Slayers and Vampires
Page 7
KELLY A. MANNERS
(producer, Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
Many years ago I was offered Buffy as a first assistant director and I turned it down. An executive friend of mine, Jamie Kleinman, said, “Kelly, I’ve got two shows you can be the AD on. One’s called Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which is a mess of people running around in rubber masks, and one’s called L.A. Firefighters.” She goes, “Buffy’s going to be twelve episodes and out, L.A. Firefighters is going to go five years.” I picked L.A. Firefighters and that was twelve and out and Buffy and went seven years.
HIGH SCHOOL CONFIDENTIAL
“It’s my first day. I was afraid that I’d be behind on all my classes, that I wouldn’t make any friends, that I’d have last month’s hair. I didn’t think there would be vampires on campus.”
After a pilot was given the greenlight by the WB, Whedon shot a presentation reel rather than a full one-hour pilot. Shot on 16 mm, which was grainier and cheaper than the 35 mm film most television was shot on at the time, the presentation reel was a relatively bare bones affair with primitive visual effects and action. Stepping behind the camera to shoot it would be Whedon himself, but while the presentation itself was unimpressive, the writing and the casting were, which helped get the series on the air.
Among those considered for the titular role early on were Katie Holmes, who would later go on to star on the network’s Dawson’s Creek. But the first person cast by Whedon along with casting director Marcia Schulman was Anthony Stewart Head, who loomed large in the cultural zeitgeist at the time in a series of serialized Folgers coffee commercials (yes, you read that right, Folgers—coffee—commercials), in which Head flirts with his female neighbor over coffee. Such were the nineties for those of you who weren’t there.
JOSS WHEDON
(creator / executive producer, Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
I was very careful to make sure that my leads were really specifically drawn out so that they’re not so generic: “I’ll be pretty this week; I’ll be snotty this week.” I hate that shit! You’ve got Buffy, you’ve got Giles, you’ve got Xander, and Willow, 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.
GEORGE SNYDER
(former assistant to Joss Whedon)
With Giles, Joss knew exactly what he wanted. Tony just so nailed the part.
ANTHONY STEWART HEAD
(actor, Rupert Giles)
Early on, Giles didn’t have the faintest idea what he was doing. He just knew it was his duty and his life’s mission to find this girl and to teach her how to deal with vampires. She is the One. The One who possesses all of the talents. Giles is the Watcher, so the fact that she had no desire early on to get on board was infinitely annoying to me. And the fact that is she was this young American high school girl and I’m very English, so there was a lot of fun to be had.
GEORGE SNYDER
What’s amazing to me is that the English got Ally McBeal before they got Buffy and they said, “You can see that Buffy comes out of the Ally McBeal mold.” Whoa, whoa, whoa, quite the reverse, and that’s no reflection on David Kelley.
In addition to his relative fame in the Folgers commercials, Head had also had guest-starring roles in such shows as Highlander: The Series and NYPD Blue and had roles in films like A Prayer for the Dying, Devil’s Hill, and Lady Chatterly’s Lover. On the London stage he appeared in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Julius Caesar, The Heiress, Chess and Rope. To genre fans, he was probably best known for his costarring role in the short-lived VR.5, in which he more or less “watched” over that show’s star, Lori Singer.
ANTHONY STEWART HEAD
I read the Buffy script and it was really exceptional. You never know what will happen, of course, but I had never seen anything like it on TV before. I chose to take the script with me when I popped out for something to eat. I sat there eating with my script and found myself laughing out loud, which is a bit embarrassing when you’re sitting on your own. But it is something that is strangely accepted in L.A.—people sitting at tables reading scripts and trying desperately not to look obvious that they’re reading a script. I couldn’t stop turning the pages to find out what happened, but at the same time I couldn’t help but crack up.
