Post by Trinity on Mar 10, 2022 4:19:23 GMT -5
www.tvinsider.com/1035088/buffy-the-vampire-slayer-best-episodes-cast-favorites/
The 25th anniversary of Buffy the Vampire Slayer comes at a difficult time for the show’s fandom. Last year, three Buffy stars—Charisma Carpenter (Cordelia Chase), Michelle Trachtenberg (Dawn Summers), and Amber Benson (Tara Maclay)—spoke out about creator Joss Whedon’s behavior and the toxic environment he allegedly enabled on set.
But to dismiss Buffy the Vampire Slayer wholesale because of the actions of its creator would be a disservice to all the other talents who were in front of and behind the cameras of the WB-turned-UPN teen drama, one of the 2000s-era TV shows that heralded this current golden age of television.
So we’re marking Buffy’s 25th anniversary on March 10 by rounding up the episodes the cast have hailed as personal favorites.
Season 3, Episode 20: “The Prom”
Sarah Michelle Gellar: “I just love that whole story, and I thought it just encapsulated the show so well. It was beautiful and heartbreaking.”
Season 4, Episode 10: “Hush”
Sarah Michelle Gellar: “I think it’s not just the scariest episode we’ve ever done but the challenge to do a silent episode—I thought it would be easy, but it was way harder.”
Season 5, Episode 16: “The Body”
Sarah Michelle Gellart: “It was beyond difficult and heart-wrenching to shoot, and I don’t know if many people know this, but my entire first scene was all done in one take. It was 4–5 minutes of one long take.”
Season 2, Episode 11: “Ted”
Alyson Hannigan (Willow Rosenberg): “John Ritter [Ted] was the best. We would all just hang out in his trailer and be like, ‘Hi, John Ritter!’ and he didn’t care. And we got to shoot at a mini-golf place.”
Season 3, Episode 16: “Doppelgangland”
Alyson Hannigan: “I was in the vampire Willow outfit, and Alexis [Denisof, now Hannigan’s husband, who played Wesley Wyndam-Price] had some holy water, and he made this noise, like FFFFT! And it just cracked me up. I had such a crush on him.”
Season 5, Episode 11: "Triangle"
Season 2, Episode 3: “School Hard”
James Marsters: “I will always have a soft spot in my heart for ‘School Hard’ which is my first episode. That was an intense experience, and it was such a good one because I felt from the very first scene that it was working. That the character fit well, and it gave me a lot of room to maneuver—I was having a lot of fun exploring Spike. There is a saying in theatre that it’s called a play for a reason. The audience isn’t going to pay the actor to just walk; they are paying to watch an actor play. You’ve got to have fun, or it’s worth nothing. Even if you’re doing a really sad play, having fun is the center of it, and I was having a blast.”
Season 6, Episode 7: “Once More, with Feeling”
James Marsters: “We decided, in the face of certain failure, guaranteed doom, we were going to go out swinging and try our best. I was proud of us. It was a huge risk. I think the only one who thought it wasn’t was Joss, because he knew he could pull it off. He actually rolled out a television on the soundstage because he needed to do a quick edit on the first scene that he shot, which was the Xander [Nicholas Brendon] and Anya [Emma Caulfield] dance. He showed that to us to allay our fears. After that, we knew it was going to be brilliant; we went from the depth of depression to the height of fun during that episode.”
Season 5, Episode 16: “The Body”
James Marsters: “I think Joss really proved that, with that [episode], the show didn’t need jokes, it didn’t need vampires or special effects. ‘The Body’ was just an episode about a young woman whose mother died, and I think that the show proved that it was dramatically strong.”
Season 4, Episode 22: “Restless”
Anthony Stewart Head: “One of my favorites is "Restless." I was going to Giles's apartment set, and Joss [Whedon] was in there. I went, "Hello, what are you up to?" He said, "I'm just seeing what will happen if I go through this set to Giles's kitchen, because it backs onto the dormitory set, and then if I build a tunnel that then goes into Xander's basement." I said, "What the hell are you trying to do?" He told me he was doing an episode about dreams and nightmares, and it occurred to him that dreams had no limits to where they could go, so he just thought he'd see what would happen. How cool?
Cut to a few days later, and he asked me up to his office. I was a bit apprehensive, although we used to chat and hang out, because it seemed like official business. He had good news and bad news. I asked for the bad news, and he said, "As you know, I'm doing a dreams episode, and each act is going to be one of your dreams—you, Willow, Xander, and Buffy. Your episode is going to be the exposition." I thought—no! We always joked that when it came down to it Giles did all the expositions because he had an English accent so he sounded very much more learned when explaining the evil. Needless to say, I was not thrilled about my dream being the one that explained everything. I asked for the good news—that I could sing it. Initially, he said I'd have a white piano. I said, "What! That's not Giles!" And he let me be a rock star. We recorded it and then did it, and it was a quite extraordinary episode, which came about, as usual, from Joss saying, "Let's see what we can do."
