PLUME: I think what’s interesting, especially dealing with the potentials, is that I know going in – with the comments you had made previous to the season – my thought was it’s going to be a rededication to the core group throughout the season. It seemed the introduction of the potentials – and here’s a dozen potentials and new characters accompanying them – that it diluted the core group that we care about …
WHEDON: Yeah, I think it did, and I had to get to that ending. The problem is it’s very hard to find a bunch of people that can suddenly come in and be important, or even just be sort of noise in the frame while you’re dealing with your characters and really get it done. Like I said, we found really good people. But, you know, you do want to deal with your core characters. The other thing is, you’ve been dealing with your core characters for seven years. It’s kind of hard. You know their tricks, you know their strengths and weaknesses, and you’re trying to drum up a new thing for them to go through, you know, a new thing for them to express, and it’s harder. It’s just harder.
PLUME: I know personally, looking at the characters, it’s almost like the things that happened to every one of them through those last two seasons – right down to what happened with Xander and Anya – it’s almost like the audience was being punished for having an investment in the characters. Can’t somebody have a happy ending?
WHEDON: Well, you know, everybody had a happy ending… except, well, not so much Anya.
PLUME: I can understand relationships tend not to work, but couldn’t one relationship work?
WHEDON: Well, Willow and Kennedy worked. Maybe you weren’t invested in that in the last one, but they were hanging at the end … One of my characters will still have a girlfriend when they cancelled the show, and it was Willow.
PLUME: The Kennedy thing almost seemed more of a predatory relationship.
WHEDON: Kennedy is, as she herself said, a bit of a brat. What I wanted was an anti-Tara. I wanted somebody who was as different from Tara as possible. Tara was very reticent, and she was somebody that Willow caused to blossom. What I wanted was somebody who was further on down in dealing with her sexuality than Willow ever was. Somebody who was totally confident, who was totally not earthy-crunchy, who was a completely different person. What I wanted to explore was the concept of Willow moving on. We did that with the first kiss, that turned her into Warren. The first time they had sex, the things that Willow has to deal with emotionally, her fear of her power and stuff, and Kennedy’s kind of involvement in that. That’s what Kennedy was for.
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PLUME: In execution, it almost seemed like it was a predatory, stalker type, “I’m always here, you’re going to give in to me. You’re going to give in to me – I’m in your bed!” kind of relationship…WHEDON: Well, it didn’t seem like that to me. It was more like, “I’m really cute. I think you’re cute and let’s get it on.” People are always like, “Oh, they didn’t even have a relationship.” They had a long talk about, “When did you come out?” and this whole thing at the Bronze that we had never done with Tara, that we very deliberately saying, “Okay, they’re starting a relationship.” What I was interested in was Willow’s guilt, that her life could go on, that her love life could go on after Tara, because that’s a part of living. Quite frankly, that was not plan A. Plan A was to bring Tara back.
PLUME: I heard there were some failed discussions about that.
WHEDON: Amber didn’t want to do it. She wanted to do other things. I had a whole – I used to tell people, “Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to have her in a couple of flashbacks, keep her alive, and then at the end …” I had a whole show figured out that ended with the return of Tara. I used to cry every time I pitched it. It was going to be Tara’s her one true love, people are going to be blown away, they’ll never see it coming – except on the Internet – and it’s going to be just about the biggest thing. Quite frankly, Amber just didn’t want to do it – which is her decision. I was like, “Okay, the thing where I cried, and we all cried, and I told you about? That’s gone. So, instead, we’re going to go out and find somebody really hot, and we’re going to make this about moving on, because that’s the only option we have. I don’t want Willow stuck in typical gay celibacy on TV. I’m interested in where her heart will go once she’s lost her true love, so let’s do that instead.” So, you know, hence Kennedy.
PLUME: On a side tangent, what was the purpose of the – I hesitate to use the phrase – sort of clumsy storytelling with the whole “Giles not touching things” thing…
WHEDON: It was just us having fun.
