frelling_tralk (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
frelling_tralk) wrote2017-11-27 12:28 pm
frelling_tralk) wrote2017-11-27 12:28 pm
Long rambling Buffy entry ahead!
I recently finished reading Slayers and Vampires: The Complete Uncensored, Unauthorised, Oral History of Buffy the Vampire Slayer & Angel
The reviews for it seem in the low side, and I suppose the way it’s put together with just assorted bits from various interviews is a bit haphazard, but I really enjoyed it anyway. Even as a longtime Buffy fan, it had quite a bit of new info in there for me.
I found out a lot about Charisma Carpenter especially which I hadn’t been aware of before, she goes into a lot of detail about her anxiety and how hard it made her to learn lines. Apparently even when she was performing in talent shows when she was younger, she would have the routines memorised, but then her mind would just freeze up on the day and she would forget what she was meant to be doing. It was the same with learning lines, she said that people on the set were actually really great about it because they knew that it wasn’t just a case of being unprepared, that she really was trying. I read the authors elsewhere talking about how Sarah *did* give Charisma a hard time for constantly forgetting her lines, and so she was always worrying about being fired, but in the book at least she says that everyone in the cast was very understanding, it was more that she kept worrying about how sick of her they must be. She notes feeling very inadequate when the lead actress was 4 or 5 years younger than her and always knew all her lines without any problems, while Charisma kept struggling over her same few lines, and that it’s a really big deal when you’re costing a production money by not being able to get your lines in one or two takes. She was having meetings with the producers, her agents were being called, and she felt awful about it. She ended up taking anti-anxiety medication, she went to a psychiatrist, and the producers hired an acting coach for her after asking her what else they could do to help. She also struggled a lot with hitting her mark because she was so inexperienced, and one cameraman in particular would make her feel stupid for not getting it.
James Marsters notes that Sarah was great if you knew all your lines, hit your marks, and were prepared, but it was very hard for her because they were regularly filming up to 16/17/18 hours a day, it would often go up to 20 hours even and they would rarely see the sun. The show was known as Buffy The Weekend Slayer in the industry as they were filming for such unusually long hours, and it was especially draining on Sarah as she had to carry so much of the show.
Armin Shimerman (Principal Synder) talked about kind of rolling his eyes when he heard that the lead of Buffy was a 19 year former soap actress, but then he was so impressed at how good she was, and how she not only knew all her own lines, but everyone else’s as well. He knocked on her trailer a few days after starting there, and he apologised to Sarah and explained how he prejudged her. He states that she’s one of the best actresses she’s ever worked with, and they ended up becoming very close
Gareth Davies was a not very nice British producer who apparently made the atmosphere very unpleasant during the first season, he was firing people left and right, and the crew would hide when he came to set. He was nicknamed Doctor Death.
Britney Spears was a big fan of the show, and her reps contacted them to say she would love to guest-star on Buffy, so they had the idea to cast her as a sex slave robot as that’s how they felt she was presenting herself at her shows at the time. Britney balked and didn’t want to do that, she’d been more interested in doing something with the Scooby gang
David Fury comments that Go Fish ended up feeling frivolous and out of place because it was apparently a spec script from the very beginning of season 2, and they based it on what the show was doing in the first season with using classic monsters to reflect high school terrors, they didn’t know anything about the Angelus arc and how dark everything was going to get at the time they were scripting that. He acknowledges that it didn’t really work to air when it did and that it ended up being hated by the fans, although he thinks it would have been better appreciated if it wasn’t placed where it was
Oh and apparently most of Halloween was rewritten by Marti Noxon which I never realised before?
