Amber Benson

AN INTERVIEW WITH AMBER BENSON

While Amber Benson has some very impressive film credits under her belt - making her debut in Stephen Soderberg’s KING OF THE HILL, and moving on to appear inTHE PRIME GIG alongside Ed Harris, the notorious “lost film” DON’S PLUM with Leonardo DiCaprio and Tobey Maguire, TABOO with Nick Stahl and most recently, completing EL INTERMEDIO with Edward Furlong - she is best known for her role as the dear-departed Tara on the newly-departed TV show, ““Buffy the Vampire Slayer”." Tara, of course, was a groundbreaking role, particularly for U.S. television, as one-half of an on-going lesbian love affair (with Alyson Hannigan’s Willow character completing the couple).

In 2001, Benson completed production on her directorial debut, the coming-of-age dark comedy, Chance, which co-stars a few of her ““Buffy”” and “Angel” castmates. The movie screened recently at the Moonlight Rising convention in the Catskills and received rave reviews from fans (a.k.a. “Amberholics”).

As she talks to me from her Los Angeles home, Amber Benson sounds very tired. “I actually just got up. I set my alarm for ten minutes to eleven so I could call you!” The actress, best known for her role as Tara Maclay on the popular t.v. show “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”, is in the middle of post-production on her first feature film. Not only did she write and direct the digital video movie CHANCE, she also stars as the title character, opposite her fellow “Buffy” co-star James Marsters.

“[CHANCE] is really just my take on trying to figure out just who the heck you are in your twenties. Trying to find somebody that you really connect with on more than just a physical basis. We shot it all over the place. Now we’re done with the filming process, and we’re going into the edit. Which is really scary! I can’t believe five weekends are over. Ten wild days.”

Ten days. Ten days was all it took for the twenty-four-year-old first-time director/producer to complete her first feature on digital video. But, sure, she’s a big-time Hollywood actress, who made her feature-film debut in Steven Soderberg’s KING OF THE HILL. She must have money pouring out of her ears, right?

“We did this for no money. Whatever I made from “Buffy” we funneled into it. And whatever my sister in college didn’t need. I think our budget was $25,000. I know that sounds like a lot of money to people out there, but it’s so not.”

After that admission, filmmakers across America now grudgingly agree that Amber is one of them: a guerilla filmmaker whose sum total of blood, sweat and tears went into the making of her first feature film. In fact, her webmistress, who goes under the name Little Willow, helped to start an internet investor’s fund, allowing interested parties to donate to the film’s completion!

“I started writing the script a few years ago, and when I finished it, I never did anything with it,” she says. “I didn’t think anyone else out in Hollywood would appreciate it. It’s my story, my thing, you know? I didn’t want to shop it around, say ‘hey you wanna buy my movie?’ They’d tell me to screw off.

“So some friends of mine and I were talking at dinner one night, and they said ‘Heck with it, why don’t you do it yourself?’ So I did. It took about three months of pre-production, and five more of filming, now we’re in editing process. Luckily I was surrounded by this incredible crew. I have a wonderful director of photography Patrice [Patrice Lucien Cochet], and my script supervisor Stacy was really cool. Even the sound guy, Dennis [Baxter], got into it. He’d yell out ‘Hey, the eye-line looks a little funny!’ Then I’d have to come back and look. Luckily, I had a friend who could stand in for me so I could come and go and see what was up. So between all of them, and my mother - who was sitting around going ‘okay, that looks funny when you do that!’ - I got myself taken care of. I was okay with everybody else, because I knew what I wanted from them, so that wasn’t a problem. It was just me trying to make sure I was doing what I was supposed to do.”

As for the film itself: “I haven’t shown it to anybody yet,” she tells me. “I’ve been really secretive. It’s my baby! No one can touch it! It’s all mine! Because I acted in it, I had to get into makeup, and wardrobe and stuff. So I’m running around in half-finished makeup going ‘okay, get the lights inside, I’ll be right back, meet you at the monitor!’ We VHS’ed everything so that we could go back and look and see how things were coming. It was intense.” And once it’s done? “Just going to take it to festivals and see what happens.”

The big question, then, is how did Amber the Actress take to being Amber the Director? “I like directing. Screw the acting! I wanna be a director. That’s where all the fun is.”

