I went back to work on Malibu Shores, and I got a call that they wanted me to go to the network and meet with Garth Ancier, who was running the WB at the time, which no one had heard about. It was a crazy story, because I was at work at Malibu Shores and I knew I had to be in Burbank at 7 P.M., and my job was cooperating, to get me out, which was nice, and it’s rush hour and I’m in Long Beach and I had to get to Burbank. I’m driving this Nissan Sentra, my very first car, with no air-conditioning, no radio, and the next thing I know I’m in gridlock traffic in the middle of Downtown L.A. and I’m freaking out, because I’m late. And I get this 911 beeper message from my agent. I get off the highway and stop at a liquor store with a phone booth to call her back, and she’s, like, “Where are you, they want to leave, they’re hungry.” Literally, I said to them, which is so Cordelia, “Wendy, you tell them I have been in gridlocked traffic for the last hour and a half and I will be there in the next ten minutes and they should wait and order pizza! They’re going to see me today. I’m coming, I’m almost there, and they can’t bail now, not after everything I’ve been through to get there. They don’t know my pain.” So that was it and the rest is history. I got the part. I was in a 7-11 parking lot when I got the offer. It was thirteen days after the final audition. I was going crazy. I just went into the 7-11 and started telling people.
DAVID GREENWALT
(co–executive producer, Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
They were all so funny, particularly Ally, Charisma, and Nicky Brendan. I wrote a line for Nicky in “Teacher’s Pet,” I can’t remember it now, and he was just so good. He could use these words that he didn’t necessarily know what they meant and Willow could give him grief. They were funny and they could play all this. Willow’s got a thing for Xander, Xander’s got a thing for Buffy, Xander gets a thing for Charisma that blows everybody’s mind. They were eighteen, Nicky was maybe a hair older, but they were all really young and suddenly making a lot of money. It changed everybody’s lives. It was a big deal.
CHARISMA CARPENTER
I really liked that I was the truth woman. There’s also another word for that. One of my favorite lines was something that takes place, where Giles says to Cordelia, after she says something rude to Buffy, “Do you actually have any tact?” And my response is tact is just not saying true stuff. So forget it. I enjoyed that very much, that I could be vulnerable and at the same time express myself.
It was a great part. I wish I was as witty as her. One of my favorite lines is, “That’s just propaganda spouted out by the ugly and less-deserving.” She said hilarious stuff. I had Joss speaking in my ear 24-7, so thankfully some of the wittier things in her way of speaking sunk in. There’s got to be some of that in me, or I wouldn’t be able to do it.
JOSE MOLINA
(former assistant to Howard Gordon)
Charisma was never supposed to be part of the regular cast, but she was so great in that character that everybody just started writing toward her, and so this girl who had been created to be a thorn in Buffy’s side and nothing else became a regular. She and Harmony were basically the same character and there was no depth, because they were just the bullies. So when they’d decided that she was going to be a part of the show, then they had to figure out, Well, how do we show different parts of this without taking up too much broadband from the other characters that everybody’s already in love with?
CHARISMA CARPENTER
I was a series regular that wasn’t going to be in all shows produced, which is a fact my agent kind of left out of the equation and it wasn’t good news. I think they were really happy with me and decided to keep me, which is why they tried to make me a part of the Scooby Gang, if you will. They probably never initially had any plans to do that, which is why I never fully fitted in, because the role was never meant to be like that. I think they finally started to develop the character a little more when she and Xander got together.
One of the many unlikely recurring stars of the series was Mercedes McNab, who played Harmony Kendall in the unaired presentation reel, returned for “The Harvest,” and then appeared in a recurring role throughout much of the series and into Angel, where she became a series regular in its last season. A member of the “Cordettes” who is later turned into a vampire, McNab’s other clique was even more exclusive: she was one of the many actresses on the series who had auditioned for the titular role of Buffy.
