Witch Way Now? by Paul Simpson
After eight appearances over seven years of Buffy, Amy Madison, wannabe cheerleader, sometimes-rat and powerful witch, became one of the show’s most popular recurring characters. We caught up with Elizabeth Anne Allen, the actress behind the pom-poms, to discuss her final Buffy appearance, and find out why she still hasn’t watched the finale!

“I had a really hard time with the idea that Buffy wasn’t going to be there ever again,” Elizabeth Anne Allen admits. Buffy Magazine is sitting down with the actress at the end of the Starfury Fusion event in Blackpool, looking over her time as Amy Madison, the young witch whose life intersected with the Scooby Gang over the years. Elizabeth enjoys coming to conventions, and interacting with the fans, and is always glad when she’s got a new appearance to discuss with them. However, as she points out, she wasn’t expecting a call to return in Buffy‘s seventh and final season. “I’m always pleased and delighted to get the phone calls,” she says. “I look forward to figuring out who I am at that given time. I always go in there having no idea what Amy has become.”
    At the time she turned up in ‘The Killer in Me’, Elizabeth explains that, “Amy was recovering – she’s working her way through the Witch Recovery Program. They’re really trying to redeem her, and say she’s not completely bad. As far as I’m concerned, she’s never been completely bad. She’s had a rough time of it. I look at Amy as a good person who’s been mistreated, abandoned, unloved and unappreciated. She’s tried her best to stay on top of it all, but she’s just got lost in the mix of the garbage that was her life. She’s a fighter and a struggler, but she would keep getting lost. It’s sad.”
    Elizabeth doesn’t like the idea that she can’t discover what her favourite characters are up to any more, after the show has finished. “I do this with books, too,” she says. “Sometimes I fall in love with a book, read the whole thing but then won’t finish it. I just can’t finish it, I just leave it open. I have a couple of books that are on my shelf that have the bookmarks so far back, but I just can’t finish them – Cold Mountain was one of them, but the movie ruined that for me! I just grew so attached to the characters on Buffy that I just didn’t want to see it end. I didn’t want to know how it ended, and if I didn’t watch it, it didn’t end.”
    Elizabeth didn’t see the last episode of the series, and really doesn’t want to know anything about it, to the extent that she gets annoyed when something is inadvertently let slip. “They’re all there in Sunnydale still,” she maintains. “They’re waiting for me to come back – that’s what I like to pretend. When you fall in love with characters, you fall in love with their story and you wonder where they are. With Amy, I wonder where the hell is she going to go now? What’s going to happen next? With all the ground that she’s covered, she’s got so many adventures – I’m sure – yet to see. Hopefully, she’s working on her self-esteem, getting a little more clear that she doesn’t need other people to make herself feel good. She’s now an adult, and responsible for herself. I hope she’s out there, working it through and enjoying her life – maybe away from Sunnydale. Getting out of there would be a good idea for her.”

Elizabeth never expected that a small part in Buffy‘s first season would lead to a semi-regular role, and to appearances at conventions around the world. “It was such a great experience the first time, and I had so much fun doing it,” she recalls. “As an actor, I just looked at that experience, and moved on, but I loved the chance to keep revisiting it and the people who were there. Making the friends I have made on the show, and meeting all the people has made the experience so much better for me. Everytime I went back, I was just so excited to be there, and to see everybody. It was fun to revisit Amy – she was almost like a good friend, and I was just happy to have that reunion every year.”
    Her occasional visits allowed the actress to notice the way that the series matured over the years. “It’s amazing to look back at the first season – particularly the wardrobe and the styles, and how young the haircuts were – and then see how sophisticated everybody became over the years, she comments. “It was really interesting to see how steam-lined everything became. It was always so shocking to walk in to this well oiled machine. It was almost like watching a baby walk, then crawl and run, and finally see an athlete in full force.”
    For the time being, Elizabeth is not pursuing her acting craft.  “I had been really busy, and as Buffy wrapped, I decided for personal reasons that I needed a little hiatus from the entertainment industry,” she explains. “I got married, travelled and then because I have a background in child psychology, I’ve been working in schools developing curriculums for enrichment programmes for children from 12 months to 12 years old. I wanted to get back in touch with roots, and settle back. Acting to me is something I can do until I’m old and grey. It’s like golf – you can play and play. I feel the luxury of being able to go back to it at a whim. I’ve never plotted out my life. When I’ve figured it’s time to change around and do something different, then I do, just to keep fresh.
    But it won’t be too long before Elizabeth’s beaming smile is back on-screen. “I love acting, and I love creating,” she concludes. “That’s my real passion.”

