Shedding light on the tough triangle that gives Buffy the Vampire Slayer its bite
B Y T I M A P P E L O
The WB's kicky hit, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Tuesdays, 8 P.M./ET), used to have a problem: The battalions of anonymous neck biters our hero (Sarah Michelle Gellar) offed each week provided reliably good action scenes, but they just didn't have the staying power to serve as dramatic foils. So Buffy executive producer Joss Whedon created a trio of bloodsucking regulars who do not go easy into that good night. Witness Angel (David Boreanaz), Buffy's hunky on-again, off-again vampire boyfriend, who was impaled on a sword in the season ender but is not dead yet -- in fact, he'll get his own spin-off in the fall of 1999. At the beginning of Buffy's second season, Angel acquired two Sid and Nancy-like roommates: his old pal Spike (James Marsters), who resembles an undecayed version of Billy Idol with an education (the Juilliard-trained stage actor's previous TV credits include guest spots on Northern Exposure), and Spike's girlfriend, Drusilla (Juliet Landau), who looks like an evil Ophelia or a creepy young female version of her dad, Martin Landau (she appeared with him in Tim Burton's 1994 movie, "Ed Wood"). Before returning to the set to start work on the show's third season, the fanged gang sat down with TV Guide for a chat at that immemorial haunt of bad boys and girls, Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles. Unlike the vampires they play, the actors ate their vegetables, but like their on-screen selves, they do like to sass and tease each other to death.
TV Guide: David, Angel was Buffy's first star vampire. Is it true you were actually discovered in a Lana Turner-at-the-sodafountain way?
David Boreanaz: Yeah, my future manager saw me walking my dog, and he thought I'd look good in this part.
James Marsters: Were you wearing a tight sweater?
Juliet Landau: Were you naked?
Boreanaz: [joking] I was wearing a dress.
TVG: On Buffy, you three seem like teens on the high school scene, only worse.
Landau: In the first meeting, Joss said we were like the bad kids parents don't want their kids to grow up like, the ones who do drugs and don't graduate.
Boreanaz: You have youthful innocence [like Buffy's], and then you have vampires who are sexy and mysterious. There's purity, and there's evil. They work well together.
Landau: Joss has such a vision.
Boreanaz: He's always running around with his hair uncombed, going, "I have never slept! I have never slept!"
TVG: He's the Undead Producer. No wonder he gets the vampires right.
Landau: He said he had these characters crawling around in his brain for 10 years.
TVG: On the show, how did your threesome get together?
Marsters: Angel was my mentor, and I'm grown up now and I don't need him anymore. [Spike is about 200 years old, Angel an older and wiser 242.] And Angel turned Dru into a vampire. [addressing Boreanaz] You were pretty rude about that.
Landau: Prior to meeting Angel, I was, like, a sweet, normal, happy English girl. He killed my whole family in front of me. I fled to a convent, but he found me the day I was going to take my vows and tortured me, and then he made me a vampire.
TVG: And how did Spike acquire his psychological problems?
Marsters: I don't think he has any psychological problems.
Landau: That's me.
Marsters: I'm a psychopath, but I don't have a problem with that.
Get your own Free Home Page