'On the subject of fanfic, I am aware that a good deal of it is naughty. My reaction to that is mixed ; on one hand, these are characters played by friends of mine, and the idea that someone is describing them in full naughtitude is a little creepy. On the other hand, eroticising the lives of fictional characters you care about is something we all do, if only in our heads, and it certainly shows that people care. So I'm not really against erotic fic and I certainly don't mind the other kind. I wish I'd had this kind of forum when I was a kid' - Joss Whedon (Source)

Ernest: Did you go for a sweeter Buffy ? She's a little less buff..
Joss: I wanted to stress her vulnerability because she came off a little harsh in the movie. I wanted to pull back from that. This is someone who has already been a slayer. She's woken up to the world and it's pushed her around a lot but she has that vulnerability and Sara Michelle Geller conveys that alot. You want to make her an underdog. She is stronger that everyone around her because she is faster and smarter. So you need to have that empathy that everybody puts on her. (Source)

Ernest: We enjoyed the attitude when she met a vampire and said "So this is the part where you expect me to scream and run away. Not today".
Joss: That's where it came from. I had seen so many girls run away and get killed in these kind of movies or tv, I wanted this girl to stand up for herself. (Source)

Tony: What made you want to approach this project again ? The movie was not a box office smash..So why go back ?
Joss: Well, there were two things..One was the chance to do it the more the way I had first perceived it , as more of a comedy-thriller, to stress the action, the horror and to have fun with it. Not to spoof it, but create cool monsters and creepy situations and still have the fun with it. The other thing was the idea of turning high school into a horror movie , doing a weekly horror and have it become a metaphor for how horrible high school was for me and most of the people I know. (Source)

Q: How do you come up with the names of the characters, and does Pike from the movie have anything to do with Spike?
Joss Whedon: No. I came up with Spike and Dru and I was all into that, and then somebody reminded me several months later that I had a character named Pike, and I was like, "OK, I suck" - that was another one of those exciting moments. I love the name "Spike", I always love it in pair with a woman; "Drusilla" I took from Emperor Caligula, his wife-slash-sister, whatever she was, 'cause I loved I, Claudius when I was a kid, and so I was very into the idea of this very twisted relationship, and "Drusilla" seemed a perfect classical match to "Spike". The first characters. it takes us a very long time to name characters: it's about finding a name that, most importantly, doesn't sound like any of the other characters, so they really have their own feel every time you hear their name. (Source)

Q: What is it about Buffy that has made the show work?
James Marsters: I think it's the central metaphor of the series, which is that adolescence is a crucial time in any person's development. It's when a person either becomes themselves or fails to. Some of the best works in literature address that, like Hamlet and Catcher in the Rye.
And Joss is choosing to address it using the metaphor of demons for the stresses and anxieties that you can feel when you're an adolescent. That allows the writers to speak about those things more directly and honestly, because they can say, "It's just a joke. Hey, it's just vampires, guys." (Source)

"The biggest thing is the writing," he enthuses. "I think that all of us are very good actors. For television - and I'll toot my own horn - I think we're a mark above the norm. But the writing is some of the best on television. The writing, especially as far as dialogue is concerned, is something that you'd have to go back to the films of Billy Wilder or Preston Sturges to match. Really, something kind of interesting or pleasing happens about every five seconds. It'll be a turn of a phrase or an event that happens, some joke that happens with such frequency that it starts to froth. Usually an interesting movie will give you something interesting happening every three minutes or so. What really excites me about Joss is we don't even know how good he is yet. He is just starting out. I feel a little weird comparing him to Billy Wilder, because that's like comparing him to Shakespeare, but Wilder never had to crank this stuff out every week. " JM (TEXT)