MERCEDES MCNAB
(actress, Harmony Kendall)
I auditioned for Buffy like pretty much every other girl in L.A. at the time. I went back in a couple times and then I never heard anything. After all, it’s just not that unusual. Then they just called out of the blue and said they had a role, and they wanted to offer it to me, and it was the role of Harmony. It was just a guest star, not a huge part, nothing to write home about, really. But I was excited, because I wanted to be a part of the project. Of course, I would have much preferred to be Buffy.
At the time I didn’t think that my character would ever return to the show. As far as I knew, it was just a onetime-only kind of a gig. I was in high school at the time and I remember I was allowed to drive on the freeway. I had just gotten my license and it was the only time my mom and dad would let me drive on the freeway since I was going to work, so that was kind of a bonus.
I just thought I was Cordelia’s sidekick and I didn’t think anything would come of it. I had no expectations. I really didn’t think it would get picked up, let alone that it would be on the air. Then to last eight years was even slimmer. I don’t think anyone thought anything of it.
CHARISMA CARPENTER
I barely worked first season, but at the beginning of the second season, I was hung upside down on a meat hook by my feet. The pace was much swifter than first season. I don’t know if I was sick from nerves, but in my episode “Out of Mind, Out of Sight,” toward the end I was throwing up. There was a scene with the invisible girl in the bathroom and it was a really convenient location because right after that scene was over, I threw up three times. It must have been nerves or something.
MERCEDES MCNAB
There wasn’t really a difference between me and Cordelia originally in the first season. From the point of an audience, I wanted it to be a little bit more interesting. And then also have the opportunity to stand out, because you don’t necessarily need two of the same characters in one show. There was an opportunity for that when we were in that computer science class. I remember this pretty vividly. We were doing some project on our computer and I just remember taking a moment playing that I’m not just the bitchy girl, but I’m also just so dim. I thought maybe that could differentiate me from Cordelia’s character.
Before landing the role of Willow Rosenberg on Buffy, Alyson Hannigan began her career in Atlanta, where she started shooting local commercials, moving on to national spots such as those for McDonalds, Six Flags Amusement Parks, and Oreo cookies. At age eleven, she moved to L.A. with the hopes of breaking into film and television.
ALYSON HANNIGAN
(actress, Willow Rosenberg)
I moved out [to L.A.] to be near acting, because that’s what I always wanted to do since I was a kid. I started commercials when I was four, and I’ve been doing it all my life. It was an after-school sort of thing. Some people would go off to ballet; I would go to a commercial shoot. Commercials are just a day here or a day there and I didn’t miss much school. And I loved it. I also had regular activities. I was on the soccer team. I was a kid; I just had a job that I loved.
My first picture was My Stepmother Is an Alien. An interesting thing is that Seth Green also played my boyfriend in that film. After Stepmother, I did a short-lived sitcom called Free Spirit. It was sort of a Bewitched kind of show. It went for thirteen episodes, then got canceled. I did some guest spots here and there, nothing really too wonderful—movies of the week and all that stuff. But nothing great until Buffy. By far Buffy was the best thing I’d done. I did some movies of the week that were horrible, but they we
ren’t the same thing as a horror series.
GEORGE SNYDER
The casting of Willow was a problem, because the network said, “Why don’t we just get an Aaron Spelling girl and put glasses on her?” The notion of casting a not classically beautiful girl—“beautiful” in the television sense or Spelling sense of the word—was something Joss was absolutely committed to. He had somebody in mind that didn’t work out and then there was somebody else who didn’t work out. There was a lot of shuffling actresses to the network and the studio and finally, in the midst of it all, came Alyson. And that’s when he said, “You know, this is the one!” Fox got it, I think. The WB was a little reluctant at first, and her look—as you watch through the first season—changed a bit. Finally they began to realize that she had a look that was equally important. Joss basically said, “Trust me.” The WB did, and she got all the prisoner mail in the first season. Actually, in the first season her mail was second only to Sarah’s.
