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Lucy Lawless and Kevin Sorbo. Photo: Acorn TV / AFP / Getty Images
New Zealand actress Lucy Lawless has butted heads with former Hercules co-star Kevin Sorbo after the 65-year-old said online that United States Vice-President Kamala Harris should "say the N-word" to prove she is black to voters.
Sorbo questioned the identity of the Democratic presidential nominee in a post on X, writing: "If Kamala really is black, have her say the N-word, let the people decide for themselves".
Sorbo's post went viral, accumulating over 98,000 likes and nearly 10,000 retweets. He has since pinned it to the top of his profile.
Lawless, 56, and Sorbo starred in Hercules: The Legendary Journeys - a popular American television series from the 1990s that was filmed in New Zealand - and the show's related TV movies together.
They hold differing political views and often publicly spar over their disagreements.
Sorbo is an outspoken supporter of former president Donald Trump, while Lawless frequently challenges the Republican nominee and his supporters online.
Sorbo's remarks mirror comments made by Trump about Harris, who was born in Oakland, California, the daughter of two US immigrants. Her mother was Indian and her father is Jamaican.
Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. Photo: Brendan SMIALOWSKI and Patrick T. Fallon / AFP
Speaking at a National Association of Black Journalists conference last month, Trump questioned Harris' heritage on stage.
"She was always of Indian heritage, and she was only promoting Indian heritage. I didn't know she was Black, until a number of years ago, when she happened to turn Black, and now she wants to be known as Black," Trump said to the crowd of about 1000 people.
If Kamala really is black, have her say the N-word, let the people decide for themselves.
— Kevin Sorbo (@ksorbs) August 9, 2024
"So I don't know, is she Indian or is she Black? But you know what, I respect either one, but she obviously doesn't, because she was Indian all the way, and then all of a sudden she made a turn, and she went - she became a Black person."
Replying to Sorbo's comments about Harris the following day, Lawless jokingly claimed to come "in his defence" that she had seen Sorbo defend "a black man against white people" before - proceeding to bring up OJ Simpson and the 1994 murder of his wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman.
"The NZ summer, Feb 1995 when my character, #Xena was introduced into my husband's show, Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. We actors were [sitting] around and I brought up a news item," Lawless wrote on X.
"I said, 'Guys, did you guys hear about that woman and her friend who were brutally murdered in LA? I think maybe the footballer did it!'
"And Peanut [Sorbo] growled: 'Hey! I knew Nicole and let me tell you ... she was no picnic!' BOOM."
In his defense, I personally witnessed a time when Kevin Sorbo stuck up for a black man against white people. @RonFilipkowski @JohnFugelsang
— Lucy Lawless (@RealLucyLawless) August 10, 2024
The NZ summer, Feb 1995 when my character, #Xena was introduced into my husband’s show, ‘Hercules the Legendary Journeys’. We actors were…
The My Life Is Murder actress - who recently made her directorial debut with the documentary film Never Look Away - added in a separate post that everyone was "gobsmacked" by Sorbo's comment.
Lawless reportedly told Sorbo that Brown Simpson "didn't deserve to be stabbed to death", before he reportedly replied: 'I'm just saying, she was a piece of work'.
"It stuck in my mind because those Americanisms were unusual to us. But we knew what he meant."
Lucy Lawless in her role as Alexa Crowe in My Life is Murder. Photo: © 2021 AcornTV LLC & AMC Film Holdings LLC. All rights reserved.
In 2021, Lawless and Sorbo had a separate feud on X after the January 6 attack on the US Capitol.
Sorbo shared a photo of a mob of Trump supporters raiding the Capitol building and captioned it: "Do these look like Trump supporters? Or leftist agitators disguised as Trump supporters..."
We were all gobsmacked. I said, “She didn’t deserve to be stabbed to death. He replied, “I’m just saying, She was a piece of work.” It stuck in my mind because those Americanisms were unusual to us. But we knew what he meant.#DontGetMeStarted!
— Lucy Lawless (@RealLucyLawless) August 10, 2024
Lawless scolded her former co-star's remarks at the time, writing: "No, Peanut [Sorbo]. 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."
Sorbo has been warned before for making divisive comments on social media.
The actor repeatedly made false claims about the safety of vaccines and the Covid-19 pandemic on Facebook in 2021, which led to the company removing his page for spreading misinformation, Newshub reported.
This story was first published by the New Zealand Herald.