"The vampires are really just a sideshow," he explains, fervently. "It's just a magic trick, so that the jester - Joss - can speak about issues more directly than other straight drama genres can. Party Of Five could never talk about the issues that we do. We have tackled incest, we have tackled gay relationships, we've tackled subjects no-one else can touch. 'Cos, you know, we can always say, 'Hey, it's just vampires! Just kidding!'"
But isn't it annoying for him as an actor, working on a series that mainstream audiences find hard to take seriously? He shrugs of the stigma, believing that viewers have the intelligence to decide for themselves.
"I think that that's the beautiful thing about the name of the show. Joss is such a rebel! He doesn't want uncool people watching the show. He is daring you to be stupid not to check it out when he called it Buffy the Vampire Slayer. You know? I'm serious! Unless you have an open mind, go watch Jag!" JM (The Realm)

"Now I work about 12 to 20 hours a every day - but they do have to give the crew an eight-hour turnaround, which means they only get five hours of sleep! Actors have to be pretty, so we get a full eight-hour turnaround (which the crew thinks is horrible). What that means is that the schedule backs up every week. We start at say 4:30 on Monday morning (before the sun rises) and we get through to somewhere between 4pm and 8pm. Next day, we can't come to work until 8am and then we work through to between 10pm and midnight. By the time we get to Friday, we don't get to work until four in the afternoon! I never sleep the same eight-hour period for two days in a row!" JM (The Realm)

Question: With Buffy going to UPN and angel staying on the WB, what does this mean for the crossover episodes? Will there be none?
JM: Yeah, that's a real problem. I think the best stuff on angel is when Buffy goes over there. I've told Sarah this, that when Buffy is saying to Angel, "There's not enough time. There's not enough time." I said to Sarah that she was so beautiful in that scene because she was real. She wasn't worried about looking glamorous or anything like that, she was very real. I tell you, if I was the head of the network I wouldn't have let them take Buffy away from Angel. I really hope they drop Angel and then we'll stick it after Buffy in the US and nobody will tell the difference. JM (The Realm)

Question: Why did Tara have to die?
Joss Whedon: The decision is always that we must make this world as unsafe as possible, and we must make this as hard for people as possible. Obviously, we're not the only show that does this. Look at poor Sipowitz. I thought Buffy had it bad. Eventually, it becomes boring, and you have to find a way to put a new spin on it. There are two things that really matter, sex and death, and eventually they're both gonna show up. It's tough. People think I'm being facetious when I say that, as a staff, we had difficulty talking about what we were gonna do, talking about that episode, because it was actually painful to us, not just as writers but as collaborators because of our love of Amber. But we felt it was really necessary for Willow's arc and also for Alyson as an actress. We wanted to send her as deep down as we could to see what she brought back. What she brought back was one of my favorite darkest, strangest, saddest characters that I've ever seen. It's not something we take lightly, but it's not something we'll ever stop doing. (Source)

Q: I love your show. It's absolutely the most fantastic show out there [inaudible] I was wondering if you could give me some insight into their relationship between Angel and Connor.
David Boreanaz: The relationship we've had has been pretty volatile the past year now. Surprisingly, Vince [Kartheiser] and I, we always kind of laugh and say, we'd like to do more scenes together where we're kind of more together, a father-son relationship, and build on that, but then he had to go off and screw my girlfriend. [laughter] That was all wrong as far as Angel is concerned, that was kind of weird.
But what the writers have done with Vincent's character has been pretty interesting. I think they've kind of put him in a corner with it. As far as that's concerned, I don't know what's really going to happen with Connor's character. I know that Wednesday night on the season finale, you'll see a pretty surprising jolt. It's going to be pretty unexpected. (Text)

Q: Speaking of romantic, tell us how you started dating former Buffy costar Alexis Denisof.
Alyson Hannigan: Actually, I had a crush on him from the moment he showed up on set, and he was the good one who said, "Not while we're working together...blah blah blah, whatever." So we became friends for a couple of years, and I was dating somebody else, and when that didn't work out, he was on Angel and we just started dating. We had always had a very flirty relationship. (Source)

Jengod in Mountain View, California: Have you and Alexis tried to talk Joss into some Willow/Wesley crossover scenes?
Alyson Hannigan: That might happen...this season. Hmmm...But, yeah, of course. I'm always talking about it. I think Wesley needs to come back, and he and Giles can set up shop, and it'll be fun. I would love to work with him again, because I'd get to see him. I hardly get to see him anymore--Angel shoots at night. (Source)