PLUME: It didn’t seem to really pan out besides making a lot of people crazy on the Internet…
WHEDON: That was just a fun runner for the diehards, so you watch every episode and you’re like, “AH! You’re right, he leaned on it, but he didn’t touch it!” It was just us having a little mystery fun.
PLUME: It almost reduced the intelligence level of the characters themselves.
WHEDON: Not really. As soon as they figured out he hadn’t touched anything for a few episodes, they ran off and dealt with the problem, and figured it out. Boom. It wasn’t like they were being idiots. Fact of the matter was, it really was just something to make people wonder. Just to have a little fun in the sense of pulling a mystery. You know, it was never supposed to be a huge thing. It wasn’t about Giles’s character, it was just about, “Uh, we don’t know where the bad guy is, we don’t know where he’s coming from. Our trusted mentor could be the bad guy.” That’s a nice creepy thing to do to people, and playing the game of, “Is he touching something? Why didn’t he hug her?” You know, it was an exercise, something to spice things up. It was not like a big, dramatic deal. If it didn’t work, then oops – but I don’t think it’s the most important part of the season.
PLUME: Are there any characters that you think got short-shrift in season seven?
WHEDON: Yeah. You know, I had wanted to go further with Dawn’s character.
PLUME: It seemed like that’s how the season was starting out.
WHEDON: You know, it was. The problem was, again, we had so much work to do to get to the end of the season, that everything else kind of fell by the wayside. Unfortunately, Michelle was like, “Never did get that boyfriend you promised me!”
PLUME: What was the purpose of Joyce’s statement to her?
WHEDON: To rattle her. To make her wonder, and then, you know, it was just this sort of said thing. The First trying to set everybody against each other, was all, and I guess against themselves. But I just think Michelle’s extremely talented. In season six, people were like, “Oh, she whines so much.” I sort of scratched my head. I was like, “Excuse me, she’s been abandoned by about six parental figures. The girl has huge issues.” At the same time I was like, “You get it… we sort of run the same note for a while, they’re not wrong.” We needed to make some changes. I’d hoped to be able to do more with Dawn this year, and the bigger picture just got so goddamn big, that it was hard. You get into a situation that you do like to stand alone, that’s about an external character – and we already had so many with the goddamn potentials… people don’t like them. You’re like, “I’m really interested in this little aspect of Dawn’s life” – if it’s not part of the bigger picture, people resent it. It’s very hard to pull that off in season seven of the giant battle that’s coming. “Dawn Goes on a Date” is not something that people would really sit for, unless we really nailed it. So it kind of fell by the wayside. She’s not the only one, but she’s a prime example.
PLUME: It seemed almost like the pacing of the season was odd.
WHEDON: I think these aren’t questions I can really answer right now, because I have no perspective of it. When you’re talking about something like pacing, it’s like, “Which episode was which?”
PLUME: That’s true. I can see the point… I retract the question.
WHEDON: You certainly don’t have to see the point – I just don’t really have a comment. I don’t have that much of an overview right now.
PLUME: So which actors are we going to see popping up again in the future, in projects?
WHEDON: Honestly, I don’t know. I think of stuff all the time. “Oh, that would be perfect for this person.” James [Marsters, Spike], obviously, is going over to Angel. I can’t imagine not working with Aly, more than anybody else.
PLUME: Oh, but what about Andrew?
WHEDON: Oh, don’t get me wrong. Tom Lenk rules. I will hound him to the grave. This man is a genius.
PLUME: Talk about the perfect sidekick for Giles on Ripper. Talk about an odd couple…
WHEDON: He is just a treasure… he really is a treasure. Believe me when I say he pops up in almost everything. Certainly in all my Aly projects. It’s like, “There’s Tom!” That’s fine with her.
PLUME: Definitely one of the biggest finds of the past two years.
WHEDON: Yeah, he blew us all away, and he’s a sweetheart.
PLUME: Much to Danny’s [Danny Strong, Jonathan] dismay.
