'It was such a homecoming,' Lawless tells ET about sharing the screen with O'Connor for the first time in 20 years.
Lucy Lawless has been wanting to work with her Xena: Warrior Princess co-star, Renee O’Connor, ever since the series ended in 2001. “For 20 years,” she tells ET’s Matt Cohen. “And we just couldn’t ever make it fit -- different shows, different life schedules.”
But that’s all finally changed, thanks to the return of Lawless’ Acorn TV crime series, My Life Is Murder, which she both executive produces and stars on as private investigator Alexa Crowe, who moves to New Zealand in season 2 after she was lured back into solving crimes. “And now that I’m the boss, we were gonna make it happen by hook or by crook,” the actress quips.
Thanks to her determination, the new season sees O’Connor reuniting with Lawless for the first time in two decades. In the episode, Alexa investigates the death of a self-help guru and finds herself in a cat-and-mouse game with the victim’s mysterious wife played by O’Connor. And “when she came on set, honestly, it was such a homecoming for me,” Lawless reveals, explaining that the two, who played Xena and Gabrielle, respectively, were comrade-in-arms both onscreen and off.
“When you work together like she and I, this friendship was forged in the heat of battle really. And to have her back was [a boost] for my soul,” she continues, sharing that she was starting to feel burnt out by the end of filming season 2. “So, to have Renee to get up and go to work with was the most wonderful thing.”
Not only that, but O’Connor’s son, Miles Muir, plays her son on the show. "'Cause he’s in drama school in New Zealand [where the season was filmed], it was like, ‘This works,’” Lawless says, adding that it made her so happy to incorporate her friend’s son because “it’s part of the richness of life.”
In addition to O’Connor, Lawless also shares the screen with a number of her former co-stars, including Anna Hutchison (Spartacus), Graham Vincent (Spartacus), Jay Ryan (Xena: Warrior Princess) and Bruce Hopkins (Xena: Warrior Princess), who all appear in season 2.
While it was great to “get the band together,” Lawless doesn’t think she or O’Connor will be reprising their Xena roles anytime soon. Attempts to bring the series back have fallen apart in the past and when asked about it again, she’s unsure why a reboot hasn’t been able to move forward "because people have tried.”
That said, if one does ever happen, “I’ll make a cameo of some sort,” Lawless says. “I’d love that.”
In the meantime, Xena fans can go down memory lane as they watch Lawless and O’Connor on My Life Is Murder season 2, which premieres Monday, Aug. 30 on Acorn TV.
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