'Xena: Warrior Princess': Action's new heroine

Currently, next to Lawless' Xena, the most conspicuously empowered female leads in prime time are The X-Files' brainily alluring Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson), Kate Mulgrew's Captain Janeway on Star Trek: Voyager, and the USA Network's La Femme Nikita (starring Peta Wilson and based on the 1991 movie of the same name). Since three out of those four are very popular (Nikita debuted less than two months ago), why do meaty female action roles continue to be such a rarity?

"I think that television in particular is a medium of the familiar, not of breathtaking new changes," says Xena's Friedman, who points out that in TV's 50-year history, only a handful of successful, rock-'em sock-'em female leads have emerged—Emma Peel (The Avengers), the Bionic Woman, Wonder Woman, Cagney and Lacey—and most of them in the more politically strident '70s.

A predictable target of blame: the still-male-dominated ranks of TV execs. "It's a bias of the TV industry, [this belief] that women will watch shows about men, but men won't watch shows about women, and therefore half the audience will be lost," says Susan Douglas, author of Where the Girls Are: Growing Up Female With the Mass Media. The Xena audience proves that theory wrong: About half of its adult viewers are male. Granted, they're watching as much for Xena's pulchritude as for her pluck; nevertheless, it's sending a message.

For the most part, though actresses playing forceful women must navigate a tightrope between strength and femininity. "I'm often cautioned not to cross a certain line one way or the other—'Don't be too butchy, don't be too vulnerable,'" says Kate Mulgrew of playing Janeway. "But I'll tell you, I'd much rather have this set of challenges than play some bimbo on Melrose Place."

Kay Koplovitz, founder and CEO of USA Networks—a rare female network head—maintains that the balancing act is in deference to viewers of both genders. "I think when you develop this kind of role, you risk having a strong action figure who is not sympathetic. It can be intimidating, it can be off-putting. Women who are too strong can be overbearing to men and women."

Friedman believes that Xena has figured out a way to solve that problem. How? In a word, subversion. "I've always been a big believer in the power of popular culture," she says. "The best way to convey more challenging ideas is to make something that functions on a mainstream level but that has subtext that people can pick up on—or not." Add a Trojan horse and you've got an episode of Xena.

(Additional reporting by Tricia Laine)