Is Murder season 2 will be available to stream on Acorn TV on August 30th, with new episodes arriving on the platform weekly after that.