"The thing is," says James "everyone really enjoys working with each other. It's past a happy set. It's like daycamp!" JM

"In college they told me I'd run into a bunch of whiny people (in L.A.), but I've been fortunate. There are no spoiled stars around here. Sarah is a complete professional and a wonderful person. People are so happy to come to work each day and are proud of the work they do." - JM

"They are a very tight crew who work hard and are really an inch away from burning out. They spend half their time on location which is harder to shoot than working on a soundstage [like Buffy] and they shoot the living hell out of scenes. Television has a language of shots, a master shot, over the shoulder, close-ups, but the Millennium crew shoot so many angles they get twice the footage most shows do. It was like shooting two hours of television for a one hour show." - JM

"Buffy is so much better than any [feature] script I've gotten so far. I'll read the new Buffy episode and it's brilliant, and then read these movies and think, 'I don't need that, why step down?' That's the thing. I came to LA to make a good chunk of money and then go back and do theater. I didn't want to die poor. I wanted to have something in savings first, and Buffy has given that to me." - JM

"Sarah is unbelievable. Juliet [Landau], who plays Dru, and I were in our eighth episode and we didn't have director's chairs. The problem is that if you don't have one of those you don't have anywhere to sit. So, finally, Sarah said, 'I'll pay for them. Get them some chairs.' Basically, she makes 22 one hour movies a year and she always knows her lines. She's in almost every shot. I can't say enough about her. I like her a lot as a person and a co-worker." - JM

"I miss Juliet [Landau] very much. We had a really good working relationship and I thought the stuff we came up with was very interesting." - JM

"Joss said, 'I would never put you out there without a net. Of course I don't know if logistics will back me up on that, but sure.' I think he was kidding. He loves to make jokes that make actors insecure; he thinks it's really funny. He loves to say, 'By the way, you're fired,' and then he gets a chuckle out of it. Then he says, 'Every time I say that to an actor, they never laugh.' 'That's because it's really not funny, Joss.' No security whatsoever. What's wrong with a boss that gets a chuckle out of making you think that any minute you could get fired? He's sick, but that's why he's so good and why he's a genius, I guess. David Greenwalt is off his rocker, too, and I wouldn't have it any other way. It keeps things exciting." by Charisma Carpenter (Cordilia Chase) in SFX Magazine (found at To Shanshu In L.A.)

"I haven't had as much time filming with the other members of the cast as you might think," he says. "I'm kind of a newbie on the set.. It's my fourth year and I'm still the newbie! I have much more time off of the set with the cast members than on the set. And it is such a fun set to work on, but a hard-working one. We have fun getting it done, but at the same time, if you get off the set and you go to the trailers, it's a madhouse. A madhouse in a good way! Like Pee Wee's Playhouse." JM (TEXT)

"Tony Head is the absolute bomb as an actor," enthuses Marsters. "He is effortless. He is able to give weight to a line without doing much. He's kind of like Anthony Hopkins that way. Most actors when they try to be serious, lower their voice and speak in a way that lets everyone know they should be taken seriously. Tony doesn't do any of that. It's his job to tell us who the villain is, where they came from and why we're supposed to care. Exposition is the heavy lifting. Any stage actor who has that horrible first scene in the first act, sometimes the second, is potentially boring because the plot hasn't started yet. Nothing is really happening. It's back information, but Tony just hoists that every week effortlessly." JM (TEXT)

Read more about what JM thinks about David Boreanaz and Sarah Michelle Gellar

"And how is working with Michelle Trachtenberg in the Dawn scenes different from working with Sarah Michelle Gellar?
They're different people. Sarah is a machine. Sarah doesn't know this, but she's actually a method actor. She is the biggest combination of method acting but also with the proficiency of the other side that I've ever seen. She's able to switch gears very quickly which I'm not. I tend to live in the reality while we shoot. She can flip in and out. Michelle is a very talented actor who's still keeping her eyes open. But they're very similar [in that] you don't realize how much they're doing until they see it on film. They're very subtle." JM (TEXT)

