26 August 2026
The man who was Hercules to millions of viewers in the 1990s was secretly dying, suffering three undetected strokes while performing his own stunts, and the production team was forced to create one of the most bizarre meta episodes in television history to cover his collapse. This is just one of the revelations emerging from a deep dive into the making of the syndicated fantasy series that dominated Friday night television for six seasons. Kevin Sorbo, the actor who embodied the demigod for a generation, was at the peak of his physical fitness in the summer of 1997 when he first noticed something was wrong. Tingling and numbness spread through his left arm, his fingers turned cold for no apparent reason, and multiple doctors dismissed his symptoms during a promotional tour for the film Kull the Conqueror. Sorbo trusted their assurances because he was Hercules, the strongest man on television, and the idea that his body could betray him seemed impossible. The truth emerged while Sorbo was lifting weights when a searing pain shot from his shoulder down his left side. Driving home from a chiropractor appointment, his vision blurred so severely that he could barely see the road. An angiogram revealed an aneurysm in his left shoulder that had been sending blood clots through his system for months. After emergency surgery, doctors delivered the devastating news that Sorbo had already suffered three strokes without realizing it, and he kept this diagnosis secret for nearly 15 years. In a Fox News interview years later, Sorbo admitted that ego and fear kept him silent about his condition. His memoir True Strength describes the humiliating transition from a carefree athlete to someone who needed to grip chairs and counters just to make a five-yard trip to the bathroom. Nobody watching at home knew that the man playing Hercules could barely walk across his own trailer, and the production team now faced the impossible task of rebuilding the show around his absence. The solution that writers Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci devised became one of the most surreal episodes in the entire history of television. When Sorbo's health collapsed during season four, his screen time was drastically cut and stunt doubles took over for most physical scenes. Rather than writing around his absence with traditional methods, the writers created an episode called Yes, Virginia, There Is a Hercules that was set in the modern day and featured the cast playing fictionalized versions of the show's writers and producers. Bruce Campbell played producer Rob Tapert while Michael Hurst played writer Paul Robert Coyle and Kevin Smith played writer Jerry Patrick Brown. The story followed the staff panicking after Sorbo vanished during an earthquake in Los Angeles, and the twist revealed that the fictional Kevin Sorbo was actually Hercules living as a mortal in the 20th century while playing himself in his own television show. Ares appeared to mock his brother for pretending to be a mortal named Kevin Sorbo, creating a paradox that still confuses viewers who think about it too hard. The actor who played Ares in that episode and stole every scene he walked into had a real-life story far more devastating than anything his character ever experienced on camera. Kevin Smith, the New Zealand-born actor who made the God of War feel genuinely terrifying and seductive at the same time, had absolutely no plans to ever become an actor. His entire dream growing up was to play professional rugby, and he lived and breathed the sport through his teenage years and into adulthood. A concussion during a rugby match sidelined Smith, and while he was stuck at home recovering, his wife Suzanne spotted a casting notice for a musical about Elvis Presley called Are You Lonesome Tonight. She pushed him to try out, he went and got the part, and that single moment redirected his entire life. Smith first appeared on Hercules not as Ares but as Iphicles, Hercules fully mortal half-brother, and the producers saw something electric in his screen presence that led them to bring him back as the God of War. From 1998 to 1999, Smith was simultaneously playing Ares across three different television series at the same time, appearing on Hercules, Xena, and Young Hercules concurrently in a scheduling feat almost unheard of in the television industry. Fans at conventions across the United States treated him like a rock star, and Hollywood was finally starting to pay attention. Smith was on the verge of crossing into major feature films when a catastrophic accident in China ended everything in the worst way possible. In February 2002, Smith had just finished filming the martial arts sequel Warriors of Virtue 2 in Beijing and was excited because it gave him the chance to train with a stuntman from the acclaimed film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. On February 