"I think Lucy Lawless does a great job, she did a great job creating her own thing.
You can't help but compare because you know, its the larger than life female, powerful
woman. But I think that they are so different. They're 20 years apart, much more progressive
in terms of what you can get away with doing. If Wonder Woman were made today I think
it could go to some, you know, less restricted places, less formula places. But I think
that Wonder Woman was very classy, but I don't think Xena is classy I think Xena is XENA.
You know its just that you can't really compare the two." Lynda Carter - Double Dare
"I think Lucy Lawless opened a lot of doors for women, playing Xena. It was a slightly whimsical show but
she was dead centre. There weren't many leading ladies at that time, and it was her show, no doubt about it.
That made a big difference for girls coming through." Claudia Black - SFX Magazine
Karen Essex: stereo3d asks: Do you think Lucy Lawless of TV's Xena patterns her look after you?
Bettie Page: She is one of my favorites. To be as big as she is, when she can do flips, she is something. No other woman
can do what she does. I have heard she patterned her look after me. But she doesn't have long hair like I have. I like that show.
Bettieville Chat, 1998
Tarantino: Xena's the show I always wish Wonder Woman was. I watch Xena 20 years from now, I'm gonna go -- oh, man, that's so lame, the action sucks? No, no, no, no. Xena's the show I always wished Charlie's Angels was, Wonder Woman was. It's like, you know, Xena has no apologies -- it's a really cool show. It's got cool characters. Lucy Lawless is terrific in it, and I love that girl who plays Callisto in the show. And then, the action in it is a lot of fun. The scripts are really good. There's some really cool storytelling going on. The whole lineage of the story -- the backstory of Xena's character -- is quite magnificent. And I would use the word "magnificent." There's a lot there to be had. The fact that she was an Atilla the Hun kind of killer and pillager. Years passed, Xena turns over this new leaf, but she is haunted, like Clint Eastwood in The Unforgiven -- she was haunted by her evil deeds. And I mean, they were evil, they were truly evil. She wasn't, like, kind of bad. She was an evil, murderous person. Untold numbers of dead during her reign, torture, whole races and tribes that don't exist anymore because of Xena. Now she's fighting for redemption, but she knows she doesn't deserve redemption and she will never get redemption. The only thing she can do is just do good now, on a day to day basis. But she doesn't deserve mercy. She's paying a debt she can never pay and she'll always be paying 10 cents on the dollar.
Interviewer: And that's rare for a female character.
Tarantino: That's rare for a male character. That's just good shit, that's just good indeed. And then Callisto comes back, who is a mirror image of Xena, doing the same murdering and killing with evil intentions -- but she exists only because Xena did it. It's her revenge for Xena, the fact that she created her in her hate. Callisto has every right to kill Xena, and Xena has every right in her own heart to die under Callisto's blade. But Callisto doesn't have the right to kill the innocent people she's killing. Therein lies -- I mean, that's a great conflict. That is just fantastic. (Quentin Tarantino - 'Double Dare' 2004 Documentary)
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