Marti Noxon Interview

Textured and rich, wicked and ironic (a vampire killer named… you know) BUFFY has taken its place, in the last year or so, among the big three in genre TV. As loyal and huge as certain fan bases are, BUFFY's audience has grown in size and passion enough that it's existence now has to be considered in discussions as the best show in the genre of all time.

Further proof for the un-convinced: ANGEL, the BUFFY spin-off series starting October 4, following David Boreanaz's mythic, murky Angel, vampire with a heart of gold, non-beating of course. With ANGEL, the story of Buffy's greatest love, her dark mirror, a brooding, romantic vampire on the same mission of slaying evil but much creepier than her's, the BUFFY universe matures in a way not even THE X-FILES has accomplished (or even attempted).

It was in this climate, as the premiere of ANGEL grew closer, and fan speculation and eagerness peaked, EON magazine sat down with Marti Noxon, co-producer on BUFFY and consulting producer on ANGEL, to talk about the slayerverse created by Joss Whedon, the future of the twin shows, and what these stories really are underneath all the coolness.

"I think David Boreanaz is such an incredible star," Noxon says, recounting one reason for her eagerness for an ANGEL show. "I really think he has something very few leading men have anymore, which is a real kind of manly, grown up quality. There are a lot of little boys on TV right now. David's got a little bit of George Clooney. He's got a real presence. The character is so fascinating. It was just too tempting."

While many of the same team will be dividing their time between BUFFY and ANGEL this year (including creator Joss Whedon and executive producer and ANGEL co-creator David Greenwalt) Noxon is confident that neither show will suffer creatively despite the added workload for everyone involved. "I think all of the sane things you would consider like we already have so little free-time, we already work so hard," Noxon recalls. "Would BUFFY suffer? Would ANGEL be all it could be since our attentions were somewhat divided? The three of us expend a tremendous amount of energy on BUFFY. Were all of those energies going to be dissipated? We spent a lot of time evaluating whether we thought we could do that. To be honest, though, if we'd spent too much time thinking about it, we probably never would have [made ANGEL]. It's sort of like any large life decision. You just have to do it and see what happens."

But with those fears soon fading in the face of possible ANGEL story arcs and a more adult expansion of the BUFFYverse, Noxon's mind went into overdrive.

"Since the show would be on later in the evening, that he would be in a more grown-up world," Noxon says. "The first things that springs to mind are that the situations could be a little more sophisticated -- more adult. You could take the same type of treatment we give stuff on BUFFY, where you look for a common experience and try to find some kind of genre thing as a metaphor that people can relate to. You can take that same kind of formula and transfer it to ANGEL. It just opened up a whole wider range of experiences. I just find the whole idea of Angel on his own so compelling. He's got such a history and his circumstances are so unique, I was really intrigued with the notion of him encountering people in the big city and trying to help them. The vampire lore is so rich. I like the idea of more grown-up situations. I like to put people in chains… I'm often pushing the envelope, Joss and I in particular, when we get together and break stories and he and I push the envelope content-wise with sexuality -- this was an opportunity to go a little further."

Chalk one up for the bondage fans. But what will the loss of Angel mean for the passionate fans of BUFFY. From the first episode, the twisted, sharp, gothic love affair between slayer Buffy Summers and Angelus, a vampire clawing his way back from soulless evil has been a keystone for the series. "Taking Angel away from Buffy," Noxon considers. "I mean, he was a big, important part of the BUFFY show. What would we lose if that romance shifted and changed? Ultimately I think we all felt that romance had kind of played out all the possibilities and we were getting dangerously close to MOONLIGHTING after Dave and Mattie got together. Where are you going to go from here? In a way, it kind of added a fresh dimension, gave BUFFY new opportunities. We worried about keeping the integrity of BUFFY while at the same time making sure there was a show on ANGEL and it wasn't just a good idea [in theory]."

Far from worrying about Buffy's loss, Noxon sees ANGEL as an opportunity for the rebirth of BUFFY.

"We've seen this season's first episode – it has the freshness and excitement of the first episode of BUFFY ever" she enthuses. "It's a whole new world. They've grown up a little. They're in a whole new environment. The whole show is reinvigorated by that, and I think at a good time because a lot of shows in their fourth and fifth season, you run out of a lot of possibilities. High school, as fun as it is, we were racking our brains about other scenes and other high school metaphors. We're just taking the metaphor to the halls of higher education."

High hopes aside, Noxon is keyed to the fact it might be hard to bring a new romantic interest into Buffy's life.

"It's a tough sell," she admits. "The actor himself knows he's stepping into some pretty big shoes. But he's enormously fat, so I think that'll help. He's a huge, huge 900 pound man. He's 18 feet tall. I think he'll do all right."

Yes, kids, she's joking. What does she really think?

"We probably will not be able to duplicate what we had," she admits. "I think the hardest thing to do is what Joss is trying to do, which is not try to recreate that. We're just trying to approach the whole romance issue with Buffy from a fresh angle and hope that it's fun and exciting for people to see her in a different kind of relationship. Are there surprises built into that that when Joss told me about them got me really excited? Yeah. I can say with assurance people will be intrigued."

While that may be true, what's more intriguing is the possibility of seeing an entire running series centered on BUFFY's most conflicted character. "He has insight into the dark place," she says of Angel. "I mean, he's been there. We certainly played with that a lot on BUFFY but we're going to hit that a lot more in this show. It is the fact this guy has been to the dark side and back that makes him so valuable as a fighter, a do-gooder. He understands that, how those minds work. He understands his own dark impulses. He also understands what goes bump in the night better than anyone else because he used to be the thing that did go bump in the night. Not to be too high faulting, but when we talked about metaphors, we talked about a recovered alcoholic. Someone who's really lived in the darkest night of their soul and then come back and see how they live and how that can inform their life in a positive way."

That informing will be aided by Angel's own prophetic sidekick, Doyle (Glenn Quinn), who works in ways he's not even sure about to help the vampire redeem his dark sins.

"The Doyle character receives visions," Noxon reveals. "He's sort of a messenger in a way because he can see sometimes. Much like Buffy had dreams that were premonitions, Doyle has these visions of people who are in need or in trouble. There are a lot of allusions to The Powers That Be -- that maybe they play a greater scheme in all of this. That was kind of alluded to last year when Angel was spared. Viewers of BUFFY will recognize we're hitting the same stuff when we continue to expand on the idea that both Buffy and Angel are part of a bigger war against evil. They're kind of frontline warriors. We haven't made any radical changes to Angel's mythology. The only thing we're expanding on that people probably suspected is that he's integral to whatever this battle against evil is. He's an unusually important player. There'll be some suggestion that he may someday be able to be like regular men if he fulfills his destiny. Angel has no idea of how that would work."

What else Angel has no idea about, and might hold some interest for those still hoping an Angel/Buffy reunion, is the new, mysterious woman in his life. "I think really the truth about the whole Angel romantic arc, and this is true on BUFFY too, is that they're gone but not forgotten," she says. "That informs the ANGEL show as much as the BUFFY show. Anything that happens romantically will build slowly. The character we have on ANGEL will be a slow build. It will be a full relationship with other components, not just romance. But you know, Angel is more limited in that area than Buffy, if you know what I mean. Plus we're not completely done in that area as far as Buffy and Angel are concerned. It hasn't all been resolved. There will be some major sweeps action. It's pretty early in the season. It's an episode eight crossover. There's still a lot of leftover baggage they've got to deal with.

But for those afraid the loss of familiar romantic possibilities for our two heroes bodes ill for the future of the vampire franchise, Noxon and company still keep in mind the key elements of BUFFY.