Legal Weapon by Ian Spelling
It’s all new for Gunn in Angel season five – new threads, new attitude and a new sinister side to his personality… Actor J. August Richards talks us through the changes.

J. August Richards is feeling the love. It’s been four-plus years since he joined the cast of Angel assuming the role of street-smart warrior Charles Gunn. The character, at first, lent the Angel Investigations team a healthy dose of extra muscle, which came in handy whenever the crew took on demons or vamps or zombies. But what could have been a cliched character, what might have been a short-term recurring role, evolved into something special.
    As the episodes and seasons passed by, the writers developed other facets of Gunn. He made friends and enemies, and also lovers, mainly in the form of Fred. He revealed his humour and his self-doubts and even his vulnerabilities; at times he seemed more humbled by the lingering affections between Wesley and Fred than any fanged foe he faced in the darkened alleyways of Los Angeles. Angel fans quickly took to Gunn and also to J.’s finely tuned and affecting performances. He’s a favourite guest at conventions around the world, a friendly and accessible guy who welcomes the opportunity to make a personal connection with the audience.
    And now it’s on to Season Five of Angel, which finds Gunn at the top of his game, armed with an ungodly amount of knowledge about the law, sporting nifty suits and operating as a full-fledged member of Angel’s team as they seek to keep a lid on evil by working from within LA’S breeding ground of evil, the law offices of Wolfram & Hart. Angel Magazine caught up with J. on a rare morning off, as the actor made a pitstop at a coffee shop and then, properly energised by a caffein pick-me-up, set about updating Angel readers by looking back at Season Four of the show and previewing what promises to be an entertaining Year Five.

Looking back on Season Four, what would you say we learned about Gunn that was new and important?
The most interesting thing was that I spent a lot of the episodes talking about how I was trying to find my place and feeling like I was just the muscle in the group. Gunn was, in a lot of ways, trying to find his place and in ‘Players’ he got a lot of validation from Gwen Raiden and from what she was asking him to do. So I think that Gunn really found himself in that episode and even more so in the season finale. When we got to the end, to the finale, and Wolfram & Hart made him this offer, this sort of silent offer, Gunn was really clear about the fact that he wanted to take it.

Were you satisfied with the way the demise of the Gunn-Fred relationship was handled last season? Some people thought it was a little abrupt and didn’t provide enough emotional pay-off. What are your thoughts?
In some ways it was disappointing for me because I love working with Amy so closely. So in some ways it seemed that we broke up and dealt with it sporadically. I felt like I did miss a final reconciliation or a final sense of closure on the relationship. That’s what I would say so far as to how our relationship came to an end.

The WB certainly surprised a lot of people after Season Four concluded. They picked Angel up for a fifth season, plus they brought James Marsters on board as Spike and handed the show an amazing slot, right after Smallville. How psyched were you, and how psyched was everyone else?
Everyone was completely psyched because we knew the show was going to make a major change. It was going to be more of an episodic structure. So, after coming off a season in which every episode fed into the next, we were looking forward to doing a season where each episode pretty much stood alone. And I personally was excited about James joining the show. Working with him the little bit I got to work with him at one of the Shakespeare readings at Joss’ house I was excited to see what he’d bring to the table on Angel. I have to say that he’s a dynamic actor and he’s a great addition to the cast.

David Boreanaz has said that he welcomes the latest changes on Angel, but for the characters it’s a matter of be careful what you wish for. They wanted to be able to fight evil and now they’ve got everything at their fingertips to do so. But as a very dead relative of Spider-Man’s once said, “With great power comes great responsibility.” So, what does all the mean for Gunn?
The drawback for Gunn is that nobody on the team trusts him entirely anymore. Everybody feels that I should not have done it, that something may have been stuck in my brain when I got all the legal information that I was not aware of, that will cause me to do something bad at some point. So I feel that the gang doesn’t trust me, but what I created for myself in the fourth-season finale was the idea that Gunn is sick and tired of feeling so powerless. All of his life and ever since we met him on the show he’s been fighting, putting two sticks together to make a weapon out of it. And now, for the first time in his life, he wants some juice, he wants some power and he’s happy to have that. He’s really been disenfranchised, even more so than any of the other characters. He’s just happy to be able to breathe.

Gunn’s now taken to wearing a suit. Considering where he’s been and the number of times we’ve seen him soaked in blood, that’s got to be quite a change of pace for you right?
It’s wonderfully strange [laughs]. I think that from the ‘Players’ episode and from the ballet episode, Gunn feels completely comfortable all dressed up. It’s just another aspect of who he is, but what’s most interesting to me is that you can’t forget that underneath the suit this guy is still an incredible warrior, He’s still ready to fight if he has to. So I love that this guy can wear a suit and still fight. I love what Gunn’s become as a character .

Have you shot any Gunn-heavy episodes yet for the new season?
The first episode is probably the most Gunn-heavy episode of them all so far this season. You got to see how he got the power that he has now. So that was his biggest stuff so far. We’re just finishing Episode Six now and, as usual, any story or character developments just come as a surprise to me and to everyone else. We don’t get told a lot in advance and I actually hate to be given previews of what’s going to happen. Sometimes they’ll give us a preview and it doesn’t happen, and you’ve gone and gotten excited about it. So, at this point, I just like to read the script when I get it and be surprised along with everyone. Also, just because an episode isn’t Gunn-heavy that doesn’t mean I’m not busy. I’m in every episode and I’m chasing baddies with a gun or an axe in my hands. And I love fighting in my suit. Fighting in a suit is really kind of comfortable. It comes naturally to me. I’m more of a dressy person in real life, so I think Gunn in a suit, even if he’s fighting, is a little closer to who I am.

Can you talk a little bit more about the addition of James Marsters to the show and also about what Mercedes McNab and Sarah Thompson are adding as Harmony and Eve, respectively?
Poor Amy is the only female regular in the cast now, so it’s nice to have a little more oestrogen around. So just from that aspect it’s good to have Mercedes and Sarah on the show. Mercedes is just the funniest thing in the world. That girl is hilarious and makes every one of her lines hilarious. Sarah is incorporating into the cast quite nicely and I love working with her. Gunn trust no one, especially vampires. He’s a lot like me in that respect. It takes me a while to trust someone implicitly and especially in a life and death circumstance. Gunn’s got all of that and he’s on the enemy’s turf. So he doesn’t know what to make of Spike yet. He really doesn’t.

Four-plus years in, it seems you’re still having a good time. So, are you still having a good time?
I am still having a great time because the show is always changing. I love the fact that sometimes when I’m at work I get nervous, and that’s because I’m being asked to do something new. It’s not like I’m doing the same thing every week that I’ve done since the beginning. It’s always something different, whether it’s getting overcome by some strange spell or putting on a suit or having a relationship with Fred. It’s always something different for me to play and that keeps me excited and interested and on my toes. I like being nervous about going to work and being nervous about what I’m going to be doing next..