WHEDON: Danny, you know – you die, you work more then. That’s our rule. No, Danny was with us since the presentation. Danny has been with us that long.
PLUME: Is the presentation ever going to make it to DVD?
WHEDON: Not while there is strength in these bones.
PLUME: Well, I mean, it’s one of the most heavily bootlegged things on the Internet…
WHEDON: Yeah. It sucks on ass.
PLUME: Yeah, it does, but it’s sort of that archival, historical perspective…
WHEDON: Yeah, I’ve got your historical perspective …
PLUME: It would take it off the bootleg market…
WHEDON: Ah, I don’t – what are you going to do?
PLUME: Put it on the DVD.
WHEDON: Not me.
PLUME: Have you seen the latest, wonderful Internet find of the purported leak of Spike’s return on Angel next year?
WHEDON: No. How’s it going to happen? Because I need some ideas.
PLUME: Well let’s see. According to this, Spike shows up in the White Room at the beginning of next season, wearing the amulet, naked, turns over, “Oh bloody hell,” as Angel and crew stand over him. Cut to credits, come back, Angel and he get in a fight, Angel tries to rip the amulet off. Spike has trouble breathing, they put the amulet back on, find he’s connected, and then Wes makes a determination that due to contact with Buffy at the time of death, Spike is human – but is now the first male vampire slayer.
WHEDON: Two words: Fan fic. Utter rubbish.
PLUME: Isn’t Ain’t it Cool News great?
WHEDON: Sometimes they are, sometimes they’re not. I wish we lived in a world without spoilers – but we never will. But that is in fact not true. The great thing is – you read ten ridiculous theories about what is going to happen, and one is absolutely, totally right by accident. Then you just go, “Ha ha! Those ridiculous theories!” and start rewriting.
PLUME: But it’s not this one…
WHEDON: Not this one. It doesn’t matter what they write. We’ll write what we write.
PLUME: And we’ll know in a couple months.
WHEDON: Yeah.
PLUME: What are your thoughts on the Internet’s role in television production?
WHEDON: The Internet, you know… The bitch goddess that I love and worship and hate. You know, we found out we have a fan base on the Internet. They came together as a family on the Internet, a huge goddamn deal. It’s so important to everything the show has been and everything the show has done – I can’t say enough about it. It drives me up the frigging wall that I can’t keep secrets, that I can’t keep things off the Internet. The crew members of my own shows are feeding things to the Internet so that people will know what happens before it happens.
PLUME: Where’s the respect for the chain of command?
WHEDON: Apparently, the chain is only as strong as – well, that weak link that’s me. It’s not respect for the chain of command, it’s respect for storytelling. People just don’t have it. But you know what? Not everybody reads spoilers, not everybody lives that way. Those are the people that really love the show. I cannot conceive of a person who wants to know what happens. People who turn to the last page of a book – what universe did they come from? I don’t understand it. That drives me crazy, but I think the Internet is beyond important in terms of fans communing, becoming a community and growing. People writing each other and writing fiction, and writing, well, porn. All of these things that do what I always wanted Buffy to do, which was exist outside of the TV show. Enter people’s own personal ethos. The Internet has been a big part in how that has happened.
PLUME: What is the current future of Firefly?
WHEDON: The current future of Firefly is that I’m writing a movie script that I have some hope of actually getting made.
PLUME: Which will be a retelling… ?
WHEDON: No, it will be a completely new story that will be completely true to the series for those people who have seen it or see it on DVD, but will completely reintroduce it to those people who never did. Which makes it a very funny tightrope to walk. I’m basically serving two masters – I want to tell a mythic and exciting and timeless tale about nine people that people have never met, and yet not betray or repeat anything I do on the series. It’s going to be tough.
PLUME: Of course, you could just keep approaching Firefly actors to do more villains.
WHEDON: Yes, I know. It’s great. It’s great, actually. I plan to… I think I’m going to need another one.
PLUME: They work well.
