Here is the pitch, and this is my sitcom thinking, by the way. I said that after Buffy fails, Giles would be fired. This would be like the midpoint of the episode, and by the end Buffy does something to somehow make amends and Giles gets rehired again. But the thing that Joss really responded to was, “Oh my God, Giles gets fired.” He just wanted that. It’s an episode where Giles is no longer a Watcher. I was going, “I don’t want to lose Giles’s job. I pitched this, but I wanted him to get his job back.” Somehow the idea became a permanent part of the mythology of the show. A significant event that Joss would hang on to is Giles will never be her Watcher again. He most responded to that.
The pitch was bought, the changes made about Buffy losing her powers, and instead of Giles getting his job back, he never gets his job back. That’s what they bought and that’s what I got to go write. I didn’t know what was going to happen with Giles, but Joss said Giles getting fired will give us an opportunity for Buffy to have a new Watcher. It opened the door for Wesley, who showed up a couple of episodes later in an episode Doug [Petrie] wrote.
As important as Alexis Denisof would become to the show as Wesley Wyndham-Pryce (as well as to costar Alyson Hannigan, whom he met on the series and would marry a few years later at the tony Palm Springs spa and resort, Two Bunch Palms), looming equally large in the series mythology was the arrival of Faith, played by Eliza Dushku, all grown up from her turn as Arnold Schwarzenegger’s pouty and profane daughter in James Cameron’s True Lies.
JAMES MARSTERS
(actor, Spike)
I remember getting off the show after the second season and the character was done with at that point; there were no plans to have him back. I remember thinking over the summer break, “Try to do the show without me now. Never, never succeed without me now that you’ve tasted it—now that you’ve bit into the mountaintop; you won’t be able to help yourself.” And, of course, Joss made up the character Faith. I remember watching a couple of episodes with Faith and then being, like, “God! He can do it without me. No problem. He doesn’t need me at all.”
ELIZA DUSHKU
(actress, Faith)
Buffy really came out of the blue for me. It had been two years since I had worked. Sarah Michelle Gellar and me had an agent and manager in common, and so I had met her probably years before. I originally went in for five shows in season three and then they kind of came up and said, “Would you be the villain this season?” and I’m going, “Yeah, that would be amazing.”
I knew that it would be a fun job to take on, and by that point I knew I loved working with those people. So I stayed on and just through the writers and I, we just kind of created this character that the fans really responded to. For me, it was almost like a little bit of therapy. When I first started playing Faith, I had just graduated high school. I was seventeen years old. All of a sudden I’m out of the house and I’m moving out to L.A. I was actually enrolled in a university before I got Buffy and I had to withdraw.
SARAH LEMELMAN
Faith is a true Madonna figure, in that she not only embraces her sexuality but also enjoys the male body as well. She takes full advantage of what Camille Paglia calls “woman’s cosmic dominance” and uses her magnetic nature to allure men. Men flock to her, as is seen in “Bad Girls,” when her provocative dancing at the Bronze attracts a crowd of male dancers around her. Faith is frequently seen in control of men, drawing power over them through her sexuality. She is the type of woman that Paglia describes as “a prowler and predator, self-directed and no one’s victim.” With her nonchalant attitude of sex and her ability to dominate men with her body, Faith thoroughly transgresses sex roles. Faith shows that women should not be afraid of their sexuality, and instead wield it as a weapon—a temptation no man can resist.
CHARISMA CARPENTER
(actress, Cordelia Chase)
Eliza is Mother Nature on wheels; that’s how much of a force she is. Adore her—she’s still very much a live wire. She’s changed a lot over the years and I forget how young she was. She’s just a weird combination—she has this really strong energy and she’s very powerful and forceful. It’s so interesting to watch her process.
ELIZA DUSHKU
High school was hell in a way. It was so hard. I went to public school in Boston after having been an actress since I was ten years old, so I had that element of just being different in an environment where any kind of difference you have makes you kind of an outcast and an automatic target. I really built up this tough shell, and it was all no-bullshit. It was a bit of a façade, but at the same time it was my reality, because just to survive you kind of have to have the attitude, “Nothing hurts me; you can’t get through to me.” I was kind of this really hard Boston chick. That worked well for Faith and for the creation of that character Joss really zoned into that and we worked with it.
DAVID GREENWALT
She has a really natural talent, you know? She just had this kind of power and it was a good mixing of part and actor. She was a little green, I believe.
ELIZA DUSHKU
Sometimes they seem to be different manifestations of my different personalities. I think we all do have interesting people in us. I try to mix it up, keep it fun, keep it real, keep it interesting. But it’s always a circumstance where the grass is greener. When you’re on a comedy, you’re, like, “I need to do something serious.” I was doing The New Guy and City by the Sea pretty much simultaneously. It was night and day. The characters were so different. It makes it fun and kind of interesting. For me, I think I have to see a streetwise element to the character. I like to see intelligent young women in roles and as characters. I gravitate toward that streetwise element.
I grew up with three older brothers, so I thought I was a boy until I was like ten! I was all about having a crew cut and wearing hand-me-downs, and cheerleading was a girly sport in a way, unless you’re a guy being a cheerleader. So I was just never into that.