6th, the day after filming wrapped, Smith fell from a lighting tower on set with some reports placing the fall at six stories. His injuries were catastrophic, and he was placed on life support with severe head trauma. His wife Suzanne and his parents flew to Beijing and were by his side when he passed away 10 days later on February 15th at just 38 years old. He left behind three sons, Oscar who was 11, Tyrone who was nine, and Willard who was only three. The part that still haunts fans is what was supposed to happen next because in March that same year, Smith was scheduled to fly to Hawaii to begin filming the action thriller Tears of the Sun alongside Bruce Willis. That role would have been his first major Hollywood role and the breakout moment everyone believed was coming. His memorial service was held at Auckland Aotea Centre where castmates remembered a man who brought warmth, chaos, and laughter wherever he went. Kevin Smith was never really a villain, he simply played one better than almost anyone else ever had. The woman whose spin-off had already made her more famous than Hercules himself had an origin story on the show that was built entirely on rejection, illness, and sheer desperation. Xena was never supposed to become a franchise because the character was written as a disposable three-episode villain in season one of Hercules and was meant to die in her final appearance. The first actress cast as Xena was Vanessa Angel, star of the Weird Science television series, but Angel fell ill and could not fly to New Zealand for filming. Writer John Schulian later revealed that the team spent the entire New Year weekend searching for a replacement. Producer Robert Tapert offered the role to Kim Delaney who accepted immediately, but her manager called back 30 minutes later and withdrew her. Four more actresses were offered the role and everyone turned it down while production was running out of time. Executives also resisted casting Lucy Lawless because she had just appeared in the previous Hercules episode as a different character named Lila, fearing audiences would be confused. Lawless later joked that the producers showed her a list of five actresses and they all said no, so she thanked every one of them. She landed one of the most iconic female action roles of the 1990s simply because she was the last person left, and that is how close the world came to never having Xena at all. The spin-off that nobody planned for ended up becoming so successful that it reportedly created real friction with the man who was supposed to be the star of the entire franchise. When Xena Warrior Princess premiered in the fall of 1995 alongside Hercules season two, it was expected to ride in its parent show shadow, but that lasted about six weeks. Xena exploded in the ratings and blew past Hercules in viewership and cultural impact, eventually airing in more than 108 countries. TV Guide ranked it among its top cult shows ever, and reports began circulating that Kevin Sorbo was not handling the situation well. Multiple sources suggested he had grown frustrated watching the spin-off overshadow his show. Lawless addressed the speculation in a 1997 interview saying there was no point in competing and describing the casts as one big happy family, but whether that was true behind closed doors is another matter. In the decades since both shows ended, Lawless and Sorbo relationship deteriorated publicly, erupting into political clashes on social media that made it clear the harmony she described had not survived. While the leads were dealing with all of that tension off-screen, one actor on the show was quietly pulling off something absurd that the producers actually tried to cover up with fake names. Michael Hurst, the British-born New Zealand actor who played Iolaus, was one of the most versatile performers in the franchise. Across Hercules, Xena, and Young Hercules, Hurst portrayed 13 different characters in 86 episodes. Besides Iolaus, he played the underworld ferryman Charon beneath heavy prosthetic makeup, the alternate universe Iolaus II, Iolaus half-cousin Orestes, the demon Dahak, and several others. His most unusual creation was the Widow Twankey, a flamboyant British pantomime dame the producers discovered after watching Hurst perform in a local Auckland production of Pinocchio. They loved the performance and insisted he bring the character to the show. Because Hurst was born in Lancashire, England, he delivered the thick Northern English accent with complete authenticity, something British audiences noticed immediately. When those episodes aired, Hurst was not credited under his real name for the Widow Twankey scenes. Instead, the credits listed him as Edith Sidebottom. In the chaotic episode Greece is burning, he even received two fake credits in the same episode, Edith Sidebottom for the Widow Twankey and Billy Wagstaff for a beggar he also played.…
