Angel Magazine #9

Date: April 2004
Price: £2.99
Page Count: 52
Editor: Martin Eden

LA Times
To be fair, it was squeezed into a corner, so you could be forgiven for not getting it straight away. The news pages were talking about mid-season excitement: damaged Slayers, Watcher Andrew, Cordelia, and submarines. We were talking about Nina returning and asking Angel on a date and a transformation that had to be seen to be believed. We were told the Burkles’ were coming back for an appearance in episode 15, which would have consequences for Fred, and a note that Alyson Hannigan still hadn’t heard anything about coming aboard, even as a guest star.
But tucked away in the bottom of page three, was this late note, added right at the last minute before press: Angel had been cancelled by the WB, but we’d have to wait until next issue to find out exactly what and why it wouldn’t be returning… The drama off-screen was just beginning, as the battle onscreen began warming to its end…

Eve of Destruction by Tara Dilullo
“Trust no one” goes the old TV saying. Well. Team Angel and Angel viewers alike certainly weren’t ready to trust new Wolfram & Hart liaison Eve when they first met up with her – and it looks like those suspicions were well placed! Actress Sarah Thompson dishes the dirt on evil Eve!

Angel might feature a male-heavy cast this season but fans were quickly introduced to a fresh-faced addition to the new Wolfram & Hart offices. Eve, the petite and appealing liaison to the Senior Partners, appeared in the premiere ‘Conviction’, and has since served as a lovely, albeit mysterious presence, providing key information to Angel and his team. Despite her pleasant disposition, no one in the Fang Gang trusts her, considering that her bosses are evil. It also hasn’t helped that her motives have been shrouded in secrecy – until the final stunning moments of the episode ‘Destiny’, where Eve’s true colours were finally revealed along with her silent partner, Lindsey McDonald (the returning Christian Kane). It was a moment that shocked fans, as well as the actress, Sarah Thompson, who plays her. “I didn’t know what the new season was going to hold,” she shares. “I was actually going on face value up until we actually shot that scene, so it was so much fun to finally figure out what is going on with her.”
    A native of the Los Angeles area, Sarah realised her calling early. “Since I was a little girl, I just knew I was going to be an actress even before I’d ever acted in a school play. I had this feeling, knowing that was what I was meant to do.” Despite being painfully shy, she auditioned for a part in a stage production of The Music Man when she was 10. “I got in the chorus and that started it all. When I got on stage, I was a different person and I kept doing school plays and musicals until I did it professionally.” She moved with her family to New York City when she was in high school, “so I was exposed to some amazing acting teachers and I studied on my own. I got an agent and started doing commercials.”
    After high school, she attended Barnard College at Columbia University for a year and a half until she got her big break. “My plan was to finish college and then pursue acting full time, but it just so happened that while I was in college I got a pilot for Fox, and it got picked up. It was called Manchester Prep. I was 19 and I got the job so I left school with my parents’ full support. I moved to LA by myself and I didn’t really know anyone except the people on the show. We shot about four episodes and it was cancelled before it aired but they cut it into a movie and released it as Cruel Intentions, Part II.”
    Sarah stuck it out in LA and not long after, she landed the recurring role of Dana Poole for two seasons on Boston Public. “That experience was so special because I had been a fan of David E. Kelley’s for years and I wanted to work with him so badly,” she enthuses. She followed that stint with more episodic guest appearances and small film roles until she got the audition call for Angel in the summer of 2003. “I got some lines faxed to me from my manager for a recurring role,” she explains. “I was excited because Joss Whedon is another guy that I wanted to work with in the television world. I wanted to nail it, so I worked really, really hard. I was specific in every choice I made, down to my nail polish and my wardrobe for the audition.
    “My first audition was with executive producer Jeffrey Bell and casting. The second audition was for the same people and then I auditioned for Joss. I was very nervous,” she laughs. Nerves or not, she won the part and immediately got to work getting caught up on the series. “I don’t watch a lot of television but I had watched Angel off and on for the four years so I was familiar with the show. Once I got the role, I started watching the re-runs every week. I wanted to learn as much as I could about the history and the characters so I felt more comfortable.”
    Stepping into the established cast was another cause of stress for the actress. “I was just so nervous because these people have been working with one another for four years and I was the new kid on the block.” Her fears quickly disappeared when the cast greeted her with a big “Welcome” on her first day. “I immediately felt part of the family and my nerves were calmed. It is such a remarkable group of people. Even after four seasons, everyone is down to earth with great attitudes. The first day I was there, Andy Hallett came out and showed me around. He was showing me where everyone’s trailer was and giving me the rundown on everybody. He was so funny.
    “By the second episode I felt settled,” she continues. “The first episode, I was still learning names and I was so focused on doing a good job. A new environment can be scary but by the second episode, I knew everyone’s named and I felt right at home. It’s so much fun and I love going to work every day.”
    So far, the biggest challenge for Sarah in playing Eve has been her lack of knowledge of what exactly this woman is all about. Not only has the audience been in the dark about the character, so has the actress playing her. “I was working just off what I was given on the page, from script to script, from episode to episode. So, I played her like she is trying to help and every once in a while I injected a little mystery.” But as the season progressed, Sarah picked up hints in the scripts that gave her more insight. A big clue for her was the dark look she delivered at the end of ‘Life of the Party’. “That look was actually in the script, so I thought, ‘That’s a clue of what is going on with this girl!’ In the following episode, there is a scene with Spike in the elevator where he says there is more to you that you’re letting on and when I read that scene, I knew there was definitely something going on.”
    That revealing elevator scene gave Eve a chance to go toe-to-toe with Spike, which was a highlight moment for Sarah. “We were supposed to shoot that scene a few days later. They were so ahead of schedule one day that I wrapped work and went home and they called me about an hour later and said, “Is there any way you can shoot that scene today?” I didn’t even know my lines yet and neither did James because it wasn’t for a few days. So I said, ‘Sure’ and rushed back to set. James and I stepped aside and we rehearsed it in a bunch because we wanted it to be really good.”
    But it was in ‘Destiny’ that Sarah finally got to prove her suspicions right when Eve is revealed to be working behind the scenes against Angel. “What’s funny about the big reveal was that nobody got that scene until the last minute. When we first got the script, that scene wasn’t in it because it was top secret. I didn’t even have it. We shot it as a Second Unit scene after that episode had already wrapped,” she shares. “I had heard a rumour about a secret scene and I tried to ask everyone about it but all I got was, ‘I don’t know, I don’t know’. One day I notice in my trailer there is an envelope marked ‘Confidential’ and I was like, ‘Wow!’ but I couldn’t tell anybody about it. Not my friends or the other cast members because they wanted to keep it a secret that Eve is evil and Lindsey is back. I had to keep my mouth shut but it was so exciting.”

