Hollywood Zen by Matt Springer
This interview was conducted during the shooting of Season 3, before Emma Caulfield knew just how far Anya would go…

Great looks. Electric talent. Neurotic to the core. Obsessed with who’s getting what part, and how much they’re getting paid to do it.
    Sounds like the requirements for most actors and actresses, right? That’s not entirely true when it comes to Emma Caulfield, the laid-back actress who has brought life to the devious Anyanka on Buffy. Sure, she’s got the knock-out prerequisite covered – if more demons looked like her, we’d set up in the Hellmouth and take our chances!

Off-camera, Caulfield seems completely at peace in the centre of the other wise tense and fast-paced show business world going on around her.
     “I still get crazy from time to time; I still obsess from time to time. I mean, who am I kidding? I am neurotic. There’s no escaping that. I don’t know any actor who really isn’t. There just comes a point where you just have to let it go,” says Caulfield. “I suppose it is a very Zen attitude towards the business. I didn’t used to have this attitude – I used to drive myself insane. I just realised one day that life is too short. There’s no point in obsessing over the things you don’t have. Everybody in this business, I think, is where they’re supposed to be.”
     Lately, Caulfield’s place to be has been Sunnydale, CA. She debuted in Season Three’s standout episode ‘The Wish’ as Anya, a new girl at Sunnydale High with great taste in accessories who turned out to be a misguided 1,120-year-old demon who’s flunking math. Her amulet gave Cordelia the power to transform the universe as if Buffy had never come to Sunnydale, creating a city where the Master never died and the vamps had taken over. When her amulet was destroyed by the alternate Giles, her powers were stripped, trapping her in mortal form. Though her character is sorry to be stranded on Earth, Caulfield is thrilled that Anya has survived on the show.
     “As far as I know, I don’t think they ever intended to have Anya around for more than one episode,” she recalls. “They found this great way to have her interact with the plotlines that had been developed throughout the entire season. It’s great. It’s so nice to work on a show like Buffy, which has a creative head who’s so involved with all the plots and the characters and the intricacies of the show.” There’s no loose ends with anything they do, and it was really nice to go along with this character as she was being developed and figure it out with them in a weird way. You wonder where this character is going to go, and then once she’s gone there, it’s brilliant.”

Prior to her work on Buffy, however, Caulfield was best known to viewers as Susan Keats, college sweetheart of Jason Priestly’s character through the 1995-96 season of Beverley Hills, 90210. In fact, she landed that part after first catching the attention of executive producer Aaron Spelling through her first television appearance on another of his projects, the short-lived series Burke’s Law.
     “I was lucky enough to bypass the rigmarole of having to test and doing all that nightmare,” she says. “I could just come in under this little arc and then end up staying as a series regular.”
     While Caulfield looks back fondly on her 90210 season, she says she also enjoys spending time with her Buffy castmates – despite an atmosphere of down-and-dirty competitiveness behind the scenes: “We have Scrabble tournaments,” she says. “What else are you gonna do? You can only read so much. Most of the time is spent waiting around, so you get good, hour-long Scrabble matches going, and that’s really fun. Everybody gets along with everybody. It’s fun to work on a show where everybody there is so happy to be there and to work in a creative environment.”
     It probably doesn’t hurt that Caulfield has the chance to play such a fun and acerbic character struggling with the bitter ironies of her life. Anya is a teenage girl who’s been around for more than a millennium – and still can’t buy a beer. She harbours an off-the-charts level of resentment for all men, yet longed to go to the prom. And despite her demonic roots, even she didn’t want to be around to witness another Ascension.
     “It’s a fun character to play,” says Caulfield. “Anya remains mortal and ambivalent. She’s just struggling with being human, and really, don’t we all struggle with that from time to time? It’s fun. She’s very irreverent – and definitely bitter.”
     Like many of the show’s guest stars, Caulfield also appreciates the opportunity she’s received to get involved with one of TV’s most acclaimed and complex shows.
     “It’s funny; people who don’t watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer and they immediately think that it’s gotta be campy cheese,” she explains. “It has it’s element of camp to it, but it’s so much more than that. It’s such a well-written, creative, original show. It’s really nice to be a part of something like that.”
     As for how long Anya will remain a part of Buffy, Caulfield’s attitude is whatever will be, will be.
     “I love working on Buffy,” she says, “and if it all works out, then great. If it doesn’t, then it’s not meant to be. I sorta have that philosophy on everything in this business; if it’s not this, then there’s a reason and you’re going to get something else. We can’t all be at the place we want; there’s too many of us. Wherever I’m at, I’m just grateful and happy, because I’m lucky. I’ve been fortunate.”
    To paraphrase the Beatles, Emma Caulfield is just letting it be, while she keeps her own Zen philosophy towards show business close to her heart.
     Buddha would be proud.