Angel

Cosmic Girl Angel’s fifth season has brought some interesting changes for all of its charcters - including the formerly timid scientist, Fred. The show’s new leading lady, AMY ACKER, gives Dreamwatch an insight into what the future might hold for her. Words : Abbie Bernstain

"It feels like we’re at a new school or something !" quips Angel star Amy Acker, as she discusses working on the show’s radically re-tooled fifth season.

"We don’t know the new `class’ - the cast is all different, the set’s all different and the storyline could be anything ! I’m sure it’s a big secret, but I know each episode is it’s own show (this season), instead of being part of the five-show arcs that we would do in the past.

"It seems almost like having a new job, but - it’s still the same,’ she laughs. "Getting rid of the hotel will be a nice change."

Angel’s fifth season sees Fred and the rest of the Angel Investigations crew taking the reins of the formidable, - and formidably evil - Los Angels branch of law firm Wolfram & Hart, where Acker’s character will now be heading Wolfram & Hart’s research and development department. The show’s new format was established in the fourth season finale. Home.

"We knew there was going to be a surprise at the end of the season," Acker recalls, "but I don’t remember when it was that we found out what was happening, I thought the last episode was really fun."

While Acker is enjoying working with new co-stars James Marsters (Spike) and Mercedes McNab (harmony) on Angel’s fifth season, she admits that she was disappointed by the departures of Charisma Carpenter (Cordelia) and Vincent Kartheiser (Connor) at the end of the show’s fourth year.

"I’ll miss Charisma a lot," Acker says. "I hope that she ends up doing a couple of episodes at least. I know they really want her to, and I want her to.

"I know that everyone really liked having Vincent there especially, because he was such a hard worker and did so much. He would make scenes work that I would read and think. `how in the world will he ever do this ?’ He’s going to be missed a lot, but I think he knew (Connor would be written out) before they had even told him - he was like, `Well, I feel that my storyline’s going in a circle.’"

Reflecting on the show’s previous year. Acker reports that she felt that season four just kept getting better as it progressed. "I really enjoyed the episodes at the end, especially Shiny happy People and Magic Bullet. I was off on my own and I went to the bookstore and was fighting against Jasmine, and I got to rescue Angel. We were fighting together for a while. That felt like a really big stepping stone for Fred, because it was the first time I got to fight."

Fred-Time Stories

Besides giving Fred her first major action sequence, season four also was her increasingly torn between Gunn (J. August Richards) and Wesley (Alexis Denisof). Does Acker know who Fred’s next love interest will be ?

"I’ve heard rumours about Jonathan (Woodward)" she confides, referring to the actor who was introduced in the season four finale as Fred’s new assistant, Know. "He was pretty fun to do scenes with, so that would be great. I also heard about the love triangle coming back - and it’s never bad to be sought after by two guys !"

As for where Fred may be heading this year. Amy Acker feels that events in SuperSymmetry - the fourth season episode in which Fred tried to kill her former college mentor when he turned out to be responsible for sending her to the hell dimension where Angel and company first met her - may offer a key clue to her character’s future.

"What happened with the professor early on in last season almost makes me think that if anyone in the company is going to become corrupt, she could be the one to do it," she muses. "She has all this power and all of this knowledge. I know having all the stuff at the team’s fingertips and to experiment with is going to change a lot of people, so I’m curious to see how they decide it will change Fred.