The Lady in Fred by Abbie Bernstein
Fred’s had a strange couple of years, and with Angelus on the loose, and Wes and Gunn both in love with her in Season Four, things only got worse! Amy Acker chats to Buffy Magazine about the latest Angel activities…

Compared to some of the other characters in Angel who’ve won and lost souls or turned into demons, Winfred ‘Fred’ Burkle hasn’t gone through all that many changes. Okay, so she went from brilliant grad student to slave in a demon dimension to timid shut-in to brains of the team to object-of-desire to would-be murderess…. on second thought, maybe Fred has had her share of transformations. 
    Playing the lighter, charming side of Fred’s personality would seem to come naturally to Amy Acker, the slender actress from Dallas, Texas, who talks animatedly about her two-plus years on Angel at a WB press event in Hollywood. “I love everything about her” Amy declares. “She’s changed so much. From where I was in Pylea to this season, it’s amazing. She’s changed just in her ability to deal with people. At the beginning of the third season, she wouldn’t leave her room. She’s become outgoing and she’s gotten a lot of strength that she didn’t have before.” 
    At times, Fred’s strength has shown itself in dark ways, such as when she furiously tasers Connor after she learns he’s betrayed Angel and when she plans to destroy her old professor when she learns he sent her to Pylea. “I think the writers were wanting to take her in a stronger direction,” Amy observes, “‘We like the tough girl.’ I feel like Joss had a lot to do with it – he’s been there all along. 
    The trick, Amy says, is in balancing the different aspects of Fred’s persona, “making the two believable together. I definitely had to try to make it make sense when she wanted to kill the professor, how she got that angry and where that comes from, because last season she was a very sweet and almost naive character. I think it’s been sort of continuous now from that point, though. There’s so much opportunity for Fred to be sweet, just in the way that it’s written, but you never really have to work on that part.” 
    Some of Fred’s newfound strength is also physical, which delights Amy, who took two years of stage combat in college. “I also like it that I get to build the contraptions,” she adds. She feels Fred’s increased battle prowess makes sense in terms of the story. “It was Gunn and I alone for the summer, so we’ve been having to fight without the help of the others.” 
Fighting on camera is easier than doing fight scenes in front of a stage audience, Amy says: “It’s actually easier for film, because the camera only sees from the one angle, so if you’re punching someone, you can have three feet in front of them”. 
    Amy has experience with swords and daggers but one of Fred’s weapons is new to her. “That’s something that I always asked – ‘Who ever uses a crossbow?!” I don’t think anyone really has experience with crossbows, but we always end up using them. Alexis is good at all of that stuff, so he’ll say, ‘That doesn’t look right – you should do it this way.’ We look out for each other as much as we can when we’re handed something: ‘How do you use this?’” There haven’t been any misfires so far, and Amy reckons it would be difficult to injure someone even if there was: “The crossbows look a lot more powerful on TV than they actually are when we’re shooting.” 

In this season’s ‘Supersymmetry,’ Fred is plucked from a  university stage by a giant tentacle that descends from the ceiling. While some of the creature is a computer-generated effect, Amy reveals, “a lot of that was a puppet. They had puppeteers and a puppet there that was coming out from the ceiling. And then we had wires that we were hanging from. It was pretty neat – this was my first experience with a harness. It came together pretty well.” She qualifies this slightly: “Actually we had a little accident when they dropped the whole contraption and it landed on my head. That was my big set accident of the year. I was trying not to cry really bad. I was fine. I just had a big knot on my head. 
    Work also temporarily added bumps to Amy’s face – in the episode ‘The Price’, she wears foam latex prosthetic when Fred becomes dehydrated by transparent creatures that swarm out of an interdimensional portal. The make-up team had to encase Amy’s face in a plaster-like material so that they could sculp appliances that would fit her features. Unlike many other actors, the process didn’t bother Amy. “The make-up artists said I was the best one ever,” she laughs. “I didn’t get claustrophobic or anything.” As for the make-up itself, “I always get in trouble, even when they’re just putting my normal make-up on because I’ll open one eye while the make-up artist is doing the other. He says, ‘You have to close both your eyes!’ I like to watch the whole process. It made me feel really sorry for Andy Hallett having to do the Lorne make-up every day, but I liked it – it’s amazing how much that stuff can inform a character. They start making your face creaky and pale and all of a sudden you’re not having to act as much – you’re dying of thirst.” 
    One aspect of Fred’s character that has heated up considerably is the triangle between her, Gunn and Wesley. “It was strange, because I didn’t realise until really late that Gunn and Fred as a couple was even a possibility,” Amy recalls. “I had seen little things in the script, like, ‘Oh, that seems like Fred kind of likes Wesley’ after Fred’s whole Angel crush. I was just playing like Wesley and I are going to get together and then when we got ‘Waiting in the Wings,’ and it said ‘Fred and Gunn kiss,’ I was like ‘Oh! Whoops I guess I maybe should have started doing this differently…’” 

The season-long romance between Fred and Gunn, while apparently over now, is one of the very few on American hour-long television to feature an interracial couple. Amy says J. August Richards was more conscious of the novelty than she was, citing a playful phone conversation their characters have in ‘Sleep Tight’: “It was interesting, because I actually am from Texas and there is one scene that we had where Fred says, “Texas doesn’t hate the black man,” and J. and I ended up getting into a discussion for three hours before that scene, because he said, “This belief that Gunn has that there’s racism in Texas is so true. I’ve been to places where African-Americans can’t drive through’, It made me proud that I ended up with Gunn, because I thought, ‘If people are offended by that, then I want to show them…’ I think it’s great. J. And I are such great friends and acting with him is very easy. If I get to be in love with Gunn on the show, those are my easy days.” 
    Then again, it’s no hardship to play opposite Alexis’ Wesley, either. “I didn’t hate it that they were both in love with me,” Amy laughs. “The three of us really click and like working together. It’s really fun when we all get to be mad at each other or hiding stuff from each other. Hopefully, there’s going to be a love triangle again in the future.” 
    Asked about favourite episodes so, far, Amy replies, “I had a lot. I guess the first one would have been ‘Billy,’ where Fred was being chased around. I liked the slug one, ‘The Price’, just because it was so different and having the prosthetic make-up. And then by far my favourite was ‘Waiting in the Wings’. I hadn’t danced for eight years before that. I told Joss that I took ballet for 14 years and he went ‘Really?’ And then he wrote the episode and that was it,” she laughs. “Even though no one did see it, Alexis and I got to do a beautiful dance number.” 
    Although the ballet number between Fred and Wesley was cut from the aired episode, it will reportedly be included on the DVD. “I’m afraid of that,” Amy laughs “Maybe ‘beautiful’ should be in quotation marks!” 
    Amy is unsurprisingly aglow about her upcoming real-life marriage to actor James Carpinello, who is at the WB party with her. As for Angel, she is obviously overjoyed that it is continuing. “We all get along so well that we’ll all just end up sitting on the red couches in the hotel set lobby and hanging out with everyone. I see Charisma and J. and Alexis and Andy Hallett all outside of work. They’re people who are my friends, so any time I can hang out with them is fun. I’m still so excited that I have this job, I feel so lucky to work with these people. Anyone who ever comes to visit us on set is like ‘Whoa! This is amazing! You guys all like each other so much!’ We just have the best dynamics.”