The X-Appeal

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Official Magazine
October/November 2004
By Paul Simpson

Xander Harris may not have had any superpowers as such, but that never stopped Buffy, and the Buffy viewers, from thinking that he was a real superhero. Buffy Magazine caught up with the popular actor to discuss life after Buffy, his hopes for the return of the franchise and his future projects...

It comes as no surprise to see that Nick Brendon is tired when he comes into the Green Room at the end of the Starfury Fusion convention being held in Blackpool, England. For the past two and a half days he has been giving his all to the fans, entertaining them on stage, both in tandem with his onscreen lover, Emma Caulfield, and just before we meet, in a solo panel. Effortlessly bounding around the stage, he has been swapping jokes, occasionally becoming serious, but always handling the audience with the kind of light touch that has endeared him to fans around the world, making him a constant favorite at conventions.

Nick looks lean and fit, and this is in part because, as he announced shortly before the convention, he recently voluntarily entered an alcohol treatment center. “Over the past eight years, I’ve discovered that Buffy fans are the most caring and supportive fans in the world,” he explained when he made his announcement. “Knowing that they will be behind me, rooting for me as I go through this process, makes everything that much easier. I’m looking forward to leading a happy, sober life.” And the fans certainly lived up to his expectations, giving him presents and passing on their good wishes.

The actor looks round the Green Room and gives a cheery ‘hello’ to other cast members who are scattered around, then reacts with mock hurt and surprise when nobody acknowledges him. “I’m saying ‘hi’ to you!” he sings out, and when they tell him that they’re just listening, he stage mutters, “I just say ‘hi’ to them, and they didn’t say ‘hi’ back… that’s odd…”

Admitting that the weekend has been tiring, Nick slumps back in an armchair but is happy to chat with Buffy Magazine, looking back at his work on the show. “I was sad,” he admits, when we start discussing how he felt as his seven years on Buffy drew to a close. “It was a big family, you know, and I was used to seeing these people five days a week – the crew and the cast… the cast and the crew.” He gives a grin. “I don’t want anyone to feel slighted there by putting them in the wrong order! Yeah, there was a definite tinge of sadness, and, of course, there was the anxiety of wondering what the last day was going to be like. Was there going to be lots of tears and stuff?”

In the event, Nick was actually very busy during the filming of “Chosen.” Not only was Xander involved heavily in the final battle between the Slayer and the forces of The First, but the actor was also simultaneously working on another project. “I was doing a show for Fox,” he recalls. “It was a pilot for The Pool at Maddy Breakers, by the creator of Married… With Children, Ron Levitt. It was an awesome show, with a fantastic cast, but the pace was completely different from Buffy. Acting in front of an audience is amazing – you get an energy from the audience that’s just like theater.”

This meant that, although he realized that he was no longer turning up for work at the Santa Monica sound stages, which had been part of his life for so long, the full impact of Buffy’s ending didn’t affect him immediately. “It kind of hit me about three months after it had wrapped,” he admits. “I missed the camaraderie of it. It had been the first job for most of us, and we’d seen what the show had become as it went along.”

Nick has no complaints about the end of Xander’s journey through the series. Throughout the show’s history, he has said that he puts his faith in Joss’ writing. “It’s been nice to relinquish control and delegate what this kid is going to do,” he points out. “He’s been growing up and trying to discover himself. I would read the script, show up to work and find out where he’s going. At the end, he lost body parts! I thought that was great. If there’s a film to be done, I’ll be wearing an eye patch! And he lost his love. I thought it wrapped up quite nicely.”

Although in the past, Nick has maintained that he knew that there were certain central core characters who Joss Whedon would not allow to be killed, all bets were definitely off when it came to the closing episodes of the series. At one stage, Nick reveals, it was even considered that Xander would turn to the dark side. “As I said on stage earlier, I like playing evil. And Joss likes me when I’m playing evil. He came up with the idea that I would be killed. It would have been when I got my eye poked out – I was going to be killed then, but he thought about it, and decided that the fans might not like that, so instead I lost an eye.”

