Angel

Julie Benz is one half of a rare couple in Hollywood: both she and her husband have their own action figures. “And don’t forget the trading cards,” Benz says with a laugh.

Fans know her as the demented Darla from the cult hit programs Angel and Buffy The Vampire Slayer, where she played a former prostitute turned vampire with a thirst for blood and mayhem. Benz also had a memorable role on Roswell.

Her hubby, on the other hand, is less easily recognized by his appearance. One shrill shriek from John Kassir into the microphone however, and you know in a heartbeat that he’s the infamous Crypt Keeper from Tales from the Crypt.

It may seem like a match in Rue Morgue heaven, but the couple got together long before their horrific on-screen ventures.

“It’s funny, isn’t it?” she asks as she muses over the match that, on screen anyway, seems to have been made in Hell. “Not many fans are aware of the connection.”

Benz is knee deep in adoring fans while paying a visit to the Toronto Comic Expo at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. Along with fellow Angel and Buffy alumni, Robia LaMorte and Mercedes McNab, Benz seems thrilled to continue her character’s legacy by signing a few autographs.

“Heck, I was surprised when they brought me back [in Angel]. When you puffed, you puffed,” she says, referring to her dusty death as a vampire. “That’s the technical term for it, you know. Puffing.”

Benz was filming episodes of Roswell when David Boreanaz (Angel himself), rushed over to tell her they were bringing her onto the show.

“He just kept hugging me and saying ‘Benz, we’re bringing you back!’ I was very surprised,” Benz says. “I didn’t believe it until I got the call from Joss [Whedon].”

From that meeting onward, the legacy of Darla grew to include a fanatic following both online and in real life. Fans were eager to find out about what her role on the show would be, which co-stars she’d interact with, and especially what her romantic on-screen antics would entail.

“There was a scene when we made Drusilla (Juliette Landau) into a vampire and David and I are going at it on top of her,” Benz says laughing. “Poor Juliette. She did her freak out thing while we were on top of her.”

There was one star she didn’t get the chance to put the moves on however: the Angel puppet from the show’s final season.

“I’d do a love scene with that puppet. Even David loved that puppet,” she says.

Benz originally auditioned for the role of Buffy, but lost out to Sarah Michelle Gellar and was just happy that a character originally intended to die in the pilot managed to survive in a meaningful and interesting way for so long.

“Thank god they reshot the pilot,” Benz says. “Joss came to me and said they weren’t going to kill me, just burn my face. The next week it was the same kind of thing. And it kept going on and on that way. I was just happy to keep getting the work!”

Getting into the full facial vampire makeup was another hurdle the actress had to endure. Right from the get-go, both Benz and Boreanaz had trouble making eye contact without laughing.

“The crew would hate us. There would be farting, laughing, and of course it’d be during the emotional scenes.”

With Angel having been cancelled more than a year ago, it seems as though the character of Darla, who died twice more (once as a human, another as a vampire) has finally been laid to rest.

“I miss Darla,” Benz says. “She was a real gift for me to play. To experience her at a young age makes me choosy now. I think it tainted me a little as an actor.”

While Benz seems prepared to let the character rest, rumours persist from hopeful corners of fandom of a potential Angel comeback, or more likely, a Spike spin-off/telefilm with actor James Marsters reprising his vampire character from the shows.

“I know absolutely nothing about that,” Benz says, perhaps a little too automatically. “There’s been talk, but I’ll believe it when I see it. Joss will tell me when it’s time.”

Julie Benz interview By Brian Wilkinson

Note: This is an unpublished interview done with Julie Benz at the Canadian National Exposition from August, 2004.