    “In ‘Destiny’, because I shot all of the other scenes before I got that last scene, they kept directing me to play Eve very, very sincere. They said, ‘We can’t tell you exactly why but it’s very important you play this scene very sweet and sincere.” So any mystery that I injected into the character in that episode, they pulled me away from that because they wanted such a reveal at the end. I had to really trust the director but I felt a little blind because I knew it was going somewhere with a reason but I didn’t know what it was.”
    While a lot came out in that reveal, there is much that still remains to come to light about Eve and her plans. “Honestly I’m still going from script to script but now I have more information so when I’m playing my scenes at Wolfram & Hart with the people there, I have to play against what I know because I don’t want to be too obvious.” Working with Christian Kane is another plus for Sarah, as the duo will feature prominently in future episodes. “All I was told is that Lindsey is the one person with whom I can let down my guard.”
    Sarah was signed on for six episodes this season but happily, she recently got word that Eve will be around for more episodes. “I’m actually starting my seventh episode next week and they called and said I will be doing some of the back nine episodes so for the time being Eve is here,” she smiles. “I don’t know how many more it will be but it’s more than my guarantee of six.”
    In that time, she hopes to get more action scenes under her belt. “I was excited by the strangling scene in ‘Destiny’,” she laughs. “It was cool and it was fun to watch. It’s funny – when you do a scene like that it’s kind of scary and it gets emotional so I found it very easy to access those emotions and convince myself of the reality.” Her attacker, J. August Richards, was less enthused. “J is such a great guy and he is so aware. He was trying very hard to be very careful. It was all very co-ordinated with a stunt co-ordinator. By the end of every take he would ask if I was okay because I would be crying, but I was acting. That has been my only real action scene, but I’d like to get in a fight with somebody,” she laughs.
    As if playing an evil liaison isn’t enough, Sarah started appearing on another series last Winter. “I have another arc on an ABC show that started in December, called Line of Fire. They have been co-ordinating the schedules and I have been able to do both. I play a prostitute. I don’t know how I get these roles because in real life I’m really shy and quiet but somehow I get the vixen roles,” she laughs. “Things happen at once and as they say, when it rains it pours, but I welcome it!”