Marti and David Fury were both unhappy with Buffy Vs Dracula. David Fury thought it messed with the mythology of their world to bring in a famous fictional character from another universe, while Marti felt that the episode just ended up campy. They had been aiming for something more emotional and resonate than that, but they struggled with the tone. She thinks the character really deserved a longer arc
All the hair and make-up people would do a synchronised hand movement from above their head to ther waist, saying in unison, “She, who must be obeyed,” whenever Sarah’s name was mentioned. The director of photography (Raymond Stella) says that Sarah was always brilliant on set and acted very old for her age. He remembers that once she got really angry with the director of DoubleMeatPalace when he wanted to go in really close to her face in a shoot where she was coming out of a dumpster. Apparently she got Raymond Stella in a corner and laid it all out about the camera being too close and too wide, and he apologised and said he wasn’t thinking, he won’t let the director do it. That director never came back to the show.
Camden Toy played one of the Gentlemen, as well as the Ubervamp in season 7, and he said that him and Sarah would have long talks on set during season 7, and one day she commented that she had never seen him out of costume and had no idea what he really looked like heh. He said that she was very sweet and she was always worrying over whether people were comfortable like a Jewish mother, he was touched one day when she insisted on taking him over to craft services and serving food to him after he explained that he was waiting until he was out of costume to eat, and she said no no it will all be gone by then, so she helped him pick out the food and then hid the plates so that he would have something to eat later on when he was out of costume
James Marsters says they hated filming with the potentials in season 7, just because all the coverage needed when they had so many people in one room made the shoots a lot longer. He notes that they were there to set up a possible spin-off, which David Fury immediately follows up with,’No offence, but James doesn’t know what he’s talking about’ lol. David Fury says that absolutely the only spin-off that was ever discussed was one with Faith. He notes that nothing against Michelle as an actress, but Dawn never quite landed as a character in the way they hoped, and so they never considered her for a spin-off either, it was always Faith or nothing. Interestingly Marti Noxan came off as a little bit bitter about that to me? She talked about how Eliza was more into movies than tv (not really true as she passed on the Faith spin-off to do Tru Calling), and she made a comment about how it was interesting that Faith was a fan favourite, yet Eliza didn’t seem as into the fans
Oh and there were a few different comments on how well Sarah and Eliza got on, even though Faith was brought in as a rival for Buffy, the actresses themselves really liked one another and there was never any competition there. Eliza notes that a lot of Faith was based on her own personality, and she had build up this persona of being this tough Boston chick after having a hard time in school. Charisma comments on what a whirlwind Eliza was on set
Charisma talks about being very surprised and touched when Joss and David Greenwalt made her the offer to be the leading lady on Angel, and that was a nice vote of confidence for her after all her struggles with lines holding up production on Buffy. And then of course it gets into the problems with season 4 of Angel, she comments that she really hated that season and it felt very icky having to kiss Vincent’s character when she was pregnant.
David Fury comments that he likes Charisma as a person, but that she did tend to live her life fairly obliviously without ever considering the ramifications on her role on the show. They would get very frustrated when she would change her hairstyle in the middle of an episode, or when she got a bunch of tattoos including a cross on her wrist that they had to keep covering up because it was a vampire show. And with her pregnancy it was felt that again it wasn’t timed well to help with production and for them to write around it, she just walked in and said by the way I’m pregnant right at the beginning of the season. They had spend weeks arcing out the season with Cordelia playing an active role as the main villain, and instead they ended up having to scramble and do another pregnancy related storyline after they had just done a pregnancy arc with Darla. It was then planned for Cordelia to be the one to put her fist through Jasmine at the end, but they ended up changing that to Connor after Charisma couldn’t work a lot of hours, and so they had her in the coma instead for the end of the season
Charisma comments that she didn’t think her pregnancy would be that big a deal because other shows would have a character stand behind a desk, but instead she feels like her pregnancy was seen as being the last straw. She did try and contact Joss over the summer to tell him earlier, but she couldn’t get hold of him. And I always thought it was supposed to be Joss who asked her to come back for an episode, then revealed that Cordelia was being killed, but in the book she says it was David Fury? She states that she really didn’t want to come back at first, but she eventually decided too for the fans. Her two requests to David Fury were for a certain amount of money, and for Cordelia to not die. It was only after she signed the contract that David decided to tell her that they were killing Cordelia and she was really upset, but he asked her to hear out his script which changed everything for her. She also notes that Joss left her a bouquet of flowers in her trailer, and a really nice note which she had framed where he thanked her for coming back
David Greenwalt said that Glen was constantly screwing around on the Angel set and laughing about forgetting his lines, as well as often being hungover, so one day he really told him off and Glen ended up crying, but ultimately nothing changed. Glen and David Boreneaz really bonded and could get very rowdy together, David Greenwalt said some people felt that Glen was having a negative impact on David Boreneaz, but he personally never saw any problems with David, and he would joke with him that if you misbehave I’m calling your Mom and Dad
James Marsters used to be very jealous of David because his girlfriend had a crush on him, even though David was actually always very nice and supportive. On his first Angel episode James was secretly wearing lifts in his boots, they made it a lot harder when he was doing stunts as it was kind of like walking in high heels. When he came on as a regular for season 5 he thought it would be too pathetic to wear lifts all the time around David, and so by then he needed to just accept that he was shorter than David (aww anyone else get the feeling that James overshares!)
