In the City of Angels, the sun is shining brightly on Good Friday.
“It’s good to see everybody!”
“Look at that smile,” he says, gesturing to Carpenter with affection.
“We just picked up where we were last time we talked to each other.”
“Every show should be this fun,” she says.
“We were so spoiled.”
(We will get to that unmerciful killing later.)
“It all made sense on paper,” says Whedon, 55.
“But until you have a show, you don’t have a show.”
Instead, it would focus on the idea of dealing with the consequences of your actions.
“The stories will be darker and, more important, he’ll be darker.”
What they ended up with certainly had intense moments, but also plenty of humor and heart, too.
“We started talking in terms of redemption,” says Whedon.
Angel is a much darker and, in a sense, more complex character."
Plus, snatching the love interest from a successful show could anger fans.
“Buffyis a show about the experience of life,” he explains.
“And the experience of life where you go to college and your high school boyfriend sticks around?
That show is only about how terrible that year is, and then it stops.”
“He’s, like, 228 years old, right?
WhereBuffyis a high school metaphor, there’s not a lot of great metaphors for your 20s.
They’re really kind of wasted years when you just look good and young.”
Telling a postgrad narrative, the co-creators felt, allowed them to reach more people.
That’s not to say grown-upAngeldidn’t have its share of teething problems.
When the data pipe saw the script for episode two, they balked.
“If you’re gonna go that dark, you have to earn it.
Initially, when Boreanaz received the lunch invite, he panicked, thinking he was being fired.
But when the actual conversation transpired, all the actor could think about was the Irish.
“I think we started talking about the Grateful Dead,” remembers Boreanaz.
“Then he’s like, ‘Yeah, we’re thinking about spinning your character off.’
Apt, since Boreanaz’s Angel loved a good brood as much as a pint of body-temp blood.
says Greenwalt, who assured Carpenter she could.
“I commend this gentleman because he had to come into a situation,” says Boreanaz of Denisof.
“Obviously it was a great character, but he filled that missing hole.”
As is his style, Whedon invited Denisof (Chilling Adventures of Sabrina) to breakfast.
When Whedon came across Acker in the audition room, it was more of a hair-blown-back-in-awe experience.
“That was about as suave as I got.
She was just the most captivating human I’d ever seen.”
Whedon sums it up best: “It’s apocalyptic goofy noir.”
Plus, Boreanaz was a total prankster on set.
“There’s a wonderful power in genre [television],” muses Greenwalt.
“It was just great for him to have to go through even more living hell.”
At the reunion shoot, the cast discusses favorite episodes.
“We drove a car through the entrance of Paramount studios!”
Since Pylea wasn’t Earth, vampires could stand in sunlight without combusting.
recalls Carpenter fondlycould film in daylight.
“It was sweltering and we were all in our brooding, dark clothes.”
Those were the lighter days.
When Angel had to revert to his soulless demon counterpart Angelus, things grew more uncomfortable.
A dark look passes over Boreanaz’s own human brow as he casts his mind back to the experience.
Still, from behind the camera, Whedon was a fan of the Angelus turns.
“It’s always fun to have an electric character,” he says.
“And there was enough time for us to take it where we thought it should go.”
Once again, Whedon invited a cast member to eat with him.
This time, it was Acker.
Laughs Whedon, “I took my moment, I’m not going to lie.”
Acker later told Whedon it was the second part of the sentence that terrified her more.
While Fred lived on in a certain respect, by the series finale, Wesley’s fate was sealed.
“I still get feelings about that scene,” says Denisof.
“It was saying goodbye to a lot of things all at once.
I can’t say it didn’t.”
As for the fate of the rest of the Angel Investigations team?
When the series finale aired in May 2004, audiences were split on the seemingly open ending.
Let’s go to work.”
Whedon knows what you’re thinking, but doesn’t agree.
“That ain’t a cliff,” he says.
The fight is for always.”
And that’s the series' true message: The pursuit is never-ending.
It certainly was for Boreanaz.
“I’m so proud of what we all accomplished,” he says.
