Amber Benson

It was good thing I never watched a lot of Buffy the Vampire Slayer otherwise I might have been nervous talking to someone as hot as Amber Benson. It was great getting to talk to Benson because most young actresses that would be perfect SG interviewees don’t want to talk to SuicideGirls on account of the women in the nude *cough* Pauley Perrette *cough*. But after checking out the site Benson was onboard.

Benson first came to fame as Tara Maclay on the hit series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. She is one of those cool renaissance types who has many projects in the pipeline such as an independent film she’s written and directed called Lovers, Liars and Lunatics, a new comic book called Shadowplay from IDW Publishing and of course expanding the brand known as Ghosts of Albion.

Benson co-created the Ghosts of Albion with writer Christopher Golden as a cartoon series for the BBC and it has spawned a radio show and now the first novel, Ghosts of Albion: Accursed has just been released.

Ghosts of Albion: Accursed is set in the mid-1800’s in England. Brother and sister William and Tamara Swift’s grandfather dies making them the Protectors of Albion, the mystical defenders of the soul of England. But the new sorcerers also inherit unique allies in their battle against the dark forces

Buy Ghosts of Albion: Accursed

Daniel Robert Epstein: What’s going on?

Amber Benson: Not too much, I had a little run in with my neighbors last night. They were having a party or until one in the morning.

DRE: Oh, so you don’t party anymore?

Amber: No, just not their party.

DRE: Where do you live?

Amber: I’m in the valley in Los Angeles.

DRE: That’s cool.

What are you working on today?

Amber: I was hoping to do some writing because I’ve been very bad with the slacking.

DRE: [laughs] So you’re working on the second Ghosts book?

Amber: Yeah, we’re just finishing up the second book for Random House right now. We’re contracted for the first two and then we go from there to see if they want to pick us up for a whole series.

DRE: You must be really excited that the first book’s out.

Amber: Yeah and it’s doing pretty well. It’s number 5000 on Amazon or something, which doesn’t sound that great but it is in comparison to the fact that some things are in the triple and sextuple digits. There’s a very select audience for science fiction type of stuff.

DRE: How did you hook up with Christopher Golden?

Amber: The girl that runs a website dedicated to me also runs Chris’s website. She emailed me and said, “I’m friends with Chris Golden and he writes these books and he’s written some Buffy stuff and he would love to talk to you about possibly collaborating.” So I met with Chris and he’s just lovely. I totally thought it would be a lot of fun and he was really cool and we wrote three comic books for Dark Horse together.

DRE: What were those about?

Amber: It was about the characters Tara and Willow from Buffy. It turned out really well.

DRE: I think that’s cool that you wrote comic books about your character. I interviewed Rebecca Romijn and I asked her if she had any ideas for Mystique comic books since she played Mystique in the X-Men movies and she said no.

Amber: [laughs] It was funny because I found that writing my character was much harder than writing the other characters. You feel like it’s you and it makes you really careful that you don’t look like an ass. People might go “Oh God look what she’s done to that.” It makes you paranoid.

DRE: When did you find out that you had this talent for writing fantasy type stuff?

Amber: I didn’t know that I could write it actually. I’m a big reader; I’ll read anything even the back of the cereal box. I’ve always loved science fiction so when Chris and I started writing the comic books together he said “We could do other things together.” Then the BBC approached him and I about doing an animated show so we created this two episode animated program for BBCI which is part of the online presence.

DRE: That’s so cool.

Amber: Yeah, I’m really proud of it. We had a really good time doing that. I got to direct the first one, which was really fun. I’ve never directed before. Cosgrove Hall, the animation company that did Danger Mouse, did the flash animation.

DRE: That’s awesome. I just got the Danger Mouse DVD [laughs].

Amber: It looks beautiful. They didn’t end up doing the second episode but that was also beautiful, just a different style. Then we made a deal with Random House to write a novelization.

DRE: You and Chris work together through the phone and email I guess.

Amber: Yeah we do. It’s weird. We actually write back and forth on the computer so it is kind of creepy.

DRE: Do you talk through instant messenger too?

Amber: No, we talk on the phone periodically and we basically take a chapter or two at a time. I’ll do one or two and then he’ll do one or two and we’ll go back and forth until we’ve done 18 to 21 chapters.

DRE: How do the two of you connect?

Amber: Chris and I are both geeks. I can say that with love and affection for both of us. So we have the same kind of interests and since we have the same sensibility it makes things really easy. A lot of times you can tell when writers are writing together but with Chris and I, because we spent so much time reading the same kind of thing and liking the same kind of programs and movies, we decided on a particular voice and we’ve both written in that voice.

DRE: How did you find new inspiration expanding the world in the book?

Amber: Originally the BBC approached Chris and I about writing something like Buffy crossed with Jane Austen. But I knew people would spot that right away. Then Chris says “Maybe we should try something different.” Then he gave them a mini rundown and then we created all the characters of the universe. We figured why not brothers and sisters with different magical powers in a Victorian setting.

DRE: Do you ever write the sisters and Chris writes the brothers?

Amber: No, we do all the different characters. There’s not one in particular that we both like. I find that I love them all. It is creating this world and you don’t need any friends because you’ve created all your friends on your computer desktop. So I get in there and I love being all of them. I don’t feel like I’m writing it, I like to feel that we all meet in a collective consciousness. Maybe we’re all getting it from somewhere else. I’ve got a muse somewhere. She’s very prolific [laughs].

