Many thanks to Tanya for the transcript
XPose Special #15
Eve of the War
Growing up as the daughter of Xena: Warrior Princess can be tough. Ian Spelling talks through Eve's history with Adrienne Wilkinson.
The GIG lasted longer than she ever expected. She learned more and had more fun than she ever imagined. So, for Adrienne Wilkinson, the end of Xena--on which she plays Xena's (Lucy Lawless) daughter Eve, formerly known as vicious Roman general Livia--brings with it an array of emotions. "It's a funny thing," the actress says. "I expected to have a little more of a melancholy feeling about the whole thing, but really I'm just kind of excited. It's been an interesting year. It's a bummer with all of the strike issues that are happening. It's sort of a bummer that Xena is ending and that it's ending now, when so much attention is on the strike. But it's also really exciting because everyone on Xena is so talented and you know that they are all going to move on to something brilliant. And I'm eager to look for new characters as well. So it's not quite as bad as I had expected it would be. "When I first booked the job at the end of the fifth season I was told that they were seriously considering ending the show at the end of the fifth season. So when they said it would end this year instead, it wasn't quite as big a surprise for me. I had certain expectations about it coming to the end. I knew it was probably going to happen and I had time to be ready for it. So I just made the most of each episode. When I originally got the job it was for three episodes. I was told that they weren't sure what they were doing with the character, so it might only be one episode, so every time I kept coming back, I was just eager and excited and interested in seeing what they were going to do with her. The character was just so incredibly empowering for an actress to play."
Audiences, like Wilkinson herself, were often surprised by what the writers had in store for Xena's little girl. Livia, of course, kicked ass. Eve was, well, wishy-washy to say the least. "Oh, don't I know it," Wilkinson says, laughing out loud. "It was such a blessing, more than I ever realized. Emotionally, I got to play a lot more with Eve. She had more issues and just more stuff that needed to be dealt with. Unfortunately, we didn't get a chance to deal with all of it. But I have to say that I was shocked when--as I was getting ready to return for the sixth season, and I was so excited to see Xena, Gabrielle [Renee O'Connor] and Eve just kicking butt together--I got the script and I thought, 'What's going on?' I had no idea that Eve was going to be so incredibly devout and so specific in her beliefs. It took a little while for me to wrap my brain around the new Eve. When I first started to play Livia, the directors just kept telling me, 'Be bigger, be bigger. Give it everything.' I had to be so physical and so active. And with Eve they kept saying, 'Be smaller, be smaller.' So it was a challenge to find the happy medium between them. "For me, the issue was that I loved Livia so much--once I got the handle on how to play her--and I just wasn't ready to let her go. I felt she had so much to do and so much fire. When it came to Eve, they didn't want to see that fire.
They wanted a definite difference between the two of them. My favorite episode with Livia is Eve, which Mark Beesley directed. He also did the first episode of the new season, where I was purely Eve. Both of us were having such a hard time trying to figure out what to do with her because we both loved Livia so much. I actually talked to Lucy about it a little bit because I felt that Livia was so smart and Eve never seemed to get the joke. She never seemed to understand the plan that her mother had. "If it was still Livia, she would have been two steps ahead of her. Eve was so wrapped up in religion and figuring herself out that she was a bit oblivious to a lot of other things. Lucy helped me figure out how to make that legitimate. What we decided was that Eve was just so honorable and so focused that she was less observant. She wasn't less intelligent, obviously, but just less observant because she was so into her goal and so into her mission.
That was pretty much the only way I could do it. It was a bit of a strange one, but it kept everything exciting every week." And now for the bombshell: Wilkinson is not in the Xena series finale. She's not in the last few episodes leading up to the finale. On the other hand, she may be. It's all very foggy and complicated and a big secret. "I don't have a lot that I can share because I'm not allowed to," says Wilkinson, who was introduced in the fifth season hours Livia, Eve and Motherhood, and who returned for the current year in such episodes as Who's Gurkhan? (which included a key scene, among Wilkinson's favorites, of her and Lawless discussing whether or not Gabrielle was capable of committing murder), The Haunting of Amphipolis, You Are There (which was directed by Michael Hurst and featured Eve finally displaying a backbone and hurling abuse at a reporter), and Path of Vengeance. "There are flashbacks of Livia that will come up, but I don't know what they'll be or which episodes they'll be in. All I know is that I signed a contract saying that they could use scenes I had already shot. They could be scenes we shot and never aired--we shot Eve's redemption three times before it was shown in Path of Vengeance--or it could just be old scenes from other episodes. But I am happy with the resolution that Eve gets. She wasn't in as many episodes as they expected this year because every time Eve showed up, more issues were brought to light. Every time we'd put an issue to rest, we'd bring up three more. "So there was a really lovely resolution this year and instead of bringing her back knowing that we'd have tons and tons of stuff to deal with, we actually left it there, which was beautiful. My last day wasn't really sad because everybody--myself included--thought I was coming back. And there wasn't time to be sad. My last day was one when they were finishing one episode in the morning and starting another one in the afternoon. So there were twice as many people around as usual, everyone was racing around, and there just wasn't time to be sad. Something that I think is strange and remarkable, though, is that the first scene that I ever filmed on the set of Xena was actually my first scene ever shown on TV. It was the teaser for Livia. And the last scene that I ever actually filmed is the last new scene with Eve that will ever be shown on the series. Being that no show is ever filmed in order, the chances of that happening were just so incredibly slim. So there's something incredibly nice about that."
And now it's time to move on. Wilkinson, who just shot a guest spot on MTV's sexy soap opera/comedy Undressed, reports that she's been auditioning and that several prospects look good. She only hopes that the impending actors' strike doesn't pour water on the fire. Should the opportunity ever arise, though, to reprise either of her Xena alter egos, Wilkinson would do it in an instant. "I'd love to pick up the characters again," says the American actress, whose previous credits include Saved by the Bell and Chicken Soup for the Soul, as well as several independent features and stage roles. "My only disappointment is that the shows this year have all been so visually stunning and huge that some of the smaller stuff we weren't able to deal with. Eve and Xena never really had a conversation about the past. They've never dealt with Ares [Kevin Smith].
They've never dealt with any issues that Eve might have with Gabrielle. They've never dealt with Xena's other child or her past or 'Where were you for 25 years?' I played it as if they've had all of those conversations, but they just haven't been on screen. "So I'd love the chance to play Livia and Eve again. I'd love to work with Lucy and everyone else again. Lucy was great to me. Everybody, of course, has heard of spin-off rumors. Eve was a character that was made close enough to Xena, who is such a fabulous character, and you can't do a second version of her. You'd have to do something entirely different. So I think that's one of the things that would stop any type of a spin-off. You just can't outdo Xena. It's just not going to happen. It wouldn't be as exciting. But I would love to work with everyone again. They are the most amazing group of people. I'd be so excited if they did end up doing some TV movies, if for nothing else than just to get to work with this group again. The whole experience has been incredible--the people, the locations, the characters, the action. Every day was a new challenge. Xena was a blessing."