Angel

Whedon & Hart

Okey, so we kinda know the general set-up for Angel Season Five, but we don’t yet know all of the finer details. One thing we do know, however, is that Buffy/Angel creator Joss Whedon is set to become heavily involved in the show’s goings-on. Joss took time out to chat to Angel Magazine and reveal a few more secrets....

At the WB network’s semi-annual party for journalists and the cast and creative staff of its various series at Hollywood’s Whit Lotus restaurant in July, Joss Whedon poses for photos with the Angel cast, then gives us the latest on continuing Angel, wrapping up Buffy and trying to get Firefly airborne again...

Angel Magazine : How would Season four of Angel have ended if it hadn’t been picked up for this season ? Joss Whedon, : Oh, I’d’ve killed everybody or something ?(laughs) You know me.

Would Buffy’s ending have been different if Angel did not continue ? Angel would have ended differently if I had known it was not going to be picked up, but Buffy was on its own course.

Will Angel Season Five have more stand-alone episodes ? Last season was basically a 22-hour episode.

We started Angel saying, "We do stand-alones." And then (we) decided that wasn’t what we were really interested in. But now we have such a big cast that we can do stand-alone episodes, but still have character resonance in them.

It’s kind of learning a new discipline for me. I’m with the writers and we sort of scratch our heads and go, ’Why is it we’ve never done this ?’

Obviously, every episode’s supposed to matter on its own. On Buffy, up until the last season, we kept [making episodes as] a self-contained show with a bigger arc. On Angel, we didn’t do that, and so we’d have to figure out, okay, how do you make it matter every week ? It’s hard but I’m having fun. Every episode, you have to get into other people’s lives. And the thing I’ve learned is, they have to affect your life as much as you affect theirs. There’s enough character resonance for the people who know the show really well that, if Wesley pines after Fred, we’ll know what that means - but at the same time, we’ll have to build in some kind of resolution about some place he comes to in every episode, or some place she comes to. It’s the same kind of storytelling it ahs always been . It has to come from emotion. We’re doing an episode about a werewolf, and it’s very easy to say. ’This could be cool, and this could be cool,’ but what does it feel like ? Why does Angel care ? It’s the same question we asked on Buffy for seven years : what’s the Buffy of it ? (Now) what’s the Angel of it ? How does this affect him emotionally, or his crew ? That’s how you get it to be something (different).

Will there be a season arc ? Oh, absolutely. There’s relationships, there’s the question of what the hell [Angel and friends] are doing at Wolfram & Hart and what Wolfram & Hart are doing to them. There’s going to be a seasonal arc the way there has always been. The difference is that every episode should be self-contained enough for anybody to walk in and watch who’s never seen it before. Last year, as much as I like to say it was, it wasn’t.

[Having them at Wolfram & Hart] makes our lives more interesting, because they’re in a place of constant conflict. It makes their lives more interesting for the same reason. It’s a double-edged sword. Now we can go anywhere, their cases come from anywhere, the stories don’t all have to be generated internally. At the same time, a lot of them will come out of Wolfram & Hart. While they’re busy trying to help the helpless, their client list are the people who are destroying them. So there’s always stories to be generated from all corners of LA and from within the firm.

Will doing more stand-alone episodes lighten the tone this year ? (Laughs) I don’t think the tone could be any more darker than it was last year. There was a really, really long stretch they went through where it was pretty hardcore. I don’t think it was ever boring - I mean, other people may disagree, but at the same time, we want to get that sort of thing that we had in the early years of Buffy - incredible tragedy, incredible romance, incredible comedy. You want all three in every episode, but we’ll definitely concentrate on one or the other. It’s that ability to ping-pong back and forth. It won’t be the end ot the world every week. The theme is, how much good can we do, compromising with evil in the world ? Are we going to become corrupted ? We’re going mainstream, is basically what it’s about. Do we become corrupted or do we bring something good into the street ? Or is it both ? The question is, why did Wolfram & Hart really do this ? Is it because they’re convinced tat we’ll just fall, that we’ll see how hard it is and fail, or is there some other ulterior motive ?

And that won’t guide every episode, the way it guided last year. It’s just an overarching question in the back of our minds that will come up if we need it to.

Are you and the writing team drawing on any frustration about working in Hollywood as inspiration for Angel and Company working with Wolfram & Hart ? (Mock-innocence) I’m sure I don’t know. (laughs) I’ve been privileged to work with a lot of pretty good people, and to make this show that we love - a couple of shows that we love - without any interference, we probably deal with less evil than almost any showrunners around. Having said that, oh,yeah.

Are you calling on Alien Resurrection memories ? No, no, no. The show would be a lot darker if I did that (laughs). No, you do see it in Hollywood and you do spend a lot of time talking about the message and, ’Am I doing good or am I just deluding ? Am I making a difference ? Once you get the, ’Am I making a living ? ’ question over with, the next one is, ’Am I making a difference ? ’ So I think every artist in television could draw on it.

Are the Angel characters still living at The Hyperion Hotel in season five ? No. We will indicate that they have been given swanky new apartments, which we will begin to see as we can afford to build them. We do have new sets in the budget. We’re still shooting at Paramount. The hotel set is being dismantled and the big main set is now going to be the 25th floor of Wolfram & Hart, which has a bunch of offices and just a lot more different spaces to do things in.

The (hotel) lobby was beautiful, but eventually, it was a giant room. All of our people would be standing around talking, and our writers would just want to kill themselves, trying to figure out a good way to do that. (This year) because there’s so much going on, we don’t have to have everybody in (the same) room, or justify why they’re not. You don’t have to have everything in one room, because we actually have three or four. So it’s got a big, open feel.