This was amazingly new stuff, so I couldn’t wait to meet them. I met Gail Berman, Joss, and a few others. Had no idea who Joss was. He was so young anyway that I probably thought he was an intern or something. I didn’t pay him much attention the first time around, but then again when you’re greeted by a bunch of faces in a room, you don’t really know who’s who. Joss has apparently said that I picked up the part and walked away with it under my arm at that moment.
JOSS WHEDON
The poor man had a ton of exposition on the show, because we wanted everyone to understand what’s going on. He’s got such extraordinary range, yet at the same time he’s extremely funny and plays the person who is so hapless and confused by this young American so perfectly. People used to ask why he was cast. We heard him read. Then that was over. Soon as he did, we knew we had our guy.
ANTHONY STEWART HEAD
The first test I did was for Fox, and just before I went, my agent said, “Have you seen the movie?” I said, “A long time ago.” He suggested I see it and I was saddened, because it wasn’t at all what I had read. I thought, “This is bizarre. This is not what I envisioned at all.” Later I saw Joss in the hallway, and, by that point, I had worked out that it was him and said, “I saw the movie,” and his face fell. He said, “Well, we’re not doing that.” I’m a great believer in instincts and intuition, and I knew then when I talked to him, I just felt it would come together.
So I had to audition in front of a bunch of Fox executives, which is bizarre, because it’s a room of about twenty people. Very crammed, like a small Equity Waiver Theater. You go in and do it. Some of them laugh excessively, because they’re working very hard to make you feel at home, and some people are completely blank and you have absolutely no idea how you’re going down. It’s rather like being a bad stand-up comic. Added to that, you sit in the corridor before you go in and they give you a contract to sign, so flashing through your mind is, “OK, I’m going to be away from my family for five to seven years. Do I know what I’m doing? What’s going to happen?” At the same time, they’re bringing pages of the contract that have been faxed from the agent with points that have been renegotiated or changed. You’re flipping through this contract trying to figure out what you’re saying that you’ll do instead of being able to concentrate on acting. It’s bizarre.
RAYMOND STELLA
(director of photography, Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
He’s always got his glasses. That was his big thing. That is a distraction that keeps you busy. He loved his props.
MARK HANSSON
(second assistant director, Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
Anthony was the brother of Murray Head from Chess and Sunday Bloody Sunday. He was a very nice man, but he has some birth-defect hand deformity. I remember he was always careful to never show that on camera.
CHARISMA CARPENTER
(actress, Cordelia Chase)
One day, Tony and I walked up and everyone was surrounding Tony’s trailer. Joss had a CD cover from the show in his hand. I remember I looked at it and said something, that was pretty funny, like, “Is this a joke?” His face was made up like KISS, but with colors. And Tony says, “Actually, no, it’s not a joke.” He’s very hip, very cool. The first time I ever saw him, it was funny. We were in the casting office and he had earrings in and he was dressed in baggy pants and Converse high tops and he’s nothing like his character.
JAMES MARSTERS
(actor, Spike)
I had said the word “bollocks” and I had pronounced it “bull-locks,” and that was the final straw. He came to me and said, “We don’t say it like that, yo
u prat. You’re embarrassing me back home.” He tutored me by force for about six months until I got my accent right. Without Tony Head, we would not be having a conversation about what a great British accent I had.
The role of one of Buffy’s best friends, Xander Harris, went to Nicholas Brendan, who began his career as a production assistant on the sitcom Dave’s World before securing a recurring role on the soap opera Another World and on stage in The Further Adventures of Tom Sawyer, My Own Private Hollywood, and Out of Gas on Lover’s Lane. Buffy represented his first genuine big break.
GEORGE SNYDER
A couple of guys came in to audition for Xander, but Nicky just hit it out of the park. He, like many of the characters, begged the question, “Which is more Joss, Willow or Xander?” In a way, probably Xander, in another way Willow. There is some part of Joss in all of the characters.
