One of the most absolute joys of my creative life is writing and producing television and radio promotion packages for Xena: Warrior Princess and Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. Never a day went by when I didn’t thank the gods for the opportunity (pun intended)  – to cut promos with one of my great creative partners, J. Churchill Morgan, and the rest of the crew at Crawford Post in Atlanta, GA, to work with a most excellent show production crew in L.A., New Zealand and Canada … and to laugh -spontaneous and pure- throughout the entire experience.

Every once in a while, I look through my box of treasures from that time and reminisce: Gabrielle’s leather journal she carried at the beginning of her adventures with Xena; a box of homemade Hercules and Xena Christmas cards we wrote that we sent to the post production crew (Happy Birthday, Jesus! From Zeus, King of the Gods); song lyrics set to the Hercules theme music that were inspired by Kevin Sorbo’s fabulous mane (Hercules, will you help me please? I’m having a bad hair day!). Hours and hours … and hours … of fun times, which amaze me still. I can never call it work.

This is why I’m sharing a video interview with Kevin Sorbo, who talks about his life and his new book, True Strength: My Journey from Hercules to Mere Mortal–and How Nearly Dying Saved My Life.

As I was experiencing one of the most productive and enjoyable times of my career, our main character –our hero- was at a precipice. And I have to say, as part of this crazy, glorious crew headed by Rob Tapert … never did Kevin’s pain encroach on us making a promo deadline, never did it show in the raw footage we screened, never once did we suffer while he was suffering. In Atlanta, at Tribune Creative Service Group, in the halls and edit suites, his work simply gave us joy.

And I’ll always be grateful to him for that.