Lucy Lawless Criticizes Kevin Sorbo for Racist Comment on Kamala Harris

Xena: Warrior Princess actress Lucy Lawless has strongly criticized her former Hercules: The Legendary Journeys costar Kevin Sorbo following a racist comment he made about Vice President Kamala Harris.

Sorbo gained widespread attention on Thursday night after he posted on X—previously known as Twitter—a remark questioning the Democratic presidential candidate’s race. His post read, “If Kamala really is black, have her say the N-word, let the people decide for themselves.”

Adding fuel to the controversy, Sorbo has since pinned this comment to his profile. This provocative statement comes in the wake of former President Donald Trump’s false claims that Harris, who is of Indian and Jamaican descent, “happened to turn Black” and now “wants to be known as Black.” Trump made these assertions during a National Association of Black Journalists conference in Chicago last month.

The backlash to Sorbo’s post was immediate and severe, drawing condemnation from many users on X. Among them was Lawless, who refuted Sorbo’s stance with a personal anecdote. “In his defense, I personally witnessed a time when Kevin Sorbo stuck up for a black man against white people,” she posted on Friday.

Lawless reminisced about an incident from February 1995, which she claimed took place on the Hercules set. She recounted discussing a news event with her costars, stating, “We actors were sitting around and I brought up a news item. I said, ‘Guys, did you hear about that woman and her friend who were brutally murdered in LA? I think maybe the footballer did it!’ And Peanut growled: ‘Hey! I knew Nicole and let me tell you… she was no picnic!’ BOOM.”

Lawless was referring to the murders of Nicole Brown and her tennis instructor Ron Goldman in 1994. O.J. Simpson, the NFL star and Brown’s ex-husband, was a prime suspect in the case but was acquitted after a highly publicized trial in 1995.

According to Lawless, her castmates were taken aback by Sorbo’s outburst. “I said, ‘She didn’t deserve to be stabbed to death.’ He replied, ‘I’m just saying, She was a piece of work,'” she added. “It stuck in my mind because those Americanisms were unusual to us. But we knew what he meant. #DontGetMeStarted!”

This is not the first time Lawless has publicly criticized Sorbo for his provocative political comments. She previously lambasted him for sharing a conspiracy theory suggesting that “leftist agitators” were responsible for storming the U.S. Capitol on January 6, not Trump supporters.

After Sorbo captioned a post with “They don’t look like patriots to me…”, Lawless fired back, “No, Peanut. They are not Patriots. They are your flying monkeys, homegrown terrorists, QAnon actors. They are the douchebags that go out and do the evil bidding of people like you who like to wind them up like toys and let them do their worst. #KeepingYourFilthyHandsClean #Enabler.”

In addition to their work on Hercules: the Legendary Journeys and Xena: Warrior Princess, Sorbo and Lawless also lent their voices to the 1998 animated film, Hercules and Xena – The Animated Movie: The Battle for Mount Olympus.

Source: Jamie McCarthy/Getty, Jason Kempin/Getty