Where Are They Now? by Tara Dilullo
As the sexy she-wolf that led Oz astray, Veruca was one of Season Four’s most memorable guest characters. Buffy Magazine caught up with Paige Moss to find out about her time on the show, working with Seth Green, and just what it was like to be the woman that Willow and Oz fans love to hate…

Way back in the day when Willow and Oz were considered the perfect couple, fans never imagined that anything could ever wreck their love. But it turned out that Oz’s werewolf ‘condition’ wasn’t so easy to control, especially when it came to his overwhelming attraction for another of his kind, the bad girl, Veruca. The mesmerising singer, who lured Oz to the dark side of his transformation, also entranced fans that still love to hate the woman who broke up one of the favourite ‘ships’. To this day, actress Paige Moss still gets a lot of recognition from her three-episode stint as the sexy singer. “There are so many incredible Buffy fans; it’s incredible,” Paige laughs. “There’s nothing like it. I had a series on ABC, It’s All Relative, for a season, and people would come up to me and ask if I was an actress. I’d say, ‘Yes, I’m on this show,’ and they’d say, ‘No, that’s not it.’ Then I’d say, ‘Buffy?’ and they’d go, ‘YES!’ and they’d just flip.”
    A native Texan, Paige was raised in a political family and was fully prepared to follow that path herself. “At a young age, I went to be a Senate Page in Washington DC and I interned for a while and decided politics was not for me, so choose the next best thing – Hollywood and acting!” Her initial political interests had seen her excelling in debates and scene-acting, so it wasn’t really an outlandish shift in careers. “I took a summer programme at the Kennedy Center in DC and I loved it. When I got home, I applied to two schools – Julliard and the Academy of Dramatic Arts. I went to my second choice, but it was a great thing as it got me to California. Theatre was all I knew and it was a big part of me getting into acting. When I finished school, I even produced my own play. But once I got into film and television, I fell in love with it. I’d like to still do theatre, maybe go out to New York or, like Alyson Hannigan, go out to London, which would be even better.”
    Paige got her first TV break with a recurring role on Beverly Hills 90210, which led to other guest roles on TV shows and the film, Can’t Hardly Wait, where she first met and worked with Seth Green. “We built a friendship on that movie,” she recalls. It was that bond that helped her land the role of Veruca on Buffy two years later. “I got a call-back for Buffy where we were reading with the other actor, and I went into the room and there was Seth. I was like, ‘Oh my gosh!’ He hugged me and we read the scene and I left. I had no idea he would be reading with me, but it did help. We did have a nice connection so it was really nice to read with him.” Once cast, she admits Seth was a great-friend on-set. “He was my saving grace on Buffy. I got to work with someone who I think is one of the best actors in town. He is so fun and such a good person. I got to spend a lot of time with him on Buffy as well because I didn’t know anyone, so I kind of glommed onto him and he took me under his wing and was really great with me, especially with the scary sex scene, which we shot right away. It was the first thing we did! He made jokes and made it all okay. He was such a trooper. He could actually wear shorts for the scene, while I had to wear a thong and he said, ‘You know what, I’ll wear a thong too.’ He did that just to make me feel more comfortable,” she laughs.

While many fans see Veruca as the villain of the piece, Paige says there was more to the role in her eyes. “She was always very confident, self-assured and sexy – these great qualities that I hadn’t gotten to play yet. It was really fun to sink my teeth into her. She was never a villainess to me. She was confident and enjoyed life and having her believe in who she was and what she was doing meant she wasn’t just bad. The audience can make up their own mind, but Veruca didn’t think she was a villain. I loved bringing her to life and having this underlying secret. Going into the lair with Seth when he wanted me to get into the cage was my favourite scene. Playing this game of cat and mouse with these people who need to be together. They have this moon about to come up and this transformation is taking place and they are the only people who relate to one another.
    “It was supposed to be a longer arc,” she says, “which was kind of disappointing because I wanted to slowly bring Veruca out rather than how we jolted her out. It was originally four episodes, but they called me in early because they decided they had to accelerate the story because of Seth leaving the show.”
    Unlike many recurring parts, Paige was thrilled that Veruca offered her so much to do – playing a werewolf, a love interest and a singer. “Well, the singing was a bit intimidating,” she says. “I didn’t know I would be doing it upfront. You learn as you go and kind of panic and freak out when you get the scripts. I didn’t meet the band until the day we shot and the people performing on stage were actually in THC. At first, I wanted to be heavier and more rock and roll than it came out and that was partly because of the song, which was so dreamy and gothic. My initial reaction was wrong so I had to change it. I practised it so much at home but the first time I did it, I was terrified. But Seth and Joss and the director were so great and so complimentary, it gave me the confidence to take it further.”
    Since her Buffy job, Paige has been busy acting, including a season on It’s All Relative. She’s now looking for her next project. “I was in a pilot that was turned into a movie called The Ranch for Showtime, and I just finished another film called Short Fuse. It’s about a boxer who can’t control his temper, and he runs into my character and she ends up trying to keep him out of trouble. It’s with the comedian, Godfrey.”