David Greenwalt ended up leaving after the third season of Angel purely because of a contract dispute, he was very insulted that Fox wanted to cut his money, he kept asking Joss to call someone, but Joss was very involved in Firefly at that time and not really present
Christian Kane seemed oddly obsessed with not wanting to be ‘beat up by chicks’, saying that’s why he originally wanted to leave the show. He was also very upset that Lindsay was killed ‘by a flunky’, and thought that he should have been there at the end as he and David were the only original characters still left on the show. He comes off as a bit of a jerk to me to be honest!
Steven S. Deknight said a lot of people were very pissed off that David was so gracious to do a cameo on Buffy’s final episode, without even asking for a lot of money, so he expected the same consideration back ‘which he did not get’
And finally Ian Woolf (first assistant on Angel) said that the cast were all happy to be there for the first couple of seasons, but then typically they get restless and don’t realise how good they have it. He said that Alexis Denisof was one of those people which really surprised me (he always seemed very gung ho about the part of Wesley?), supposedly he complained a lot and really wanted out. Then he had trouble finding work after Angel, and when Kelly Manners came across him at an audition he acknowledged that they didn’t realise how good they had it at the time. Amy Ackler was still enjoying the show however, and seeing the save angel billboards got her hopes up a little bit that they might get another season after all
The reviews for it seem in the low side, and I suppose the way it’s put together with just assorted bits from various interviews is a bit haphazard, but I really enjoyed it anyway. Even as a longtime Buffy fan, it had quite a bit of new info in there for me.
I found out a lot about Charisma Carpenter especially which I hadn’t been aware of before, she goes into a lot of detail about her anxiety and how hard it made her to learn lines. Apparently even when she was performing in talent shows when she was younger, she would have the routines memorised, but then her mind would just freeze up on the day and she would forget what she was meant to be doing. It was the same with learning lines, she said that people on the set were actually really great about it because they knew that it wasn’t just a case of being unprepared, that she really was trying. I read the authors elsewhere talking about how Sarah *did* give Charisma a hard time for constantly forgetting her lines, and so she was always worrying about being fired, but in the book at least she says that everyone in the cast was very understanding, it was more that she kept worrying about how sick of her they must be. She notes feeling very inadequate when the lead actress was 4 or 5 years younger than her and always knew all her lines without any problems, while Charisma kept struggling over her same few lines, and that it’s a really big deal when you’re costing a production money by not being able to get your lines in one or two takes. She was having meetings with the producers, her agents were being called, and she felt awful about it. She ended up taking anti-anxiety medication, she went to a psychiatrist, and the producers hired an acting coach for her after asking her what else they could do to help. She also struggled a lot with hitting her mark because she was so inexperienced, and one cameraman in particular would make her feel stupid for not getting it.
James Marsters notes that Sarah was great if you knew all your lines, hit your marks, and were prepared, but it was very hard for her because they were regularly filming up to 16/17/18 hours a day, it would often go up to 20 hours even and they would rarely see the sun. The show was known as Buffy The Weekend Slayer in the industry as they were filming for such unusually long hours, and it was especially draining on Sarah as she had to carry so much of the show.