The Managing Director’s Cut by Jenny Lynn
Angel’s having some very weird dreams, Lindsey and Eve are up to all sorts of evil shenanigans and David Boreanaz is behind it all! Well, sort of – the Angel star makes his directorial debut on ‘Soul Purpose’, and Angel Magazine was there to report on all the behind the scenes going on.

Dru Calling by Edward Gross
Drusilla may be completely insane and terrifyingly lethal, but it’s always a pleasure for us viewers to see her turning up every now and then in Buffy and Angel. And since her last appearance, in Angel‘s ‘Destiny’, revealed a shocking twist in the Spike/Angel/Dru relationship, we thought it was about time we caught up with Dru actress Juliet Landau for an insightful chat!

Part of the appeal for guest stars of Angel and the late Buffy the Vampire Slayer is the way that their characters can weave in and out of storylines as the tapestry of the Whedon-verse continues to evolve and expand. Actress Juliet Landau serves as a perfect example of this.
    Since debuting on Buffy as vampire Drusilla in Season Two’s ‘School Hard’ (which co-starred James Marsters as Dru’s vampire lover Spike), Juliet has reprised the role an impressive 22 times, most recently on the Angel episode ‘Destiny’. Along the way, the character has not only served as a tangible threat in the present, but in different time periods via flashback – all of which have played an integral role in Dru’s gradual evolution.
    “Getting to work on a character for such a length of time is something that I liken to doing a run of a play,” muses the daughter of Mission: Impossible and Space: 1999‘s Martin Landau and Barbara Bain. “When you work on a play and you do, say, eight shows a week from opening night through 40 shows later, this other sort of thing starts to happen where you gradually begin to find so much more in the character. Playing Drusilla has been the same kind of experience, except that the text is different every time as opposed to a play where it’s the same text night after night. But getting to live with this character and bringing her in over six years – well, I’ve never had the longevity of that kind of experience before as a character. It’s so great and I’ve been so busy doing other things too, so it’s this balance where I get to play this great role, and I get to do many other things as well.
    “I love this role,” Juliet continues. “There’s just so much dimension and it’s really a great time working on this part. In terms of history, you’re dealing with characters who are 200 years old, so there’s quite a lot of lineage there. The cast and creators are wonderful – both Buffy and Angel have been great shows to work on, and working on ‘Destiny’ was wonderful.”
    In “Destiny”, Angel and Spike vie for the virtual Holy Grail of the vampire world: the Cup of Perpetual Torment, which will supposedly transform a vampire back into human form in fulfilment of the Shanshu Prophecy. Along the way, the episode flashes back to the 1880s where we discover that the rivalry and antagonism between Spike and Angel has often been over their feelings for the same woman: Buffy in the present and Drusilla in the past. “The appeal,” Juliet explains, “is that it sort of takes place right after I’ve made Spike a vampire, and investigates that love triangle between Angel, William and Drusilla. That’s the theme of it, and it’s always great to come back and work with the boys and to explore new colours and dimensions in the role.”