KELLY A. MANNERS
(producer, Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
We had to emancipate her. She was only seventeen that first season, and she knew that this was her big break. She brought high energy and the character was fantastic.
ELIZA DUSHKU
It was really not as black and white as, “I divorced my parents,” which I know happens a lot in this business. My mother has never been a stage mom. I lived in Boston my whole life, even like the seven or eight years that I was doing films, and she always wanted me to be in high school. When my grades weren’t doing so well from on-set tutoring, she said, “Forget the movies, girl.” She is a government professor at a university and she said, “I want you to come back to town, go into public school and get good grades in your junior and senior years, and just live the life of a junior and senior in high school.” It really was always her just wanting the best for me, and so I graduated high school with my class, went to the prom, and enrolled at university in my mom’s school. I was all set up, I went to orientation, I had my dorm all sorted out. Meanwhile, my mom was already planning to go to Romania to write a book for the year, so she was going to be out of the country.
I was seventeen when I graduated, so when Buffy came up, it was really a hard choice because, originally, they only wanted me for five shows, which turned into more. But at the same time I was really, really excited about going to school. So we did the emancipation knowing that my mother was going to be out of the country and because I was ready to go out and be independent. In fact, the sole reason for the emancipation was so that I could be a legal adult for work, and especially the night shoots on Buffy, because otherwise, if you’re classed as a child, you can’t work past a certain hour.
DAVID GREENWALT
When I was on The Wonder Years, which I wrote three and directed four, I had the time of my life. Fred Savage was just born to do that part and he had really good parents. They gave him $10 a week allowance. He comes up to me one day and says, “I got this date and I can take her to a café or a movie, but I don’t
have enough money to do both.” I said, “You got the greatest parents in the world.”
KELLY A. MANNERS
I did Dollhouse with Eliza as well. She could bring a conflict that we didn’t have before; she came between Buffy and Angel and just the whole group of them. She was a great addition. It brought a darkness to it, too, which was nice and welcome. It always had its dark elements, but Faith was such a dark character. It made the show that much better.
ELIZA DUSHKU
Truthfully, though, I get misunderstood sometimes, because everyone says, “Oh, you just love to play the bad girl because she’s so bad and because it’s just so fun to be evil.” It’s not just about that. It’s about I have a connection to a bad girl character that makes it more than just so black and white, and more than just so evil. People that were watching Faith were really surprised when, at times, they felt sympathy for her or they felt compassion and it wasn’t just, “Oh, here is this black-and-white monster, bad girl.” I think that it’s more about just playing interesting women and having contrast so that there is more to the girl next door.
DAVID FURY
It’s another example of bringing up Sarah’s game and having another layer on the show, one who plays up her sexuality. Playing bad girls is better than playing good girls for an actor; there’s always going to be more ripeness to it. There never seemed to be any tension between them that I ever witnessed. But certainly the characters themselves—you kind of have to raise your game. Her character was just the sexier version of what Buffy was, because Buffy is the good girl and more grounded. Buffy is beautiful and can play a great romantic scene, but to have someone with Eliza’s sexuality out there, dancing, there’s always that homoerotic quality that’s going on between them, too. They were two sides of the same coin.
SARAH LEMELMAN
Mayor Richard Wilkins is the Big Bad of season three and serves as both an ally and loving father figure to Faith. After Faith accidentally kills a man, she becomes out of control and is rejected by Buffy and the rest of the Scooby Gang. It is then that the Mayor takes her under his wing and treats her as if she is his own daughter.
HARRY GROENER
(actor, Mayor Richard Wilkins)
That was a very interesting and special relationship, because it was unconditional. His seeming love for her I felt was unconditional, and I don’t think she ever had that before. It doesn’t matter what you think; I’m going to love you no matter what. Faith got that kind of relationship, and he got a daughter that he could never really have, because he’s immortal.
DAVID FURY
The Mayor character becoming a daddy figure to the bad girl was great. Giles is always the father figure to Buffy. The Mayor became the father figure to Faith. It just created this great dichotomy. It’s always fun to write villains; it’s fun to write bad girls, which is why we played around with Buffy in later years where she becomes a little bit of a bad girl with Spike. That’s always much more of a fun place to be.
SARAH LEMELMAN
At first, Faith very clearly does not understand the Mayor’s impetus to spoil her—he is the first character on the show to treat her as a human being, rather than a monster or outsider. Slowly, she warms up to the Mayor and the two share an eerily disturbing bond, where Faith is depicted as an equal as well as a young daughter to him. In one scene where the two are discussing a plan, the Mayor breaks off and says, “You know what I wish? I wish you’d pull your hair back. I know, fashion isn’t exactly my thing, but gosh darn, you have such a nice face, I can’t understand why you hide it!”
