Lucy Lawless and Kevin Sorbo: A Timeline of Their Feud

Lucy Lawless, the one-time star of Xena: Warrior Princess, has hit out at Hercules actor Kevin Sorbo on Twitter after he repeated a widely debunked conspiracy theory that the rioters who stormed the Capitol were disguised members of Antifa.

Lawless replied to Sorbo calling him "peanut" before saying that the protestors were "douchebags that go out and do the evil bidding of people like you ."

Though the pair starred together in a number of crossover episodes of their two shows (and Xena began life as a Hercules spin-off), there is a history of bad blood between them, of which Lawless' tweet is just the latest example.

Or rather, more accurately, there is a history of Sorbo making disparaging comments about Lawless in interviews in the two decades since both shows ending.

The reasons for these attacks may be explained by an interview Sorbo gave with SFX magazine in 2001. In this interview, first, he criticized Xena: Warrior Princess for its failure to conform to "family values" of the sort espoused by right-wing figures in the early '00s.

He said: "In that show, they had two issues that separated it from Hercules: one, it was heavily into lesbianism, as people know, and number two: it was heavily into violence. It was far more violent than Hercules was."

Later in the interview, however, he reveals the true reasons behind his bitterness, saying, "Xena took all my directors, they took half my writing staff, they took everybody to go and work for that show. They took half my crew! So, you know, it upset a few people, including myself But I just think of it as like, why are you stabbing us in the back? We're the show that started it!"

In later interviews, however, Sorbo went from attacking the Hercules spin-off in general to criticizing Lawless specifically.

In a 2007 interview with FilmStew, for example, Sorbo complained that Lawless had received a small part in Sam Raimi's Spider-Man film (Raimi had previously produced Hercules and Xena.)

The actor said: "I think Lucy got a small part in it because she's married to Sam Raimi's partner, Rob Tapert. She started having an affair with him down in New Zealand. She left her husband and he left his wife of 15 years. So that's how that whole thing got together."

After Lawless had replied to Sorbo on Twitter, a fan brought these interviews to her attention on the social media site, to which she replied, "HAHAHHAHAHHAAA!! oh, Peanuut! You slay me!"

This is far from the only time that Sorbo has disparaged Lawless for the romantic choices she has made. In a 2010 BlackBook interview, he somehow both implies that the Xena actor may be a closeted lesbian and that she got the role by seducing the male executive producer.

Asked in this interview whether he was saying Lawless was a lesbian, he said: "I don't know. She'd never admit one way or another, trust me. She didn't wanna lose that crowd. She did end up marrying the executive producer, which I think is how she got the role. They had another actress slated for the part."

Lawless, meanwhile, has not publicly criticized her former co-star, in interviews. However, Lawless' progressive politics and Sorbo's conservative leanings have often seen them at odds on key issues.

Though this is the first time she has directly replied to one of his tweets, she has previously tweeted things that some have read at shaded digs at the Hercules actor.

In February 2018, for example, Sorbo tweeted: "Only in America are legal citizens labeled 'racists' and 'Nazis,' but illegal aliens are called 'Dreamers.'"

The following day, Lawless, who is a U.S. immigrant born in New Zealand, tweeted the pointed, "I'm a Dreamer."

As such, it was left to Chrissy Teigan to bring Xena into things, tweeting to Sorbo, "hot take, boy xena."