Demon on Heels by Matt Springer
A season five interview with Emma Caulfield, who talks Anya, Xander, Weddings, Romance and just where some of the wackiness comes from…

She’s romantic.
    “It’s ludicrous to have these interlocking bodies and not… interlock. Please remove your clothing now.”
She’s thrifty.
    “I like my money the way it is… when it’s mine.”
But never with compliments.
    “He’s a Viking in the sack.”
And she’s an excellent driver.
    “I think I’ve figured out how to steer by gesturing emphatically.”

Yes, Anya Christina Emmanuella Jenkins is a great many things. But the one thing she isn’t in the least bit, is predictable. Buffy fans probably could never have imagined that she’d become anything more than a demon-of-the-week back in the third season episode ‘The Wish’. Yet the show’s writers brought Anya back in ‘Doppelgangland’;’ and sprinkled her into the third season finale episodes – quickly taking a liking to the quirky ex-demon and her confused perceptions of our dimension in the late 20th Century.
    “Anya is me,” Buffy producer Jane Espenson once said. “She’s perplexed by a lot of human things that we take for granted, but when you really think about them, there’s no reason for them. Why does everybody coo and smile at babies? Babies don’t care. Anya gets that, and I get that.”
    Emma Caulfield is the actress who has managed to keep Anya balanced on the tightrope between her caustic disregard for humanity’s niceties and her emerging attachments to her friends. And as much as it’s been the writers’ devotion to Anya that has allowed the character to grow, it’s been Caulfield’s endearing performance that has earned Anya a special place in Buffy fans’ hearts.
    We last spoke to Caulfield in issue 11, when Anya was little more than a recurring character and a gleam in Whedon’s brain. She’s now earned a spot as a regular character and the faithful fiancée of Xander Harris. A catch-up with Caulfield was long overdue, so one afternoon on the Buffy set, we sat down with Caulfield after a long day of shooting and some Scrabble trash-talking to a visiting Marc Blucas. It quickly became clear that with such a savvy and funny actress behind her, Anya will continue to confound and entertain the Scooby Gang for some time to come.
    Quiet! You’ll miss the humorous conclusion.

How has your life changed since you’ve become such a vital part of the cast?
Am I vital?

Well, we think so.
Thank you. How has my life changed? I guess probably the biggest change has been the amount of time I have to myself. The hours here are pretty long. They were long when I started, but now, as opposed to coming in once every so many episodes, I’m here three or four days a week. It gets pretty brutal, but it’s great. It’s fun to experience the evolution of Anya. I don’t think anybody knew she’d end up becoming comic relief along with Nicholas Brendon. That’s sort of our role right now which is great for me. I love doing comedy, and it’s something I’ve always had difficulty getting opportunities to do. People usually tend to not want to cast me as a funny girl. It’s been great.

Anya always says what’s on her mind. In that sense, is it liberating for you to play her?
It’s so liberating! She’s just so outrageous. She has absolutely no governor at all – although, I don’t know if that’s true any more. The more she’s evolved, I think ever so slightly, she’s tried to edit her thoughts a little bit more. I think that’s actually probably more funny than when she speaks her mind, because she still doesn’t get it quite right. That’s something we can all relate to, the idea of not being able to get something right, no matter how hard you try. It’s like something that itches. The more you try not thinking of something that’s itching, the more you want to scratch it. That’s sort of what it’s like with her. She tries too hard to walk like everybody and talk like everybody, and she just can’t. She still twitches and does her weird thing. It’s like she’s still finding her own space in her skin.

This is probably a tough question to answer, considering there are so many now, but do you have a favourite Anya moment?
There are so many great one-liners with her. It’s impossible. I got a great fan letter the other day. This guy was kind enough to type out his favourite Anya one-liners. There are probably four pages of these great quotes from her. So many of them I’d completely forgotten; I started in Season Three and it’s season five now, so there’s been a decent amount of time to accrue a litany of Anya-isms. I loved the Thanksgiving episode, where she talked about Thanksgiving being a ritual sacrifice with pie. It was just so straight and to the point. I loved when Anya got dressed up in the bunny suit. That was endearing. It was the first time she really tried, and again, she tried so hard that she went off-the-mark. She definitely comes from a  good place all the time, but at the same time, she’s horribly misguided.

When you open a script, are you always blown away? Are you just drooling over the lines?
I can’t wait. It’s such a joy, this character. I’m so lucky to have the opportunity to be surrounded by such talent. It’s so hard to come by; it’s so rare. The amount of scripts that I’ve read over the years, and they’re just horrible. After the season finale of last season, with the dreams, I thought it could never get any better than that. Then here’s another script, and it keeps getting better and better. Just when I wonder how to start playing Anya differently, they do something completely whacky and it’s like, “Okay, start shifting in another direction.” It just keeps on growing.

You were a Psychology major in college. Does that help you get inside a character? Do you bring any of that experience to your work as an actress?
I’m sure on some level I do, but not on a conscious level. The idea of breaking a character down is a very similar process to reading about a case study, or trying to pick out variables. In a lot of the psychology classes, you’re doing theories. You’re taking information and trying to come up with your own theory as to why things work the way they work. When you get right down to it, so much of psychology is conjecture and a lot of subjective opinions. There are things that are definitely fact but so much is left up to interpretation. It allows you to take everything that you read and study in common denominators and work back up, which is really the process of acting. You break the character down to it’s common denominators: you make it bare, and then you start to build something.

Do you think you’ve done that with Anya?
I guess I’ve done that, but it’s been such a long evolution with her. It’s not like it was all there on day one, this whole outline of where she came from and where she’s going. She didn’t start out being funny. She started out being a very bad girl. I think it definitely helped me deal with this type of situation, as opposed to when you read for something and the writers have a breakdown of who the character is. On the surface, a lot of work is done for you. It’s probably helped me more than I realise, to get to the essence of Anya. What does she really want? I don’t think we even know still…