Amber comes off as the antithesis of the “Hollywood Actress”. She’s quick to laugh, she’s self-effacing, funny. Not one for the overly-social network parties, she prefers the company of her family. “My mom and my sister and I are like the Three Musketeers. My mother’s not my manager, though; she just makes sure that I don’t get in trouble. She looks out for me. She was one of the producers on the movie. She does all the grunt work and makes me look good. You have to have somebody supporting you. You have to have an emotional support system or you can’t make it in this world. Especially in this business where you have somebody ripping you down all the time. That’s just the nature of this business. People are going to not like you, they’re going to reject you, they’re not going to hire you. So if you have someone to say ‘You know what? It’s not personal. It’s not you! That’s the way it goes.’ It makes it so much easier to deal with.” Born in Alabama, Amber has been acting steadily since her age was in single-digits. “I was put in dance class as a little kid because I had too much energy. I started doing ballet, and I realized that it wasn’t the ballet that I enjoyed, it was being onstage and having people applauding. So I stepped into acting. I figured out early what I wanted to do and I’ve just been lucky enough to get the opportunity to do it, and get paid for it.”

Aside from her afore-mentioned impressive debut in Soderberg’s KING OF THE HILL, Benson has had roles in THE CRUSH, BYE BYE LOVE, and S.F.W. But it was her role as Tara on “Buffy” that really put her on the pop culture map.

That Tara McKlay is an interesting character on a show famous for its interesting characters comes as no surprise. The acclaimed “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” is one of the best-written shows on television, thanks largely to creator Joss Whedon and his expansive vision of a group of friends living in a Los Angeles suburb over-run by vampires, werewolves and demons. At the center of the group is the titular character, played by Sarah Michelle Geller, a young girl of superhuman strength who was destined to consistently save the world. At her side are her long-time friends Xander (Nicholas Brendon) and Willow (Alyson Hannigan), who help her battle the forces of darkness while at the same time struggling with the more mundane problems of life, relationships, and pending careers.

Amber’s Tara made her debut in the show’s fourth season - specifically in the amazingly-scripted “Hush”, an episode that, for the second half-hour, is completely devoid of dialogue. Tara, like Hannigan’s Willow, is a witch, able to channel the four elements, conjure protection spells, and so-forth. It is this interest in natural magic that brought the two young women together. Over several episodes, their relationship grew into something more than friendship. By the end of the fifth season, Willow and Tara became the only on-going lesbian relationship on television. Thanks to the charisma of the two actors, as well as the deft writing of the teleplays, their relationship has seeming nothing less than organic, loving and very sweet. While in recent months, the storyline has required the pair to undergo some problems, the Willow and Tara relationship still remains one of the strongest emotional couplings in Prime Time. “It’s very nice,” Amber says. “It’s sweet and romantic. I think it’s actually the most romantic relationship on “Buffy”. Because [Alyson] and I are comfortable with each other, it makes it really easy.”

So, with that in mind, I ask Amber how she wound up on this deservedly popular show.

“Boringly enough, I just auditioned for it,” she says. “I knew Alyson [Hannigan] - we’d met through mutual friends. I’d seen the show since she was on it, but I was never a huge fan. I never watched a bunch of them in a row, and knew who said what in what episode, or who wore what in that episode. But I thought it was a really good show, really well done. And I was very excited to go in and read for it. I went in and met with Joss, and he was really cool. They said ‘Well, we’re going to have callbacks,’ and this and that. And I thought, ‘Okay, cool’. But then I went out of town, and I got a phonecall when I’m halfway out of town, saying that they were going to change the callback to this afternoon. And was shouting ‘what do you mean this afternoon? I’m almost in San Francisco, I can’t come back. There’s no way. Even if I turned around now I’d never make it.’ So I kind of wrote it off, thinking it’s not going to happen. Bad luck. And then later they called and said that they didn’t find who they were looking for and wanted me to come back in. So I went back in and later I got a phone call telling me I’d gotten the part. That was funny too, because just as my agent called to tell me I’d gotten the part, Aly called at the same time to give me the news. She’d heard from Joss that I’d gotten the part. So that was really nice.”

In her early appearances, Tara is a shy, quiet girl. When she does speak, she does so with a slight stammer. Even meek, contrite Willow seems a pillar of strength compared to socially awkward Tara. But the neat thing about “Buffy” is that the writers allow the characters to grow. You can actually watch people and relationships evolve, and the evolution seems completely natural. While Tara remains unsure of herself around the rest of the “Scooby Gang”, when she is alone with Willow, she is relaxed, confident and comfortable. There are times when she even seems like the stronger of the two.

