It Takes Two by Matt Springer
A brief interview to start this month as the magazine caught up with Carey Cannon and Randall Slavin, who had played the Oracles during Angel‘s first year.

What happens when you die? Croak? Kick the bucket? When some supreme being asks you, “Is that your final answer,” and you say, “I suppose it is.”
    It’s a question that has fascinated philosophers for millennia. Some say we’re reincarnated into another form. Others say there is nothing after death; you live, you die and that’s all you get. Maybe others believe there is a higher plane of existence, a Heaven, Valhalla or some such place to which our soul will drift after beginning our dirt naps.
    And if eternity were a long room filled with Grecian pillars and two snippy omniscient beings? Considering some of the alternatives, maybe that’s not such a far-fetched notion.
    “Y’know, it wouldn’t be bad,” says Carey Cannon, the actress who brought the female Oracle to life on Angel. “It’s more of a waystation, a really great five-star hotel on the way to eternity.”
    True to form, Cannon’s onscreen brother, Randall Slavin, is inclined to disagree with sis Oracle. “I thought eternity would be bigger,” he complains. “I really thought it would.”
    Their eternal accommodations may not have been up to par, but the scope of the Oracles’ role in Angel mythology cannot be underestimated. It’s true that we never got to see much of them, but that only added to their mystery. When Angel did visit their interdimensional Caesar’s Palace, under the post office of all places, it quickly became clear that the Oracles were his immediate supervisors in the cosmic hierarchy – his project managers in the battle against evil. As such, they were his most direct link with the Powers That Be, and his only hope for interpreting the clues meant to guide him toward his ultimate destiny. But now they’re gone – ruthlessly slaughtered by the demon Vocah in the season one finale.
    Slavin and Cannon took some time just before filming their Angel swan song to chat about the challenges inherent in playing gods, such as getting gold paste out of their underwear.

So how did you become Oracles? Was it just another audition, or were you excited about going in to read for Angel?
Carey Cannon: I was thrilled about it. I actually had met casting director Amy Britt when I auditioned for another role on Buffy, so when this role on Angel came around, they thought of me. They have a great casting team that does both shows.
Randall Slavin: I had read for Angel and Buffy so many times in the past, and for Spike. I’d gone in for so many parts that when this came up, I knew the casting director. I just auditioned like any other sort of thing. It must have been my sixth or seventh audition for that show.

Did they tell you a lot about what you’d be doing? Did you know you’d be omniscient beings?
CC: I knew I was going to be an Oracle. After looking it up in the dictionary, I had a pretty good sense of what I was going in for. My background is in stage, and I’ve played one or two goddesses and the queen of the fairies before, so I figured I had some insight into playing an omniscient character.

How do you approach something so otherworldly as a performer?
RS: It’s not too hard when you have god-like dialogue, to take on an air of entitlement. [laughs] It really happens quite easily.
CC: Anything is allowed. The great thing about both of these shows is that anything is possible. There are no rules. You can basically ,play anything you like, because you’re a god, or a vampire, or a demon. There’s no blueprints for that kind of stuff in real life, so it gives you a lot of permission.

How’s the make-up experience? Did they basically drench you in gold?
RS: I found it to be torturous. It’s two hours of standing there in your underwear, having two strangers paint you. Then it gets all in your mouth, and you can’t eat anything like that. You can’t lie down and go to sleep. You also feel odd because everyone’s staring at you. But when we’re walking around the set and I’m all dressed up I feel like when I was a kid. They film Star Trek: Voyager next door, so there’s all these demons hobnobbing with Klingons. It’s very surreal – they’re all sitting around smoking outside.
CC: The crew are amazing. They have pictures all over the make-up trailers of every actor who’s ever been in, from the stars to the extras, and they have a ‘before’ picture and an ‘after’ picture. It’s almost like a museum. But it’s time consuming. You have a lot of skin, and they have this gold powder, which is kind of magical. I had pictures of Goldfinger, where they painted that woman and asphyxiated her, but make-up’s come a long way since.

Did you guys start finishing off each other’s sentences off-set as well?
CC: I think actors do that all the time anyway. They don’t have the patience to let you finish your sentence. If you spend enough time with anybody you start doing that. So I guess we did, to a certain extent.

You don’t need to be an otherworldly being…
CC: …to finish each other’s sentences? No, you don’t. See?