Does the amulet that Angel gave to Buffy figure in Spike’s return ? What do you think ? The amulet will figure in the return of Spike, because I couldn’t think of anything better .... (joking) I mean, because we had it planned all along.

How will Spike fit in ? I can’t really give you much of a hint except that ’badly’ would be the word, because he sticks out like a sore thumb, which is exactly what we always hire (James Marsters) to do. He appears at the end of the first episode. The second episode deals with what the hell he’s doing there. In the old version of the show, we might have stretched out that question for a lot of episodes. In the new version of the show, by the end of that (episode), you’ll know why he’s there and you’ll know more importantly what part he plays on the show, what his role is in the ensemble. So that doesn’t mean all his problems will be solved, it just means you’ll understand what they are and where he’s heading, to an extent. I see him not fitting in. That’s exactly what they need right now, because although they all have their separate agendas to an extent, they’re a team. When you’re a team, you need somebody to come in there and f**** up the team (laughs).

What’s happening with Gunn after his visit to the White Room ? He’s going to go through some interesting changes. And again, we’ll find out early on what it is, but not exactly what it means. But yeah, Gunn is somebody that we’ve felt is a little under-utilized. J [August Richards] is an amazing actor and we thought Wolfram & Hart would be the perfect venue to find a new side of him, so we’re shaking it up.

What prompted the decision to discontinue Cordelia as a regular character on Angel ? You know, it’s been a lot of years. Same thing, it’s like with Buffy, it had been seven years, it was just sort of time to move on. We wrapped up the character and it’s kind of a new paradigm and we just wanted to shake it up some. Actually [Cordelia] had basically been through what Buffy went through in the movie. That journey was over, at this point. It’s not over completely, obviously, because she’s in a coma, and we do want to have her back, but it felt like I was starting to have too many [regular characters] to service. I felt like her story had resonated and I really want to do more episodes with her. I know exactly what I want to do whenever she’s available, obviously that’s what we want, depending on [Charisma Carpenter’s schedule], but for 22 [episodes], it just didn’t feel right.

Will Lilah be back ? Lilah is somebody that again, we may see, but that arc also we feel like we played out. There is a new person at Wolfram & Hart that they’re going to be dealing with [Eve, played by Sarah Thompson - Ed], and she just might be a little bit sexy ! (laughs). I must admit, I had Morena Baccarin [from Firefly] in mind for a while, but because she’s doing [another] show, she can’t. She really is special.

Lilah had a particular purpose, which was really about Weslay, and (Eve) has a different purpose. She’s a little more complex - although Lilah had lovely complexes.

(Stephanie Romanov) is on the list of people I love, but depending on schedules and storylines and whether we can afford her, we may see her. I believe the character has kind of finished her arc. At the same time, we all love working with Stephanie, so if something came up, we’d jump.

Have you talked to Sarah Michelle Gellar about the possibility of ther making guest appearances ?Yes, I have. And so has David (Boreanaz). She’s always been very open to the idea - she’s probably the busiest of all, but she’s talked to (WB entertainment president) Jordan (Levin) about it. She’s someone who’s said from the start, ’If I have the time, if the schedule is there, we’ll do it, count me in.’ We’re hoping she’s available, oh sweeps time. But we can’t control that - neither can she.

Are there any recurring characters you know for sure will be back ? Harmony (Mercedes McNab). And Jonathan Woodward is coming back (as Fred’s assistant Know). Spike and Harmony do have a history, but that doesn’t mean that they’ll necessarily hook up, it just means that we love Mercedes and we want to see more of her.

Will the other characters remember Connor ? Vincent [Kartheiser] is somebody else that we’d like to do some episodes with next year. We’re not going to deal with the idea of nobody remembering Connor a lot, because there’s already so much back-story. Believe me, I know, because I’m working on the first episode right now, and it’s like, ’So, here we are at W & H, the evil law firm that we, the good guys, have recently...’

Does doing stand-alone episodes give you more freedom on when you write particular characters in ? It does, actually. It really pumps things up, because then you know exactly what the episode’s about - that person ! When you’re writing it, you know exactly where you need to be. It’s like, gear it around them. For example, like the Cordelia thing, what I want to do just fits in really well in a few episodes. The perspective is stronger, it’s more potent, particularly since [Cordelia] doesn’t know what they’ve done.

Who from the Buffy writing staff is coming onto Angel ? [David Fury and Drew Goddard] are the only ones, and I was lucky to be able to afford as many as I did. It was a real struggle to get my staff together. It’s a dream staff. I’ve got Ben Edlund from Firefly. I’ve got both of them from Buffy and Angel staff that was already in place, so it’s a powerhouse bunch of guys. Jeff Bell did a great job last year, so he is still the showrunner, day to day. And obviously, he’s got David Fury flanking him who’s also at about the same level, and then, every writer produces - they go on set, they watch their episode, they work with the directors.

Has life gotten any easier since you’re working on only one series ? I’m trying to get a (theatrical) movie made of (Firefly), with the same cast, and I will know in a month or two if that’s actually gonna happen. So I haven’t been idle, but it does feel a little easier. I complain a lot because I’ve been working since the day Buffy stopped, and I really should have taken a vacation, but I don’t know how.

But some of the pressure is off. I’m very anxious to make Angel everything it could be. I know we’re going to make our 100th episode, it really feels good, so in a way, that’s a kind of pressure that’s off, even though I want the show to go beyond Year Five, and I don’t have to make Buffy any more - that was really hard !

How do you feel about the New Official Angel Magazine in addition to Buffy Magazine ? Excellent. One more and I’ll have three !

Amy Acker, who’s sitting nearby : What about a magazine called Joss ?

Joss : Just Joss !