Interview on the set of Buffy - Nov 1998

For the transcript should I include his "ah's" and "um's"?

I think this was just an interview of the cast and crew as a press release of the show, but it was never released until later. I'm not too sure on that and I can't source it, but it's what I am getting from it.

They don’t have the questions up, but I’m going to guess at what they could be:

Who are you to Buffy and what is the show about?

Um, yes, um, I’m basically I’m Buffy’s watcher. The, um, the basic premise is that we have a-an American high school girl who is told, um, in her teens that she is the only woman, the only girl, uh, in all the world, of her-of her generation who is-has-cho- been chosen to, um, to hunt and, uh, kill vampires. Uh, and, um, she’s already had a bad experience with that, she’s burnt a-a school gym down, she’s moved, ah, away from-from where she was in order to, um, to start life afresh and forget the fact that she’s the Chosen One, the Slayer. And she pitches up at Sunnydale High School where I’m waiting for her. Um, I’m her Watcher who is basically her mentor, the person who’s been chosen to watch over her, to take care of her, to train her, to discipline her, to teach her. Um, and she’s, um, not terribly happy with that. She only just wants to go out with boys, paint her fingernails, and go to the mall.

Why is your character British?

It’s yeah, I mean tha-it- the reason he’s British is-is because it provides, um-uh, a-a nice, um, foil for Buffy’s very American, um, attitudes and she’s very, y’know she’s very teenage. So there’s a total culture clash, total culture clash, I mean she’s talking in a language that my character doesn’t understand, even though we speak the same language we don’t speak the same language.



Well normally B-Brits out here get cast as either the bad guys or the, uh, or the complete fools. Giles is not a fool, he’s-he’s, um, deeply learned. One of the choices I made, um, at the beginning was that I’ve prepared for this for some time and that it’s-there’s a lot of theory going into it, but that- I’ve had absolutely no practical experience, um, so that when we actually first get into the, um, the-the fray it’s a-a bit of a shock, and-and, uh, um, there’s a fair amount of ground that we had from that.

What do you think about the comedy meets the horror in the show?

It’s the first time that anyone has proven that you can have real humour, wit, um, dry humour, uh, and then at the same time have, um, tragedy, real tragedy and thrills and horror. Normally, um, if-f comedy and horror go together it’s a spoof, it’s the only way people really have ever dealt with it before and Joss set out from the beginning to-to-to say you can have all the emotions, you can, y’know, and-and they are heightened by the existence of the other emotions.

What’s working with Sarah like?

She doesn’t stop. I mean I’ve done-thank-thankfully she’s young. :pause: :laughs: SO. Ah, yeah, she, um, she doesn’t stop, she’s in it, um, eight days out of eight days, I know. Very rarely is she not on set, um, she does, uh, a lot of-of the physical stuff. She does have a stunt double, but, um, y’know thank god to be honest, ‘cause I mean she’d beat-she’d be beaten into a pulp by now.

This was done during the shoot of the third season episode "Helpless".