But to dismiss Buffy the Vampire Slayer wholesale because of the actions of its creator would be a disservice to all the other talents who were in front of and behind the cameras of the WB-turned-UPN teen drama, one of the 2000s-era TV shows that heralded this current golden age of television.
So we’re marking Buffy’s 25th anniversary on March 10 by rounding up the episodes the cast have hailed as personal favorites.
Sarah Michelle Gellar's favorite episodes
Sarah Michelle Gellar: “I just love that whole story, and I thought it just encapsulated the show so well. It was beautiful and heartbreaking.”
Season 4, Episode 10: “Hush”
Sarah Michelle Gellar: “I think it’s not just the scariest episode we’ve ever done but the challenge to do a silent episode—I thought it would be easy, but it was way harder.”
Season 5, Episode 16: “The Body”
Sarah Michelle Gellart: “It was beyond difficult and heart-wrenching to shoot, and I don’t know if many people know this, but my entire first scene was all done in one take. It was 4–5 minutes of one long take.”
Alyson Hannigan's favorite episodes
Alyson Hannigan (Willow Rosenberg): “John Ritter [Ted] was the best. We would all just hang out in his trailer and be like, ‘Hi, John Ritter!’ and he didn’t care. And we got to shoot at a mini-golf place.”
Season 3, Episode 16: “Doppelgangland”
Alyson Hannigan: “I was in the vampire Willow outfit, and Alexis [Denisof, now Hannigan’s husband, who played Wesley Wyndam-Price] had some holy water, and he made this noise, like FFFFT! And it just cracked me up. I had such a crush on him.”
Season 5, Episode 11: "Triangle"
James Marsters favorite episodes
James Marsters: “I will always have a soft spot in my heart for ‘School Hard’ which is my first episode. That was an intense experience, and it was such a good one because I felt from the very first scene that it was working. That the character fit well, and it gave me a lot of room to maneuver—I was having a lot of fun exploring Spike. There is a saying in theatre that it’s called a play for a reason. The audience isn’t going to pay the actor to just walk; they are paying to watch an actor play. You’ve got to have fun, or it’s worth nothing. Even if you’re doing a really sad play, having fun is the center of it, and I was having a blast.”
Season 6, Episode 7: “Once More, with Feeling”
James Marsters: “We decided, in the face of certain failure, guaranteed doom, we were going to go out swinging and try our best. I was proud of us. It was a huge risk. I think the only one who thought it wasn’t was Joss, because he knew he could pull it off. He actually rolled out a television on the soundstage because he needed to do a quick edit on the first scene that he shot, which was the Xander [Nicholas Brendon] and Anya [Emma Caulfield] dance. He showed that to us to allay our fears. After that, we knew it was going to be brilliant; we went from the depth of depression to the height of fun during that episode.”
Season 5, Episode 16: “The Body”
James Marsters: “I think Joss really proved that, with that [episode], the show didn’t need jokes, it didn’t need vampires or special effects. ‘The Body’ was just an episode about a young woman whose mother died, and I think that the show proved that it was dramatically strong.”
Anthony Stewart Head's favorite episodes
Season 2, Episode 17: "Passions"
Anthony Stewart Head: “One of my favorites is "Restless." I was going to Giles's apartment set, and Joss [Whedon] was in there. I went, "Hello, what are you up to?" He said, "I'm just seeing what will happen if I go through this set to Giles's kitchen, because it backs onto the dormitory set, and then if I build a tunnel that then goes into Xander's basement." I said, "What the hell are you trying to do?" He told me he was doing an episode about dreams and nightmares, and it occurred to him that dreams had no limits to where they could go, so he just thought he'd see what would happen. How cool?
Cut to a few days later, and he asked me up to his office. I was a bit apprehensive, although we used to chat and hang out, because it seemed like official business. He had good news and bad news. I asked for the bad news, and he said, "As you know, I'm doing a dreams episode, and each act is going to be one of your dreams—you, Willow, Xander, and Buffy. Your episode is going to be the exposition." I thought—no! We always joked that when it came down to it Giles did all the expositions because he had an English accent so he sounded very much more learned when explaining the evil. Needless to say, I was not thrilled about my dream being the one that explained everything. I asked for the good news—that I could sing it. Initially, he said I'd have a white piano. I said, "What! That's not Giles!" And he let me be a rock star. We recorded it and then did it, and it was a quite extraordinary episode, which came about, as usual, from Joss saying, "Let's see what we can do."