Question: I believe SMG is really short - does that make any kissing or fighting scenes difficult?
JM: No. Not at all. It's just that she makes me look tall... which, you know, I love that! When she was paired opposite Angel and Riley, she had to stand on an apple box to kiss. Also, Marc Blucas is a very handsome guy but because when you shoot from each character's perspective, but when you shoot Marc, you shoot from Buffy's perspective, which is right up Marc's nose! So, he's like, "My nostrils! there's my big nostrils again!" He hated that because it's called being shot high-to-low and it makes you look taller. They often shoot me high-to-low to make me look taller... oh, by the way, I am 6'5". (laughs hysterically) Yeah, but they have to accentuate even that enormous height.
(The Realm)

Question: Do you think it's a little weird that David Boreanaz is scared of chickens? Does anyone else in the cast have weird phobias?
JM: I didn't believe that David was scared of chickens. Someone mentioned it to me and I thought it was a joke! I did not know that. You say that Emma [Caulfield] told you that she tied frozen chickens to David and made him cry? I would never tie chickens to David. I love him too much. I mean, I would never really have thought to tie chickens to him anyway, but now I know that I will really steer away from it. Of the rest of the cast, Sarah doesn't really particularly like graveyards. It makes it tough. She has to overcome a real fear every time we shoot graveyards... which is all the time. That is my definition of courage, overcoming fear and the hero is not a hero because he doesn't feel fear, that's an idiot. A hero is someone who is afraid and acts anyway so she heros it up every Friday night when the tombstones are out and we're walking around. She has to get buried under earth sometimes in a graveyard where the decomposing bodies have been seeping into the soil for hundreds of years. It's a freaky thing. (laughs and shakes his head). chickens.

"David [Boreanaz] and Sarah [Michelle Gellar] are not ego-driven as actors," he defines. "They care about the work. They don't like to screw around; they like to have fun working, which is what I like. I do have enormous fun working, and if I feel we're just screwing around and telling jokes I get antsy. I think a lot of people take their cue from a lead in a series and if the lead is a good actor, if the lead is professional, turns up on time, knows their lines, then the work becomes focused. What struck me more than anything was the professionalism on both sets.
"I'll tell you a story about David. In the episode I was in he was actually chained up [in the studio] for 15 hours. Right before that he had been rushed to the emergency room because he got rear-ended on the freeway. Somebody hit him at 50 miles an hour. The man would not admit to being in pain. He is like a stunt guy; he could have his ribs broken and he would say, 'I'm fine, let's get this shot'. That's David in a nutshell; I only knew he was really in pain because I saw him wince when he thought no one was looking at him." JM (The Realm)

"I've enjoyed working with these people enormously, especially Tony Head, who I consider to be one of the better actors that America has right now. We would do well to keep him around and not let him go back to England. He's really fabulous!"
"If you are fighting Buffy or kissing her, you know you are in the middle of things!" reasons Marsters. "Getting to kiss Buffy was great. I got the script and went, 'Oh my God!' The problem was I was still smoking cigarettes at the time and Sarah hates smokers' mouths. So I was feverishly brushing my teeth in my trailer at all times." JM (The Realm)

"The thing that I appreciated about Joss Whedon before Hush was the dialogue," says Marsters. "I think you'd have to go back to the 1930s to find dialogue that sparkles like that, frankly. Something interesting is said with such frequency on the show that you, in fact, miss a lot of it. It starts to bubble and has effervescence; right on the heel of something interesting, something else happens.
"I thought that was the man's strength. I think he showed everybody that he has a lot more in his pouch of tricks than just the dialogue. He knows that the show is known for the dialogue and the quipping so he went, 'Hey, let me flush it! Let's just drop it and show you what I can do without it'."
Given that there were actually few words spoken in Hush, was the script noticeably shorter than the rest?
"Oh no, " Marsters corrects. "There was actually a lot of description of exactly what is happening every second. The same kind of care that was in the language was in there. Joss is very specific." JM (The Realm)