Cosmic Girl by Rod Edgar
Television characters don’t often come as complex or interesting as Cordelia Chase – she has certainly experienced many changes during her six-year journey. We caught up with Charisma Carpenter for a rare, exclusive interview about her – and Cordy’s – past, present and future…

Its’s been an incredible evolution for Cordelia Chase – from stuck-up High School snob to compassionate, courageous heroine, right up (literally) to higher being. While playing the complex character, Charisma Carpenter has also undergone a dramatic journey. After three seasons on Buffy she left the popular, established series to take a starring role alongside David Boreanaz in spin-off series Angel.
    Angel‘s third season saw the biggest changes yet for Cordelia – becoming part demon to retain her precognitive powers, enjoying a romance with other-worldly hero the Groosalugg, and finally realising her true feelings for vampire detective Angel by helping him through the loss and return of his son. In a dramatic cliff-hanger, the Season Three finale concluded with Cordelia’s new demon powers forcing her to ascend beyond the mortal plane before she had a chance to declare her newly discovered love.
    We caught up with Charisma as she was preparing to return for the show’s fourth season – still digesting the recent dramatic events and considering what lies ahead for Cordelia.

What did you make of the events of the season three finale, particularly in regards to Cordelia’s transformation?
It’s called a cliff-hanger, a season ender, so a lot of people were a little confused by the way it ended and my ascension and “does that mean that I’m not coming back next year?”, and all of that. I thought it was appropriate, I guess. I’m curious to find out what’s next for Cordelia as far as when she has her powers, where are they going to go with that now? Like, am I going to come back, and when I come back will I still have my powers? Giving her all this power – I don’t know what we’re going to do with that so we’ll see.

What did you think of initial plans to make Cordelia part-demon?
I was grateful because I was kind of bored with Cordelia being hurt all the time and in pain. I was over it.

So it was a chance to take on a new sort of role. A more heroic role?
Yeah, I like that. I think it is more heroic, and I just think that too much power though… I don’t know how to explain it… I don’t think that it’s as fun. There is one hero on the show, and that is Angel, ultimately.

What did you think of the arrival of Groo onto the show this season and the romance with Cordelia?
I thought it was necessary. I thought it was necessary to tell the story because the whole point of having Groo is that he’s an obstacle to get in the way of Angel and I being together. So it’s been my understanding that the minute you put two leads together on a show nobody wants to watch anymore, and it becomes tiresome and boring, or whatever. So I think like any good drama there should be conflict – we couldn’t act out our feelings, or Angel couldn’t. He couldn’t come right out and say it, besides his other stilted emotional problems. (Joke!)

You mentioned concerns about what might happen if two leads get together – the Moonlighting effect. Are you concerned about what might happen with an Angel and Cordelia romance?
A little bit. For me as an actress I would want us to act on it, because, I think, you set it up – there’s got to be a pay-off. But I think that would be detrimental to the series, if we did. So thank God those sorts of decisions aren’t in my hands, I don’t know what the right thing to do is.

Of course, another element thrown into the mix this season is the introduction of Angel’s hostile teenage son, Connor. What sort of role might Cordelia play in that relationship? An intermediary?
Hopefully not mother. I think, though, that is the direction it’s going – Angel’s the father and I’m the mother. They often use family as a metaphor for our union, the group; the clan, the whole investigative office, everybody that’s a part of the investigative service we offer – we’re all very bonded together. We’ve been through a lot together for whatever reason. We’re family. I think that bringing in a child kind of makes us the matriarch and the patriarch and then our getting together, our feelings for each other, makes that even more solidified. And you know, I don’t know how I feel about being presented as a maternal person on the show – I’d rather still kind of stay sassy and talk back, and be the wise-cracking, one-line deliverer person.

There are constant developments on the show. Nothing seems to stay the same for very long, and as we’ve seen with Wesley, changes happen to the main characters. Do the constant changes ever unnerve you or unsettle you?
No, they’ve never unnerved me or unsettled me. I think it’s imperative for characters to change to stay watchable. They have to grow and have conflict and through conflict is growth and strength, That’s what life is like and any good story-teller would try to make their stories as lifelike and identifiable as possible.

You originally auditioned for the role of Buffy. Do you feel that getting the part of Cordelia was for the best?
Yeah. I think I’m better suited to Cordelia.

The character’s been through an incredible transformation over the years. Have you found it difficult to make that transition from what she was to what she’s become?
No, I was begging for it.

Do you think the transformation was a natural evolution for the character, or how much do you think was necessitated by the move to Angel?
Well, it didn’t happen right away on Angel. It happened for her, but the audience was privy to her change or her experience through being hungry and not getting jobs as an actress and having been defeated in that category. She was really going for being an actress and it wasn’t working. It wasn’t working out for her. So she had this silent suffering that the audience knew about, but she never let anybody else know about. I think that’s when it started – the first few episodes of Angel. And I loved it. I wanted to be challenged. I wanted to have my character fleshed out and to become more three-dimensional, and become more of a human being. Not everybody is one personality type, even though we might think so. Obviously, even the nastiest of people have more to their personality than just that nastiness and also there’s a lot of reasons for why they’re probably that way. So I think that over the years she’s had the time, and she’s had the screentime, to parlay that, and make that happen, and have that show up and be written about.