NICHOLAS BRENDAN
(actor, Xander Harris)
I was Joss Whedon in high school. I think what Joss wanted is a situation where he could completely manipulate and write the situation the way he saw fit. He played God. If he wanted that girl, by golly, by going through me he was going to get that girl. He could say all the funny lines and have all the retorts quickly, very witty and wry. I liked that. I think he went to high school in Europe at an all-boys school, so it wasn’t a typical high school situation. I think it made him even more insecure when he went out into the real world. We had that conversation where he told me that Xander was him in high school.
JOSS WHEDON
Nick Brendan is extraordinarily likable. He’s real good-looking and brought a humbling quality to the character, which is extremely charming. He can also play a range of emotions.
NICHOLAS BRENDAN
I was horribly insecure in high school. I wanted to be funny, but I had a stutter. One of the reasons I got into acting was because I have a stutter, and that’s why I’m hard on myself when I act. I lived my whole childhood life and high school with a stutter that I couldn’t control. It took a lot of hard work. When I want to do something a certain way, it has to be that way; otherwise, I’ll beat myself up for it.
Brendan had hoped to be a professional baseball player, but an arm injury cut that dream short, and he pursued an acting career instead. After some commercial work and a recurring role on The Young and The Restless, he appeared in Children of the Corn III: Urban Harvest.
NICHOLAS BRENDAN
I went into acting. I was a great player, but there are so many politics in baseball and you have to be really lucky and in the right place at the right time. It sounds similar to acting, but with acting I was really naive.
Charisma Carpenter, whose first name was inspired by an Avon perfume, was born on July 23, 1970, in Las Vegas, Nevada. Her early credits include a succession of local lounge shows and beauty pageants. By the time she had finished high school, though, she was seriously leaning toward a career in teaching English. College would lead her to a position as an aerobics instructor and then a one-year stint as a cheerleader for the San Diego Chargers.
CHARISMA CARPENTER
Since I was five I was in a dance studio, and I was always involved in the arts. I went to the School of the Creative and Performing Arts, so we learned stage technique and opera and acting, and all sorts of things under that umbrella. One summer I took a three-day seminar and there was scene study, so I was given a scene and you learn your lines and you act it out. There was this one woman who it was impossible for her to give a compliment, and she was kind of wowed by me, and it really caught my attention; something about us heartbroken artists need to have the attention of those who don’t approve of anything.
I grew up in Las Vegas and I was very involved in the community and I was involved in the Young Entertainers, which is basically a talent group for young children. We used to tour the local Travel Lodges at every entrance and exit of the Las Vegas freeway, of which there are two, and we would do little bars, and we would do the March of Dimes, and we would do old folks’ homes, and I was in talent contests. I was always performing at a very, very young age. On top of that were the recitals, so I feel like, with that kind of background, to be in front of people performing, it came second nature to me, so acting, when that came about, made sense. It was like the next level.
In 1992 she went to L.A. to visit her boyfriend and never moved back. At first she took a job as a waitress at California Pizza Kitchen, and then, after the inevitable questions from her customers whether she was an actress, she decided to actually give it a try. Acting school followed, which in turn led to over twenty television commercials, including two years as the Secret antiperspirant spokeswoman.
CHARISMA CARPENTER
I was in my early twenties and had moved to Los Angeles from Las Vegas to be with a boy. I didn’t know what I wanted to do, so I got a job at a restaurant on Sunset Boulevard called Mirabelle, and one day an agent asked me if I did commercials and I said no. He said, “What are you doing with your life?” And I said, “I’m here and I’m waiting six months to pay college tuition to go back to school, because it’s an exorbitant fee,” and he said I should really consider acting, because it’s a lot less time-consuming than waitressing. I’m, like, “Oh, tell me more.” He introduced me to his son, who was a commercial agent, and I started doing commercials, and then I started studying acting with Robert Carnegie and Jeff Goldblum at Playhouse West and fell in love with that.