Armin Shimerman (Principal Synder) talked about kind of rolling his eyes when he heard that the lead of Buffy was a 19 year former soap actress, but then he was so impressed at how good she was, and how she not only knew all her own lines, but everyone else’s as well. He knocked on her trailer a few days after starting there, and he apologised to Sarah and explained how he prejudged her. He states that she’s one of the best actresses she’s ever worked with, and they ended up becoming very close
Gareth Davies was a not very nice British producer who apparently made the atmosphere very unpleasant during the first season, he was firing people left and right, and the crew would hide when he came to set. He was nicknamed Doctor Death.
Britney Spears was a big fan of the show, and her reps contacted them to say she would love to guest-star on Buffy, so they had the idea to cast her as a sex slave robot as that’s how they felt she was presenting herself at her shows at the time. Britney balked and didn’t want to do that, she’d been more interested in doing something with the Scooby gang
David Fury comments that Go Fish ended up feeling frivolous and out of place because it was apparently a spec script from the very beginning of season 2, and they based it on what the show was doing in the first season with using classic monsters to reflect high school terrors, they didn’t know anything about the Angelus arc and how dark everything was going to get at the time they were scripting that. He acknowledges that it didn’t really work to air when it did and that it ended up being hated by the fans, although he thinks it would have been better appreciated if it wasn’t placed where it was
Oh and apparently most of Halloween was rewritten by Marti Noxon which I never realised before?
Marti and David Fury were both unhappy with Buffy Vs Dracula. David Fury thought it messed with the mythology of their world to bring in a famous fictional character from another universe, while Marti felt that the episode just ended up campy. They had been aiming for something more emotional and resonate than that, but they struggled with the tone. She thinks the character really deserved a longer arc
All the hair and make-up people would do a synchronised hand movement from above their head to ther waist, saying in unison, “She, who must be obeyed,” whenever Sarah’s name was mentioned. The director of photography (Raymond Stella) says that Sarah was always brilliant on set and acted very old for her age. He remembers that once she got really angry with the director of DoubleMeatPalace when he wanted to go in really close to her face in a shoot where she was coming out of a dumpster. Apparently she got Raymond Stella in a corner and laid it all out about the camera being too close and too wide, and he apologised and said he wasn’t thinking, he won’t let the director do it. That director never came back to the show.
Camden Toy played one of the Gentlemen, as well as the Ubervamp in season 7, and he said that him and Sarah would have long talks on set during season 7, and one day she commented that she had never seen him out of costume and had no idea what he really looked like heh. He said that she was very sweet and she was always worrying over whether people were comfortable like a Jewish mother, he was touched one day when she insisted on taking him over to craft services and serving food to him after he explained that he was waiting until he was out of costume to eat, and she said no no it will all be gone by then, so she helped him pick out the food and then hid the plates so that he would have something to eat later on when he was out of costume
James Marsters says they hated filming with the potentials in season 7, just because all the coverage needed when they had so many people in one room made the shoots a lot longer. He notes that they were there to set up a possible spin-off, which David Fury immediately follows up with,’No offence, but James doesn’t know what he’s talking about’ lol. David Fury says that absolutely the only spin-off that was ever discussed was one with Faith. He notes that nothing against Michelle as an actress, but Dawn never quite landed as a character in the way they hoped, and so they never considered her for a spin-off either, it was always Faith or nothing. Interestingly Marti Noxan came off as a little bit bitter about that to me? She talked about how Eliza was more into movies than tv (not really true as she passed on the Faith spin-off to do Tru Calling), and she made a comment about how it was interesting that Faith was a fan favourite, yet Eliza didn’t seem as into the fans
Oh and there were a few different comments on how well Sarah and Eliza got on, even though Faith was brought in as a rival for Buffy, the actresses themselves really liked one another and there was never any competition there. Eliza notes that a lot of Faith was based on her own personality, and she had build up this persona of being this tough Boston chick after having a hard time in school. Charisma comments on what a whirlwind Eliza was on set
Charisma talks about being very surprised and touched when Joss and David Greenwalt made her the offer to be the leading lady on Angel, and that was a nice vote of confidence for her after all her struggles with lines holding up production on Buffy. And then of course it gets into the problems with season 4 of Angel, she comments that she really hated that season and it felt very icky having to kiss Vincent’s character when she was pregnant.