“It’s a group of effort,” Amber says of Tara’s evolution. “The way that Joss had written it, he wanted Tara to really blossom under Willow’s affection. I’ve tried to take it further, because she needs to be growing. She has an arc, and I really want her to grow up in front of people’s eyes. And find out who she is. It showed people that you can be really shy and quiet, and you can become a more outgoing person.”

When all is said and done, however, “Buffy” is still an American television show. And while the writers have gotten away with some pretty racy things - double entendres galore and heterosexual couplings that have generated enough celluloid heat to inflict pixel-burn on even the heartiest television screen - the Powers That Be in TV land were reticent to allow Willow and Tara to get too physical during their 8 PM time slot. The women can occupy the same bed, but it wasn’t well into the fifth season before Willow and Tara were actually allowed to kiss on screen. When they did, it was a desperate, emotional kiss borne out of the grief of having lost “Buffy”’s mother (to a natural death, in an episode titled, logically, “The Body”). Whedon reportedly had to fight to keep the kiss in the final cut of the show, and it was a powerful image, not exploitative in the slightest. “The episode itself was a tricky one ’cause the subject matter was so intense. But all in all, I think that the kiss was very well done and the subject matter demanded a bit more intimacy between the two of us, so it fit well.”

Surprisingly, there has been very little - if any - public backlash over the Wiccan same-sex lifestyle. There were some emotionally-stunted internet fan-boys with intense crushes on Willow who felt threatened, and expressed their ire on numerous message boards, but beyond that, the response has been predominantly positive. “I think more people were upset that I was taking over where Seth Green left off, than that I was portraying a lesbian,” Amber says, citing the fans’ enormous love of Green’s character, Oz, Hannigan’s previous love interest. “[However] I think that anything that is the least bit liberal, or pushes any boundaries, people are scared of it. If it scares you, don’t watch it.”

Fans responded to the single kiss so well that another was added for Benson’s next-to-last episode on the show. Only this one had passion behind it. “Seriously, when I was kissing Alyson Hannigan, after doing take after take, I almost stuck my tongue in her mouth! I’m not a lesbian, but I’m really prone to getting caught up in the moment,” she says, laughing. “Some of the directors direct, and some of the directors are more interested in the camera. Joss tends to be a little of both. He trusts you, which he does all of us. He lets you do your own thing. But if there’s something really important to him, he’ll take you aside and kind of ‘this is how I want you to do this’. He doesn’t give you line-readings. He never says, ‘You will say -‘ But he definitely has his ideas about certain [key points]. They tend to be emotional things, especially with me. He has a fondness of the relationship between Tara and Willow. He had certain elements that he really wanted tweak, so we would concentrate on making those moments really resonant. And then, there was the time that we made up and kissed, and he wanted twelve takes. Somehow, I think there was more to that. [laughs] We were doing take after take - and I think it was more than just getting the right tone of the scene.”

On May 7, 2002, the 6th-season episode “Seeing Red” aired for the first time. It was Benson’s last episode. During the course of the storyline, “Buffy” villain Warren (played by Adam Busch), in an attempt to kill the Slayer with a handgun, fired a stray shot that went through an upstairs window-killing Tara McClay just after she’d resumed her relationship with Willow. Her death sent Willow over the edge, leading the witch to-almost-destroy the world.

Fans were shocked. The legion of “Amberholics” sat stunned. Within minutes of the show’s end credits, the internet lit up with outrage.

Benson herself had known that Tara was doomed to die as far back as Season 5. But the knowledge didn’t soften the blow. “At first I felt, ‘god, maybe this is not what we need to do here’. We didn’t want to put it out there that ‘okay, here’s this lesbian couple, let’s kill one of them! Yeah, that’s what we need to do: kill lesbians!’ But then I talked to Joss, and it really wasn’t about that. He doesn’t even see them as a lesbian couple, he sees just Willow and Tara. Just as individuals. He really saw that Willow was going through something, and the only thing she really loved and really cared about, was Tara. And to have something happen to Tara was the only way that Willow would get pushed to the limit. It was the only way that she was going to hit bottom. She wasn’t in recovery as a magical addict. She was just floating, just getting by by the seat of her pants. And then this happens, it really pushed her over the edge. I knew two years ago that it was going to happen, and I felt iffy about it. So Joss and I really talked about it. This was really a violent emotional thing. This was two people who really loved each other and they really got screwed. You know? I don’t think that we put it out there that we were into killing lesbian characters. It was really about individuals and emotions. I think we did a lot more good than bad.”