It was a really tough school and we had to do book reports. Our teacher was constantly reminding us how impossible it was to make it and this work ethic was kind of pounded into our heads; how often were you working on your craft, if you’re trying to earn a wage, how many hours a week are you really putting forth? We had to do book reports, we had a reading list, and we had to read 1,500 pages a week, because it was imperative we understood what good writing was. So he provided a reading list, and, in a matter of a few short pages, [we had to] be able to discern what is good writing and what is the essence of a story and what is character development. It was quite the curriculum.
Stage roles in No, No Nanette and Welcome Home Soldier were followed by a guest-starring turn on Baywatch, which caught the attention of Aaron Spelling. Ultimately, Carpenter was cast as the bitchy Ashley Green on Spelling’s short-lived Malibu Shores.
CHARISMA CARPENTER
I was auditioning for Buffy while I was doing Malibu Shores. I guess they knew it was going to get canceled soon. So I auditioned wearing overalls, a leather jacket, and flip-flops. It was really a bizarre day. I was actually reading for the character of Buffy. Then they wanted me to read for Cordelia five minutes later. I did and I guess they really liked it. Joss Whedon was there and I didn’t know that it was for producers only. Cordelia was always looking for attention and never got it. The fan mail was disheartening too, saying things like, “Are you ever going to be nice?” My response is, “I am nice. They’re meaner to me than I am to them.”
When I was on Malibu Shores and went on to Buffy, I suffered from extreme anxiety. I didn’t really know how debilitating it was. I remember when I was dancing in these talent shows and I would compete in pageants, and I would blank on what the next step was in my routine. You have to remember, I would have four-hour private rehearsals on a Saturday and a Sunday and I had been doing the same dance for a year. It’s not that I didn’t know the steps. For whatever reason, and I could never predict it, which created even more anxiety, I would forget. So in Buffy, I really wanted to do a good job and I believed in what I was doing, but I just never felt safe; I never felt I could trust myself or remember, and it created a really bad confidence problem which was just getting bigger and bigger.
When you find your passion and you know what you want, and you’re living that dream, you want desperately to never lose it—there’s just this pressure that I put on myself, and then there’s the absolute pressure in making TV, which is expensive. At the time we were using film and so it was two takes and you’re done. By the time you’ve shot seven
people for about fourteen hours and it’s your close-up and it’s time for you, and you don’t get it in two takes, it’s a problem. It’s an economic problem, it’s a morale problem, and it’s a confidence problem.
GEORGE SNYDER
Originally, Joss was looking for a black actress for the role of Cordelia. But one of the stumbling blocks there was the way we knew Joss anticipated the relationships shifting and changing. There was some concern at the network at the time that interracial relationships would be problematic. At that point the WB was a different kind of network. I know that came up and Joss said, “I can’t have restraints on how I mix and match the dynamics. That’s part of the fun of the show, that Willow is in love with Xander, Xander is in love with Buffy, Cordelia can’t stand any of them yet finds herself drawn to Xander.” Joss decided it wasn’t worth fighting that fight at that particular time, but he didn’t want to be hindered in the dynamic of the shifting triangles.
CHARISMA CARPENTER
I had gotten a call on Malibu Shores from my agent for this audition. She said the word on the street is that Malibu Shores was not going to continue, so she got me an audition to keep me employed. I went in, I got the monologue, the Buffy monologue that was the audition with Giles in the library, just talking about why she doesn’t want to be the slayer and she doesn’t want that responsibility—she wants to be a kid—that was the speech. I read for Joss Whedon and [casting director] Marcia Schulman and it was a rainy day and I was in these overalls and bright orange JCrew flip-flops that were plastic, and it was a really bad choice. I don’t know how they saw Cordelia in any of that, but I read for it, and they loved me; they just said, “Can you do me a favor, how do you feel about reading for this other part, Cordelia?” I’m, like, sure. And they were, like, “Can you just go prepare it, go in the corner and come back in fifteen minutes?” I was more fearless then, so I did, and they loved it.