David Fury comments that he likes Charisma as a person, but that she did tend to live her life fairly obliviously without ever considering the ramifications on her role on the show. They would get very frustrated when she would change her hairstyle in the middle of an episode, or when she got a bunch of tattoos including a cross on her wrist that they had to keep covering up because it was a vampire show. And with her pregnancy it was felt that again it wasn’t timed well to help with production and for them to write around it, she just walked in and said by the way I’m pregnant right at the beginning of the season. They had spend weeks arcing out the season with Cordelia playing an active role as the main villain, and instead they ended up having to scramble and do another pregnancy related storyline after they had just done a pregnancy arc with Darla. It was then planned for Cordelia to be the one to put her fist through Jasmine at the end, but they ended up changing that to Connor after Charisma couldn’t work a lot of hours, and so they had her in the coma instead for the end of the season
Charisma comments that she didn’t think her pregnancy would be that big a deal because other shows would have a character stand behind a desk, but instead she feels like her pregnancy was seen as being the last straw. She did try and contact Joss over the summer to tell him earlier, but she couldn’t get hold of him. And I always thought it was supposed to be Joss who asked her to come back for an episode, then revealed that Cordelia was being killed, but in the book she says it was David Fury? She states that she really didn’t want to come back at first, but she eventually decided too for the fans. Her two requests to David Fury were for a certain amount of money, and for Cordelia to not die. It was only after she signed the contract that David decided to tell her that they were killing Cordelia and she was really upset, but he asked her to hear out his script which changed everything for her. She also notes that Joss left her a bouquet of flowers in her trailer, and a really nice note which she had framed where he thanked her for coming back
David Greenwalt said that Glen was constantly screwing around on the Angel set and laughing about forgetting his lines, as well as often being hungover, so one day he really told him off and Glen ended up crying, but ultimately nothing changed. Glen and David Boreneaz really bonded and could get very rowdy together, David Greenwalt said some people felt that Glen was having a negative impact on David Boreneaz, but he personally never saw any problems with David, and he would joke with him that if you misbehave I’m calling your Mom and Dad
James Marsters used to be very jealous of David because his girlfriend had a crush on him, even though David was actually always very nice and supportive. On his first Angel episode James was secretly wearing lifts in his boots, they made it a lot harder when he was doing stunts as it was kind of like walking in high heels. When he came on as a regular for season 5 he thought it would be too pathetic to wear lifts all the time around David, and so by then he needed to just accept that he was shorter than David (aww anyone else get the feeling that James overshares!)
David Greenwalt ended up leaving after the third season of Angel purely because of a contract dispute, he was very insulted that Fox wanted to cut his money, he kept asking Joss to call someone, but Joss was very involved in Firefly at that time and not really present
Christian Kane seemed oddly obsessed with not wanting to be ‘beat up by chicks’, saying that’s why he originally wanted to leave the show. He was also very upset that Lindsay was killed ‘by a flunky’, and thought that he should have been there at the end as he and David were the only original characters still left on the show. He comes off as a bit of a jerk to me to be honest!
Steven S. Deknight said a lot of people were very pissed off that David was so gracious to do a cameo on Buffy’s final episode, without even asking for a lot of money, so he expected the same consideration back ‘which he did not get’
And finally Ian Woolf (first assistant on Angel) said that the cast were all happy to be there for the first couple of seasons, but then typically they get restless and don’t realise how good they have it. He said that Alexis Denisof was one of those people which really surprised me (he always seemed very gung ho about the part of Wesley?), supposedly he complained a lot and really wanted out. Then he had trouble finding work after Angel, and when Kelly Manners came across him at an audition he acknowledged that they didn’t realise how good they had it at the time. Amy Ackler was still enjoying the show however, and seeing the save angel billboards got her hopes up a little bit that they might get another season after all
no subject
They would get very frustrated when she would change her hairstyle in the middle of an episode, or when she got a bunch of tattoos including a cross on her wrist that they had to keep covering up because it was a vampire show. And with her pregnancy it was felt that again it wasn’t timed well to help with production and for them to write around it, she just walked in and said by the way I’m pregnant right at the beginning of the season.