Harder than the idea of dying was the act of “actually doing it”. For days, Benson had to lie on the floor of the familiar bedroom set, playing Tara’s lifeless body. For the cast and crew, it was heartbreaking for more than one reason. “It was really, really difficult,” she says. A close friend of mine passed away last year. [J.D. Peralta] was Marti Noxon’s assistant. And such a sweet, wonderful person. Our production office, where she worked, was right upstairs from the soundstage where we shoot, and to be at the same place - she’d come down to hang out on the set - and to associate her, and then here I am. Sarah and I talked about it. It made me feel uncomfortable and unhappy, it just brought back a lot of feelings. She was the first person I’d lost that I was really close to. You lose grandparents, and I was really little, and I didn’t know them. But to lose someone you saw from day to day, someone you could hang out with, someone you can go sing karaoke with. So it was really tough to be on that set and playing dead. It was really tough.”

Tara’s death marked the end of Benson’s appearances on the show. This is a rare thing in the “Buffyverse”-dead characters, by nature of the show, don’t usually stay dead. But Benson made the conscious choice not to return in any form in Season 7.

“It was intended for Tara to come back in Season 7 as an [incarnation] of The First,” she says, referring to Season 7’s “big bad”, The First Evil, which can assume the shape of any dead person, leading to confusion and betrayal among the Scooby ranks. “I didn’t want to put the fans through that. A lot of people loved Tara. I loved Tara, and I wanted to protect everyone from that-including me. I didn’t want to come back as an evil incarnation of Tara, or anything like that. I thought it was best that she died, but never left Willow’s heart.”

Benson loved her time on the show and continues to do convention appearances because of it. Though “Buffy” fans can be a rabid, strange lot, Benson swears she’s never had any negative encounters. “I’ve only had good encounters with “Buffy” fans. I went to this party that the fans put on to raise money for charity. And this one girl came up to me, and she was in tears. She came out because of Willow and Tara’s relationship. ‘I came out and now I have a girlfriend and I’m happy. And I just wanted to thank you.’ And then I started crying, and she started crying harder, and then Joss walks by and says ‘Alright, everybody’s going downstairs now.’ I’ve just been really lucky with this “Buffy” thing. It seems to have spoken to so many people. People are really moved by what happens on the show, and they like being a part of it.”

Does this make Amber feel like she has a responsibility to the fans to portray a lesbian Wiccan in a positive light? This is not meant to be a facetious question. Wicca is a legitimate religion that continues to be misunderstood and its values misconstrued to this day. And while lesbianism will always be a top sell among the raincoat crowd, it is a lifestyle that is also frowned upon and misconceived. To combine the two can open Amber up to a wave of criticism if not handled correctly. Fortunately, she has a healthy and responsible attitude towards acting of any kind.

“Anytime you put yourself in front of the camera, you have to be aware of the fact that people will emulate what you do. You must be responsible for your actions off camera as well. You are in the public eye and have to learn to set an example, not cause more problems in this world. Enough sanctimonious stuff. Sorry.”

“Buffy the Vampire Slayer” had a number of problems during its run on the WB network, and Whedon butted heads with network executives numerous times. Because of these skirmishes, “Buffy” wound up moving to the UPN network. For many other shows, this kind of move could possibly resulted in career suicide, were it not for the devoted fanbase who would follow it no matter where it went. Whedon’s fans are now content to tune into the WB on Monday nights for Angel - “Buffy”’s spin-off show starring David Boreanaz as the title vampire with a soul - and then flip to UPN the following night to watch the Slayer and her crew take on the weekly return of the living dead. Fans did take notice that Amber remains in “Guest Star” status, rather than listed during the title credits. She has assured everyone that this was her decision. “It just means that I don’t get all the fancy gifts and the big salary.” What the “Guest Star” status does give her is more freedom. Series regulars are required to be on hand for every episode. Guest stars are not. If a big project came along that was too good to refuse, Amber would have the freedom to leave the show without breaking her contract - not that she has any plans to do so. But it’s always nice to have a back door.

The “Buffy” universe has proven to be quite the valuable franchise as well. Fans snatch up the tie-in toys manufactured by Moore Action Collectibles (though there is yet to be a Tara Figure, one is sure to be in the works soon), the trade paperback adaptations and original stories, as well as the popular comic book series’ continuing the adventures of the Slayer and her Scooby Gang. An opportunity arose for Amber to contribute to the series and co-wrote (with “Buffy” novel and comics scribe Christopher Golden) the stand-alone one-shot issue: “Willow and Tara: WannaBlessedBe”. Illustrated by the wonderful Terry Moore (Strangers in Paradise), “WannaBlessedBe” is a Slayer-free, Wicca-centric story about the seduction and danger of magical power (which, in a rudimentary way) parallels a major storyline in the show. Throughout the book, Benson showed a remarkable grasp of the characters and kept the story moving at a terrific pace. As a result, “WannaBlessedBe” has proven to be a favorite among the series’ readers.