This is an opportunity that presented itself to Juliet from the beginning. “For the first six episodes of Buffy,” she reflects, “my character was weak and dying. Then I got renewed strength and became powerful. When I came to Los Angeles and teamed up with Darla on Angel, it was this little bit of a different side – and I got to spread more of my evil wings. Then filling in the flashbacks is something I’ve always loved, because I’ve always wanted to do a period movie, so we get to do some of that. The nice thing is that this is not just a straight black and white, ‘Oh, she’s the villainess’ kind of role. So much had happened to the character in terms of her life before she was turned into a vampire, that I hope it creates some sympathy for her as well. She’s a little crazy, but, as we’ve learned, she was also victimised.”
    In that regard Juliet recalls a flashback sequence on Buffy, in which a still-human Dru is suffering from bizarre visions, and turns to the church for answers. Unbeknownst to her, the ‘priest’ she’s talking to in the confessional is actually Angelus, who more or less pushes her over the edge of sanity before turning her into a vampire. “What was interesting about that scene, ” she says, “is that we usually get scripts about a week in advance, but for some reason that particular episode for that particular sequence, I really only got it a couple of days ahead of time. It seemed like such an important piece, because it was the first time I got to work on Drusilla prior to her becoming a vampire, and I felt that this was important and we had to get it right. For that reason, it was an intriguing scene.”
    Just as intriguing about the character of Drusilla is the fact that she seems to be extremely sensual, which Juliet attributes to a combination of the character as written and what she’s attempted to bring to it as an actress.
    “When I first got hired for the role,” she says, “I had never actually read for it ahead of time. I came in for a meeting and Joss had seen my work in Ed Wood and a movie I did with Whoopi Goldberg, where I played an upper-class English character. I went in and we had this incredible creative meeting where it was Gail Berman and David Greenwalt and Joss, and we bounced ideas off each other and I thought, ‘This could be so much fun.’ When I got hired, I went in for a creative meeting and Joss and I sat down. He sort of filled me in on all the vampire lore of this show and he told me the objectives he wanted for Drusilla – and they were quite a spectrum of things. A little bit Ophelia, but diabolical. Sensual, but ethereal – things that seemed like a big spectrum. I thought to myself, ‘How am I going to put all of these pieces together?’ Then I did a little work on it and it all fell into place. She is definitely sexualised.
    “There’s a lot of it that’s twisted,” Juliet elaborates with a laugh, “because there’s also the fact that the relationship with Angel is kind of an incestuous love affair, as he’s kind of my father figure. I remember talking to Joss about a movie called Night Porter, with Dirk Bogarde and Charlotte Ramping, which was about Nazi Germany but was also very dark and interesting and has that murky sexuality as well. So I think it’s a combination of what was given and how it’s taken off as well. Definitely collaborative. That’s one of the things that’s so great about working on the shows.”
    Although Juliet has made an impressive career for herself in independent film, she’s still, naturally recognised mostly as Drusilla. “Drusilla has a different kind of life. I have an action figure, which is kind of surreal and pretty wild. I am one of the few people on the planet who doesn’t have a computer, but I’ve been told that there are quite an extensive amount of sites devoted to the characters from Buffy and Angel. The thing that’s really cool about the fans is that there’s such a wide spectrum of them. It seems likes the show appeals to a wide-range of people in terms of ages. I get fan-mail from really interesting parts of the world.
    “It seems that people respond to the writing because it’s really intelligent,” Juliet adds, noting that there has been talk about her returning to Angel this season. “The thing that made it terrific as an actor is that there’s an element to the shows that is fantastical, obviously, but Joss has always been really clear that everything is rooted in something. The whole initial concept of high school as a nightmare and using evil forces to pull that metaphor to the extreme is a perfect example. It’s the same thing when Buffy’s mom found out she was the Slayer. The whole scene was written as if Buffy is coming out of the closet, and her mom is like ‘Have you ever tried not being a Slayer?’ For us actors, that kind of thing roots the show. That’s what makes it, I think, not just a fantasy show.”

David’s Destiny by Tara Dilullo
His name is David Fury and you might recognise him as the ‘Mustard Man’ from Buffy‘s ‘Once More with Feeling. or the goat-sacrificing ‘First Worshipper’ in ‘Reprise.’ No? Well, how about the man who’s written a total of 28 Buffy and Angel episodes to date! We find out more about the life and career of the Angel writer/executive producer (and occasional actor)!

A Day in the Life of… The Angel Make-Up Department by Jenny Lynn
Our Angel Magazine reporter graciously got up extra, extra (and we do mean extra) early to go into the make-up department at Angel…

The Clothes Show by Abbie Bernstein
A posh new Wolfram & Hart job means posh new clothes for Angel and company. So we caught up with Costume Designer Shawna Trpcic to discuss what the gang are wearing this season!