WHEDON: Yeah, they do just fine.
PLUME: In fact, it would have been nice if Caleb had shown up earlier.
WHEDON: Yeah, I think so, too.
PLUME: Was that naturally where that was going to be?
WHEDON: No, that was us going, “You know what? We need someone to latch onto.” Having a villain who can take the form of anybody – and not being able to afford to hire the guest cast – made that really fascinating, but it meant that we didn’t really have anything to push against. We needed somebody, we needed a sidekick. Somebody physical that we can see from episode to episode, and it took us a while to realize, which is why he came in.
PLUME: What is the current production status on the Firefly DVDs?
WHEDON: They should be coming out in the fall. Late fall.
PLUME: The full-on special edition?
WHEDON: Oh my god. They couldn’t be specialer. We’ve got three unaired episodes, commentary by every cast member, big interviews with everybody, gag reel – all kinds of stuff. It’s just bells and whistles, and they’ll be in the right order. And widescreen. So it really couldn’t be better DVD package… a wicked one, at that. They really went to town on it. I was like, “I don’t know if they’ll release them on DVD, because it was cancelled,” and they’re not only releasing it, they’re doing everything. I did the commentary on the two-hour pilot with Nathan. He and Alan did one together… Alan Tudyk. It’s really exciting.
PLUME: What has been the difficulty in getting cast members for the Buffy and Angel commentaries?
WHEDON: I don’t know. I don’t know. You know, it wasn’t really broached early on. I think we’re getting more sophisticated about how this is done as DVDs have established themselves. DVDs of TV shows have established themselves just in the last couple years … the only time I ever did one with a cast member was when Marti and Seth and I did one together. That was of course insane, because it was Seth.
PLUME: Who was on his best behavior.
WHEDON: None of our best behavior is really that good.
PLUME: Did it surprise you the reaction that the lack of widescreen for Buffy season four on DVD got here in the U.S.?
WHEDON: People were upset, right? I haven’t seen the season four package … it contains a disclaimer from me as to why it’s not in widescreen, that I wrote. It’s on it, it comes with it. It’s not a widescreen show. We shot it in a TV ratio, and I am very, very specific with the way I frame things. To arbitrarily throw – and I love widescreen, but Buffy was never a widescreen show. It was an intimate, TV shaped show. To arbitrarily throw wider borders on it, to make it more cinematic when I very specifically framed it. Think of “The Body” – the episode “The Body”…
PLUME: Right, which I’ve seen in widescreen and full frame…
WHEDON: How could you have see it in widescreen?
PLUME: The U.K. sets are in widescreen.
WHEDON: Good. See, that is not the way I framed it. That’s not the way it was meant to be seen, and therefore that’s not the way I shot it. I’m preserving what I shot. The DVD is there to preserve what we made, for eternity. What we made, very specifically, was a certain shape. So I’m sure there’ll be widescreen copies and there’ll be arguments about what’s better, but I’m not interested in – and I mean, I love widescreen. I’m a widescreen fanatic, when something’s wide. When it’s not, then I want to see it the way it was meant to be seen.
PLUME: Were you not consulted for the U.K. sets?
WHEDON: No, I was not. Buffy was never widescreen. Angel is, Firefly was – and was not aired that way. That’ll be nice, that it can be shown the way it was meant to be seen. For me, Buffy is a different animal.
PLUME: What are you working on right now, as far as the future? You mentioned in the past you were working on a self-project completely unrelated to this universe you’ve created.
WHEDON: Well, I am actually working on the screenplay of Firefly, in my hopes that I can actually get it made. I am actually working on season five of Angel. Right now those are my two priorities.
PLUME: Working on a single show will be a change after this long.
WHEDON: What a relief.
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March 22nd, 2017 at 8:16 am
[…] “In season six, people were like, “Oh, she whines so much.†I sort of scratched my head,†he said in an interview after the series finished. “I was like, ‘Excuse me, she’s been abandoned by about six […]