“WannaBlessedBe” was Amber’s first foray into comic book scripting. She told me that the book came about during a dinner meeting with Christopher Golden. “Chris is awesome. I was really, really lucky. Chris approached me about it, and if he hadn’t I never would have gotten involved in comics. I’m just so lucky that he thought I could do it. He’s just such a cool guy. He’s written a lot of stuff for “Buffy”, and it was his idea to do a Tara/Willow comic. I was just along for the ride.”

[Aha! But what Amber doesn’t know is that this intrepid journalist is also in touch with the aforementioned Mr. Golden! And he told me that it was Amber’s idea!]

“He’s full of it! It was his idea!” And we laugh. Amber continues, “I couldn’t have done it without Chris. He walked me through the entire process, after I moaned ‘I need help! I don’t know what I’m doing’. It’s like making a movie without the sound. I love comic books. Chris really introduced me to the realm. He did indeedy. And then everybody else started giving me books to read. I like Alan Moore’s stuff a lot. Give me the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen or Promethea and I’m a happy camper.”

So how was the give-and-take process of comic writing? Golden himself speaks very highly of the collaborative process. In fact, Amber is the second actor of the cast to work with Golden. The previous year saw a Spike and Drusilla one-shot co-written by “Spike” himself, James Marsters.

“[Chris] and I worked really well together,” says Amber, “because I think we both think in the same vein. We’re both into science fiction and scary books and mythology. Chris had some of the same ideas that I do, so he made it really easy to collaborate and make something cool. I think he did a nice job on it.”

Fun must have been had - Amber’s name appears in the writer’s line-up for the compilation comic “Joss Whedon’s ‘Tales of the Slayer’”. And so the comics writing bug sinks its teeth in further.

One thing about “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” is that the show never seems to lose its stride. The episodes continue to be engrossing and thought-provoking, showing the different levels of horror - both the supernatural and the mundane. The actors are nothing short of marvelous, and the writers continue to push the envelope to develop new ways of telling a story. This past season featured a musical episode entitled “Once More With Feeling”, in which a demon has taken over reality and everyone in the town winds up singing and dancing in full-blown musical numbers. (In this episode, Amber’s beautiful soprano is very much the star.) “Buffy” actually seems to be getting better with age. And speaking as one who has been an addict of the show, the characters are a group you very much care about. You could easily follow them into adulthood. They have much more going on in their lives than another set of “Friends” one could mention, if one were so inclined.

“I think what’s so great about science fiction is that it’s an escape,” Amber says. “So when you sit down in front of “Buffy” for an hour, you’re not in your life, you’re in crazy Sunnydale! With all the insanity, and vampires and the witches and monsters. Joss and Marti and all the writers are so good at what they do. They have great imaginations and they take us to wonderful places. [Plus] Joss is around all the time. He’s a god.”

But Amber Benson will always be the type of person who will find ways to work harder, strive to do more with her life. In 2002, she teamed up with her previous collaborator, Chris Golden, to do an animated series for the internet arm of the BBC. The series, Ghosts of Albion, tells the story of a sister and brother team who are entrusted with the duty of defending 1800’s London from demonic forces, aided by the ghosts of such historical luminaries as Lord Nelson, Queen Bodicea and Lord Byron. The series proved so successful that they are currently working on a sequel.

Chance was released to limited screenings to rave reviews. A problem with the way the film was funded has, however, prevented Benson from releasing it “officially” to DVD. Undaunted, she forged on, filming TABOO in Romania with Nick Stahl, and, most recently, EL INTERMEDIO, with Edward Furlong for the company The Asylum. She just entered into pre-production on her second feature film (for which she has held multiple contests on her site, including a “Name the Film” contest!), and is collaborating with Golden on a screenplay that they hope to shoot in Ireland in the future.

Clearly, there’s no stopping her - not that anyone would want to. And through it all, she has maintained a definite down-to-earth attitude. She has very little negative to say about any of the Hollywood insanity. In fact, for the most part, she shrugs it off.

“I think when you put out good vibes, people kind of change their attitudes and reciprocate. I just try to go in with a good attitude, and so far people have been cool back. I’m sure there have been people who are kind of shitty, but you just deal with it and move on. Life’s too short.”

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