ALYSON HANNIGAN
I almost didn’t get the part of Willow. My agent had submitted me, but for some reason they wouldn’t see me. They had cast someone else for the presentation, but then she got fired when the show was picked up. I finally was able to get an audition for the recast . . . and I auditioned for what seemed like forever. Then I waited and waited, but didn’t hear anything. I’m not the most patient person. After a while, I was at the point of, “Oh, please, just tell me yes or no, because I will kill myself if I don’t find out!” I figured, even if it was bad news, at least I would know. Well, I was at a 7-11 store one day when I got a page to call the producers. After all that auditioning and waiting, they told me I had gotten the part! I was, like, “All right, cool!”
On the first day of shooting I was a little bit nervous. Nick [Brendon], Charisma [Carpenter], and Sarah [Michelle Gellar] had all known each other from the pilot episode, and I was pretty much a stranger. But it didn’t take very long for all of them to become very good friends of mine. Everyone involved with the show was so great and nice. During the first season hiatus, I had my tonsils taken out, and Sarah visited me in the hospital and brought me a little Beanie Baby.
JOSS WHEDON
Alyson Hannigan played the shy, bookish one and what’s great about her is that she is also someone you just respond to emotionally. Whether she’s in jeopardy or being hurt, you’re just completely open to her in the same way that you’re open to Sarah. She is also sort of a temptress. She brought a real life to the character and made her very much a part of the group. If these four didn’t have different perspectives on stuff, they were going to be boring.
ALYSON HANNIGAN
I’m a fan of the genre, but such a wimp when I watch the movies, because I will basically jump into the lap of the person next to me. There was an episode, “Prophecy Girl,” where there’s this huge, enormous slimy monster attacking my leg. It’s wrapped in a tentacle around my leg and is pulling me. They gooped it up with the slime stuff. It’s really disgusting and really scary, and then they turn on these air things so they would flop around and they would make this hissing sound, so I was genuinely screaming to myself at that point. I watched the footage and my hands were up in my face and it looked so fake. It was my natural reaction, but it looked really fake. Of course, only I noticed it, because I’m so critical, but I thought, “What a dork.”
JOSE MOLINA
I was probably a cross between Xander and Willow. I kind of wanted to be as funny as Xander, but I was more dorky and studious like Willow and you know, like Xander, Buffy was a dream girl. Who doesn’t want to date her? But there is a moment in the season one finale where Xander does ask Buffy out and Buffy is, like, “I don’t know, we should just be friends.” And then I think Willow asks him, “What are you going to do tonight?” And he just says, “I’m going to go home and listen to country music. The music of pain.” As a guy who sat with a lot of sappy music and licked my own wounds in my time, I could definitely relate to that.
Aspiring actor David Boreanaz—who was making a living parking cars, painting houses, and handing out towels at a sports club—was famously discovered by an agent while he was walking his dog. This led to guest appearances on Married with Children, the TV movie Men Don’t Lie, the stage shows Hatful of Rain, Fool for Love, and Cowboy Mouth, as well as the feature films Aspen Extreme, Best of the Best 2, and Eyes of the World. Whedon cast him as Angel, an early protector of Buffy who quickly became her love interest, and revealed himself to be a very soulful vampire.
DAVID BOREANAZ
(actor, “Angel”)
I wanted to be everything. I wanted to be the fire guy, I wanted to be the police guy, I wanted to be the cowboy, the Indian. I guess I didn’t say I wanted to grow up and study the Shakespearean art of acting. I’m not good at that kind of stuff. I love people. I love experiences. I love going out. I love traveling. I love adventure, I love learning, and I love involving myself in things where I’m going to learn more about people and seeing people. I’m extremely voyeuristic; I like to look at things. I can go to parks and watch people and their personalities. I didn’t study at the Royal Shakespearean Academy or whatever. I have a high respect for those people, but my method is trying to get down and dirty with it. I understand the level it takes in order to achieve the impossible dream, and for me, the dream is, “Be very simple.” And that’s very hard to do. It’s very difficult. It takes a lot of work, a lot of effort. I just want to work hard and do what I’m doing.