Nick admits that it came as something of a shock to see the black and white words of the script, bringing everything to a close. “We knew that people were going to die,” he says bluntly. “One of the things that we were warned about was that people were going to die in the finale. Then we got word about three weeks before we shot the episode of the people who were going to be dying.” He pauses for a moment, then says more quietly, “That was kind of weird. When you read the script and see a line that says Spike is dead – okay, at least for a week! – or another one that says ‘Anya lays down on the floor, dead,’ it was strange, because we were always laying on the floor – but we would always get up again the following week.”

For once in Buffy, death really did seem to mean death. “There hadn’t been that finality before, no,” Nick agrees, then laughs again. “Except for Spike, of course!”

Looking back over the whole seven years, Nick thinks that the greatest thing he learned from the experience was “patience. Tons and tons of patience. In every respect.” He laughs when he’s reminded of his jokey comment a couple of years earlier that ‘the 14-hour days aren’t as much fun as they used to be, and you’re in your trailer for 10 hours, thinking that everyone is conspiring against you!’ “Yeah, I learned patience about the hours, about everything,” he says.

There’s a large grin on his face when he says that the highlight for him of his whole time on Buffy was “learning patience…” and he’s determined to keep the gag running as long as possible when he says that “patience” is a challenge that he can now face as a result of working on the show. He turns serious for a moment. “I don’t actually view it that way,” he says. “I attack each part differently. I learned a lot from working on Buffy. I became a lot more comfortable in what I do. I was on there for 144 episodes [he missed “Conversations with Dead People”], so there was definitely a lot of opportunity to learn while I was there. I still get nervous, but now it’s like it’s ‘fun’ nervous. Those nerves make me shine a little bit – at least I hope they do.”

Nick has always maintained that he prefers to work on ‘quality, not quantity,’ and since work ended on Buffy, he has played Celeste’s gay cousin in the TV movie Celeste in the City, working alongside a fellow former fantasy actor, Roswell star Majandra Delfino. “It was nice to be working on something where I didn’t have a love interest,” he admits. “It was a lot of fun to do.” However, the actor is very honest about what he looks for when his agent sends him a script. “I want to be hired,” he says bluntly. “I want to book the job.” In reality, he’s much more choosy than that, and he adds, “I look at the way it’s composed. If I’m doing a comedy, then I want to be sure that the beats are there. If it’s a drama, does it hold my attention when I’m reading it?”

Like many of his castmates, and indeed everyone who has worked on a Joss Whedon show, Nick considers that he was spoiled by the fantastic dialog that he was given to deliver during the series, and the overall quality of the scripts, whether written by Joss directly or overseen by him. “Oh yes, we were spoiled. I’ve learned that it all starts with the writers,” he says firmly. “It’s very much in the writing. Hopefully, I’ll get lucky again – lightning can strike twice, or maybe even three or four times.”

At the time of this interview, there had been no confirmation on the rumors of Buffy: Animated being resurrected, and Nick admitted that he was “wide open right now. I’ve been talking about maybe doing comedy – I want to do a sitcom in front of a live audience and have fun. I also want to play a villain, or maybe be in a romantic comedy.”

He is absolutely insistent that he has no regrets about the seven years that he spent playing Xander. “No,” he says instantly, “No regrets at all. It’s a pretty good way to spend that time.” Indeed, unlike many actors who have appeared in a long-running series, who are champing at the bit toward the end of the run for a chance to do something else, he even says that he would be happy to sign up for another long-running series.

Nick used to say that “Xander is a very important person in my life, but he’s not me,” but he agrees now that it’s become really hard for him to be able to see how much the character of Xander has been influenced by Nicholas Brendon. “I really don’t know how interchangeable they were by the end,” he admits. “I was just learning my lines, and hopefully doing a good job.” But, as with any long-running series, the writers saw what Nick was bringing to the table and started to play to the actor’s strengths. “Yes, that’s what makes it really hard to say!” he laughs.

As our time draws to a close, and Nick prepares to face the UK fans for one last time in a final autograph session, he’s typically modest about what he would like to see if Buffy the Vampire Slayer does translate back to the big screen at some point in the near future. “The eye patch,” he repeats. “I would have to wear an eye patch. But other than that, there’s nothing I can particularly think of. During those seven years, [Xander] went through the whole gamut of emotions. I’m more than happy to leave that in the hands of the Powers That Be.”

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