DRE: I saw that you had written and directed a couple of movies.

Amber: Yeah, I wrote and directed two films, I’m just finishing post production on the last one called Lovers, Liars and Lunatics. I’m hoping to go to festivals with it.

DRE: Is it a fantasy film?

Amber: No it’s a comedy. I love screwball comedies and they don’t really make them anymore. So I decided I’d meld dark comedy with screwball comedy and see what happened. People would fall in love with Preston Sturges again.

DRE: [laughs] Is fantasy something you want to keep to the one medium or do you have ideas for turning Ghosts into something bigger?

Amber: I don’t particularly want to be stuck in fantasy. I don’t want to limit myself to the point where that’s all I’m known for writing. I’d like to be able to do lots of different things. But with Ghosts we’re hoping eventually that we’ll be able to do an animated TV series.

DRE: Would you do a voice?

Amber: No, probably not. I’ve come to the conclusion that as much as I’ve liked being in stuff that I’ve worked on. I think I’d rather watch it come to life.

DRE: I’ve spoken to Shaun Cassidy a couple of times in the past year. He was a big teen idol in the 70’s and now he’s a big time TV creator. I asked him if he had any desire to act and he said “No”. Then I asked him if he ever wanted to perform live again and he said “I only want to play live music at home in my living room.” So do you think you’re coming to the point where acting may be something that you don’t want to do anymore?

Amber: I’m one of these people that has to have 15 things going at once or I’m bored. I love acting because I can go work for other people as an actor and then when there’s down time I take my computer and I do my work while I’m at work. So I’m making money while I’m making money.

DRE: How did Joss Whedon influence you on this?

Amber: Chris and I both of us love Joss’ sense of humor. He is very tongue in cheek and very pop culture literate. There are so many levels to it. The beauty of it was that you can take Buffy as this little blonde chick kicking vampire butt or you could say this he was making commentary, not just writing a TV show. When we used the idea of Willow and Tara getting magic together we were really talking about them falling in love with each other. So people could take it as them doing magic together or they could think that it was symbolic of their lesbian relationship. So we wanted to imbue Ghosts with a little bit of that. I always told Joss that I didn’t want to sleep with him, I wanted to be him. I didn’t ever want to be a groupie. I wanted to be the guys that are making things happen. If I could have been born a guy my life would have been so much easier.

DRE: All the stuff you’re into is very guy-ish.

Amber: Yeah but there are a lot of women now that have gotten into it. It is not because women aren’t interested in fantasy and stuff but that women haven’t been given the opportunities that men have. Now that things are changing, women are saying, “Hey I like comic books, I like fantasy books.”

DRE: You’re absolutely right but at the same time it’s going to take an extremely long time to change, at least in America. I always think its funny when I go into a Barnes & Noble and see all the young teenage girls ripping Manga off the shelves.

How did you get financing for the movie?

Amber: I raised the money selling action figures of my character from Buffy which was my mom’s idea.

DRE: Oh that’s great.

Amber: Yeah, they did a limited run of 2000 of these particular variants of the Tara doll for my production company. My mom suggested we buy a bunch of these dolls and then sell them to raise the money.

DRE: So was directing the movie the hardest thing you ever did?

Amber: In some ways yeah. In other ways, there have been other things that have been more difficult. I had never written prose before. So to write that was really difficult. It was just a different way of thinking. You have to describe the color of the carpet sometimes in a scene and I just have always been much more of a minimalist. I like ideas but I’m not so much into details. I had to learn how to be more detail-oriented.

DRE: I definitely want to talk to you about SuicideGirls because normally young actresses don’t want to talk to someone from SuicideGirls.

Amber: Why?

DRE: Because there are naked girls on the site.

Amber: What’s so bad about naked girls? They’re pretty.

DRE: What was your first impression when you looked at the site?

Amber: The idea of beauty is so diverse and I love turning on TV and seeing girls that aren’t just Barbie dolls. So to click on SuicideGirls and see that these girls are tattooed or pierced and beautiful is really neat. I like to live outside the beauty box.

DRE: Have you ever seen any Tara tattoos?

Amber: No, that would freak me out. To see your own face staring back at you from la leg or an elbow or something would just be odd.

DRE: Do you have any tattoos?

Amber: No, my sister is the tattoo person in our family. I’m not a big needle person.

DRE: Yeah, I know what you mean.

Amber: I get a little freaky but my sister has four tattoos. She’s amazing. She’s a painter and a photographer. She does everything. She has a baby’s head on her leg. She has a pink elephant named Fred on her arm that she uses in a lot of her art.

DRE: Do people always think that you’re a lesbian because of your role on Buffy?

Amber: I date men and I never dated women. But I actually had a girl propose to me at a signing. She came with a ring and everything. I looked at her and said, “God she’s really cute, I wish I did like girls because this would be way too easy. I could get laid every night of the week if I liked ladies.” I have some of the most beautiful women come up to me and say “I’m a fan of your show, Buffy, and I’m a lesbian.” If I ever quit men I’m going to be a lucky girl.

DRE: What’s next?

Amber: We’re finishing the film, finishing the second book for Random House. I’m trying to figure out what I want to do next. I just got back from Romania where I was working on a film for the Sci-Fi Channel. I also did another little film in North Carolina. I’m just trying to keep busy.