DAVID GREENWALT
That’s a hard part to cast, a young really good-looking guy who maybe isn’t a star yet, but probably could be one. I remember David came in and in the scene he’s supposed to be riding a motorcycle. He turned a chair upside down and kind of sat on it as if he was on a motorcycle. Gail Berman and Joss and I, particularly the women, really responded to David. Then, you know, I think it was about episode seven, somewhere around Christmas, where this first kiss between Buffy and Angel happened. I just said, “I’ll just write the episode.” I didn’t know it was going to be that big a deal. It went on the air and, you know, the rest is history.
Recalled casting director Marcia Schulman at the time, “The breakdown said the most gorgeous, mysterious, fantastic, the most incredible man on the face of the earth.” I think I saw every guy in town. It was the day before shooting, and a friend of mine called me and said, “You know, there’s this guy that lives on my street who walks his dog every day and I don’t know what he does, but he has all the things you’re describing.” And the minute he walked in the room, I wrote down on my notes: “This is the guy.”
DAVID BOREANAZ
I’ve always liked horror films. When I was a kid, Frankenstein, the original movie, scared the hell out of me. I’ve always been fascinated with the film Nosferatu, and when I saw the film the first time it was eerie. You had no choice but to get into the genre when you were on the show, because you’re surrounded by all these vampires and it’s amazing when you have all these extras in vampire makeup, or you’re in the graveyard shooting and you look around to see vampires hanging out. The show itself was really well written and it just goes to show you that if you have the writing and the right chemistry between the cast, things really do work out for the best.
JAMES MARSTERS
I like [David] so much. The man does not whine. He refuses to whine. One time I saw him break a two-by-four with his head. He was trying to get into Buffy’s mom’s house, because he saw me in there. He was supposed to try and get in, forgetting that he wasn’t invited, so there was a force-field that kept him out. The way that we did that was to rig him with a steel cable out of his back so that when he got to a certain point, he’d be pulled back by a cable. Well it was one of those things—dusty floors, maybe. God knows what it was, but the cord was shorter than he expected and he got yanked off of his feet, back through the porch, and splintered a two-by-four in half. Not just a crack, he splintered it! The whole set hushes. They think David is going to the hospital and we’re shu
tting down for a week. But David pops up and says, “I’m fine, I’m fine.”
The other story is that when I went over to Angel, he had just gotten rear-ended on the highway at high speed. They just took him to the hospital because they suspected whiplash, but the doctor says it wasn’t and he should just be careful. He went back to set and he was strung up on chains and hung off the floor for sixteen hours while we tortured him. The man would not complain. The one time I realized he was in pain was when he thought no one was looking at him. I saw his face go ashen. But he’s like a stunt guy; he won’t admit it.
SARAH LEMELMAN
(author, It’s About Power: Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s Stab at Establishing the Strength of Girls on American Television)
The first real iteration of the sympathetic vampire came about with the publication of Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire, in 1976. In it, Rice introduces Louis, a vampire who is repulsed by the joy his maker, Lestat, takes in killing and feeding on his victims. While Angel is not the first sympathetic vampire, his character certainly helped popularize this new conception of the vampire, as following the end of Buffy and Angel, both television and the movies saw a rise in this depiction of a vampire, which seems to have become a staple of the vampire genre.
In 2008, much to tween girls’ delight, the vampire Edward Cullen was brought to life on the big screen, in Twilight. The same year also saw True Blood, a television program which showed the southern gentleman—and vampire—Bill Compton. The following year, in 2009, television viewers were introduced to Stefan Salvatore of The Vampire Diaries. All three characters are essentially the same type of vampire, refusing to feed on humans and wanting to help, rather than hurt, humanity. Since then, there have been dozens of other less popular sympathetic vampire roles on television and the movies, as the fascination around this now prototypical vampire has grown immeasurably.
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