Ugh. At the beginning of this paragraph, I'm on the side of the producers, and by the end of it I'm on Charisma's side. I can see how tattoos and haircuts could add time and money to the production and how frustrating it must have been if she did things like that carelessly, without thinking through the ramifications. But...pregnancies happen, and sometimes they can't be timed out to the perfect moment. Given that they didn't really want to tackle another pregnancy plot right after Darla's, they could have chosen to either hide it for as long as possible and then write her out of the last half of the season (maybe Cordelia could have been offered an acting role out of town, or something), or they could have chosen to incorporate her pregnancy in a way that didn't turn the character into a villain.
David Fury says that absolutely the only spin-off that was ever discussed was one with Faith.
I always got the feeling that the network was interested in the Slayer School spin-off idea, but I don't know if the producers/writers were ever really behind it. A Faith spin-off could maybe have worked (and would probably have been better than Tru Calling), but I wouldn't have wanted to see Spike on it ('cause I'm a petty shipper).
Christian Kane seemed oddly obsessed with not wanting to be ‘beat up by chicks’, saying that’s why he originally wanted to leave the show. He was also very upset that Lindsay was killed ‘by a flunky’,
UGHH.
Anything about Sarah's Type A professionalism just makes me like her more, tbh.
Thanks for this write-up!
no subject
And yep, I can see why changing your hairstyle without advance notice would be a big deal in tv terms, I remember that the WB were practically forbidding leading actresses to cut their hair after what happened with Felicity lol. I always understand it as Charisma literally cut her hair in the middle of a season 2 episode, just showing up with short hair on the day without telling anyone, and so that totally threw the continuity of scenes. Charisma herself talks about her pregnancy being seen as the last straw, so I guess that her already being seen as having a pattern of not considering production needs more all had an effect on how mad everyone got with her as well. It was a sad way to end things though
they could have chosen to incorporate her pregnancy in a way that didn't turn the character into a villain.
Definitely, I guess the issue was that they always originally intended for Cordelia to be the main season 4 villain, and so weren’t prepared to change that? I know that Joss was excited about her character having a big throw down with Angel and the pregnancy and Jasmine was their compromise on that. Honestly they should have just come up with a whole different arc once they knew that Charisma was going to be heavily pregnant in the back half of the season, she deserved to have at least 5 or 6 episodes off for maternity leave.
And ditto on Sarah :)
no subject
Fury's comments about that are weird. Haircuts I can see, but that happened only once I can think of. Tattoos... Charisma is far from the only cast member with tattoos. They didn't even bother with Sarah or Aly's by the time S7 came around. One is a cross on a chain... so? Cordy is not a vampire, nor do I think images of crosses have any effect if she was.
The comments about her and SMG really shed some light on what it takes to be called trouble when you're an actress.
no subject
no subject
I would have to assume so. There was the infamous break in S3 where she left in the middle of a major storyline that couldn't have gone down well. But the stuff listed in the book seems trite when it was a problem for others. Nic himself says he was very unreliable and they fought to keep him around. There must have been more going on or the problems with lines/marks were very, very serious.
I really don't think she was fired for the pregnancy. From what I read, S4 of Angel was supposed to mirror Becoming, with Angel/Cordy fighting and him killing her. Which is to say she was done after S4 from the get-go.
no subject
David Greenwalt seemed to be the only one who really loved Cordelia’s character and was championing her, once he left it sadly didn’t like any of the remaining Ats writers cared about Cordelia half as much as they did about Fred.