HARRY GROENER
A lot of the fans say over and over again that one of the things that was so scary about the Mayor was that he’s like your neighbor. He’s like your uncle. He’s just your guy next door. A lot of it was on the page, so it was just how you interpreted it. Joss and I were on the same page about that particular thing. He would always be the person to check me if I ever got to a point where it was too mustache-twirly. He would always say, “No, just throw it away, throw it away.” That was a great note. Because he’s so sure of himself. Mayor Wilkins is so sure of the course of his trajectory and where he’s going. He seems to be very clear about it. The only time that confidence is in jeopardy is when Faith is in jeopardy. When she is in trouble, that was a weakness for him and that was eventually something that took him down.
SARAH LEMELMAN
The Mayor effortlessly changes conversation topics with Faith: at one moment talking about an assassination, to the next moment, where he wants her to “load up on calcium.” He is the ultimate patriarch; Richard Wilkins leads the town of Sunnydale, is the ruthless head of a dark organization, and is a kind and caring father to Faith. Like the Master, the Mayor represents a failure of familial patriarchy, because he cannot protect that which he holds most dearly. Once a stranger, Faith becomes an inspiration to him, but in one of their missions to distract Buffy from the Mayor’s actual agenda, Buffy puts Faith in a coma. As the doctor in the hospital describes to the Mayor the injuries that Faith sustained, his face changes to pure horror. At that moment, he overhears a nurse speaking about another case that has just come in the hospital, and by the description, it is clearly Buffy.
With no remorse, he moves to suffocate Buffy, until Angel pulls the Mayor off of Buffy. The Mayor’s response to this is his shriek of “Murderous little fiend! Do you see what she did to my Faith?” This act of trying to kill Buffy solidifies his bond with Faith, as he is painted as a father having lost his daughter. Faith’s growing dependence on the Mayor and her demise at the hands of Buffy show the failures of familial patriarchy. The Mayor is unable to protect Faith, despite his great power and affection for her.
ARMIN SHIMERMAN
(actor, Principal Snyder)
I had cast Gregory Itzin, who’s an old friend of mine, as the Mayor in my head. But lo and behold, one of my dearest friends is Harry Groener. So I was tickled when Harry got cast and Harry did a brilliant job as the Mayor.
HARRY GROENER
Mr. Trick was a wonderful Steppenwolf [Theatre Company] actor named K. Todd Freeman. In fact, I had seen him in a fabulous show on Broadway, and Ladysmith Black Mambazo was the chorus. It was one of the most brilliant pieces of theater I’d ever seen. And he was the lead.
Less well known was the fact that, unbeknownst to most, Charisma Carpenter was still grappling with severe anxiety that had complicated her work on the show from the beginning of the series.
CHARISMA CARPENTER
It’s amazing what people will and won’t put up with. I feel people will put up with bad behavior before they’ll put up with something that’s costing them money. That’s just the facts. If you’re late or you’re mean to people or you’re challenging ideas and you’re creating angst among people, it’s not appreciated and people will talk about it. But I was having meetings in which my producers were calling me in, my agents were being called, and it was just an awful situation. I could cry just saying this: obstacles are so important; they give perspective, so when they come, you can go, “I earned this, I deserve this” and you’re not lost in that, because you worked for it—it wasn’t just given to you. I had to overcome a lot and it keeps me grounded.
I’ve had huge things to overcome, and I tried really hard to learn as much as I could and absorb as much as I could and, fortunately, I worked with a lot of professional people who’ve been doing it for a long time and they were great examples. But I remember a cameraman being so mad at me that I wouldn’t hit my mark, and it was literally my first job. When I first did Buffy, I was still doing Malibu Shores with not a lot of experience under my belt. We were shooting both shows at the same time and I didn’t have a lot of on-set experience, and this cameraman was, like, “What’s wrong with you?” He was so annoyed, saying, “It’s really important you hit your mark.” I made a joke about putting a sandbag down. I just learned on the job and am thankful for the people that surrounded me at the time who had been doing this for a long time and am
grateful to have learned from them.
I didn’t know it was anxiety at the time. I just thought I was stupid. I beat myself up about it, and I would obsess about my dialogue, and I would study for hours. I’d bought my first house in 1999 and I’m living with someone and I was never present. I couldn’t enjoy my house, because I was constantly trying to figure out what was happening. Do I just need to study harder, memorize longer? There was no space left in my head to just be. It just got really nasty—it was a really big thing to overcome for a few years, but I think my bosses knew that it wasn’t about me not trying or putting in the work, because they would see me with my script and my coaching lessons and I would break down the script and write it out a hundred times.
I would apply what I learned in school and I knew that writing it out for me would help. Then I would have an acting coach help me memorize stuff at home where you toss a pillow back and forth and I would try to recite the stuff when you’re doing an action and you try to recall things; it makes you work both sides of your brain. I did everything. I went to a psychiatrist, I took anti-anxiety medications, whatever would assist me to put my best foot forward.
HARRY GROENER
In television you have to make your choices very quickly and you develop a kind of short-term memory. You can keep it in your head for twenty minutes. And then after that it’s gone until you put it back in. Just enough to get the take. We did that. You had the short-term memory where you kept it all for the rehearsal and for shooting, but the next day it’s gone.
Slayers and Vampires Page 17