Do you feel the essence of the character is still true to who she originated from?
No. I don’t think that the way she was initially written is anything like what she is like now, at all.

Buffy was a proven, popular series. Were you at all concerned about making the leap into the unknown with Angel?
Of course! I was very scared! I was flattered to be given the opportunity to star with David, and there was only going to be three of us, initially, so there would be a lot more screentime to develop her character. And they told me, they gave me hints about what lay ahead for Cordelia, and I was really eager to do that, but also very concerned about  the possibility that it wouldn’t fly, or it wouldn’t be well received. Because spin-offs, typically speaking, aren’t usually successful, and Angel has proven otherwise. I mean it’s really, really over come a lot. Leaving a show like Buffy, and still maintaining that audience and bringing on new audience members and changing the dynamic even of the demographic… that fans that watch Buffy tend to be younger and female, and on Angel the demographic is more widespread – we’re number one in the men’s 25-36. So in some aspects it’s done better, so that’s really surprising.

You’ve now done three years on both series. How do they compare as experiences?
Angel feels better because I’m wiser and older and more capable of handling the change and the responsibility that comes with only three people being on the show, whereas on Buffy there was five. And I was not very high up on the totem pole as far as responsibility and screentime, and my dialog wasn’t as heavy. So there was a lot more responsibilities on Angel that I had to grow into and it’s worked out fine.

There’s an impression that Angel is quite a fun set to work on. What do you do between takes?
Everybody wants to know that. I don’t know – we just hang, we talk to each other, or I’m studying my dialog with my coach, or eating, or on the phone. We hang. We engage with one another.

A key episode, ‘Waiting in the Wings,’ was centred around ballet. You trained as a ballet dancer. So, were you sorry you didn’t get to show your stuff?
No. I did not want to be in tights and a leotard and a tutu.

And how did you find the passionate scenes with David? Were they at all awkward or difficult?
Yeah, I was nervous, but got over it.

On a more mundane issue, your hair was originally long, then short, then long – what was behind this latest style?
I think I read something that David Greenwalt said, and he said it was an inside joke between the characters, and I think what he meant was that Angel prefers blondes. Let’s leave it at that.

Another big episode last season was ‘Birthday,’ where Cordelia got her wish to become a serious actress.
That was such a great episode. It’s one of my favourite episodes. It was good fun to be on a sitcom because that’s my secret wish. The next step for me… I would really enjoy being on a sitcom, rather than doing one-hour drama, especially on a  night-time show, because the hours are completely different from a daytime drama. Obviously when you’re working on a vampire show you’re outside at night, and we have to go to these weird areas and it’s challenging. So it would be nice to do a half-hour show in a studio because when I did that episode, ‘Birthday’ we got to shoot the episode partly as a sitcom because I was a sitcom star, and we were out by 3pm. I mean, who knew?!? And I was trying to be quick because I had a lot of wardrobe changes to shoot for the opening of the sitcom, and the crewmembers were like, “Oh, my wife is going to be so grateful, Charisma. Thank you so much for getting us out of here.” Well, I didn’t get them out of there – it was the way it was scheduled. These people don’t see their families, and tend to live an hour away from the Paramount Studios where we shoot, so I don’t see my family, and if I have children and get married that’s going to be a grave concern for me. So I want to be on a sitcom.

Buffy might end at the end of this season. If Angel keeps on going you will be the longest-serving principal cast member from the Buffy franchise…
Maybe.

Does it ever become a grind, or do you still enjoy it?
“Does it ever become a grind?” You know what, if it wasn’t for the three months between, it probably would, because it does become a long stretch. You shoot six months, that’s the front, then you do the last three months. We shoot nine months out of the year. It would be ideal, especially for the crew. Like I said, I do work long hours, it is very hard, but the crewmembers are the ones who really work hard. They don’t have a trailer to retreat to, they don’t really have time. It’s hard and they live an hour away from where we work. Sometimes I don’t have to work every day. Sometimes I just have to come in for a wardrobe fitting. So that would be ideal. Sometimes it feels like a grind when I’m not in a good mood, or I’m not feeling good about… whatever. You have your moments, like everyone. But, no, it’s been a wonderful experience, and it’s a well-oiled machine. Everybody knows what they’re doing. Everybody knows where they’re supposed to be standing. Everybody comes prepared. So of course that makes things easier.

Anthony Stewart Head has a good arrangement with Buffy at the moment, where he has organised time to come and go. Is that a chance you’d like?
I’ve talked about it, just in the sense that I want to be a mother. And being a mother on a show working those hours is a direct conflict. It’s just not easy and I don’t want to be an absentee mother. I don’t want nannies. I don’t want that, ideally.

So where do you see yourself in the future? Do you have plans?
I just want to develop my personal life as well as my career.

This was the first season that Angel has been on its own on the WB. How do you feel it’s done without Buffy?
Oh great! Like I said before, the demographic has increased and we’ve developed new demographics, and from my limited knowledge, what I hear, we’re very, very successful and I’m grateful because most spin-offs don’t do well, and it’s all worked out quite nicely.