|
DEMON
TURNED HUMAN CONFECTIONERY, ANYA
Shit-kicking,
leather-wearing, crossbow-firing queen of all the bitches.
That's Anya, the beautiful if stroppy compadre of Buffy The
Vampire Slayer who, with her sharp tongue, blunt opinions and
leather trousers, has so convincingly upped BTVS's sexual
'stakes'. She was a demon for 1,120 years before being
cruelly turned into a human. And she's struggling with
it.
"Well,
she has only been human for about a year," sympathises
Emma Caulfield, the actress who plays Anya. "Think
of how long it takes us to work the world out when we're babies.
You know, she used to be a vengeance demon and suddenly she
becomes this 20-year-old mortal. She's just figuring out
how to do it."
I
suppose only having been human for a year might be a good excuse
for rudeness. We should be grateful she's not burping
up sick and screaming all night. But what about Emma?
She is, by reputation, a very shy young lady. Is the character
of Anya possessing her, demon-like, and making her real-life
persona a little more evil?
"Yeah,
actually," she laughs, "sometimes I do find Anya rubbing
off on me. Not to the extent that I actually..."
Kill
people?
"Yeah!
Anya's just so honest, and if I had to pick one quality from
that character that I'd want to emulate, it would be that.
Not that I'm dishonest, but if you live in LA, everyone's so
phoney and there's so much bullshitting that it's kind of contagious
- you find yourself doing it despite yourself. So she's
rubbing off on me that way. I'm more honest about what
makes me uncomfortable and what makes me comfortable."
But
new-found honesty or not, it must be difficult being shy and
famous at the same time.
"Well,
the shy thing is not so much about people recognising me,"
she explains. "It's about situations like this, where
it's one-on-one and the whole point of this meeting between
you and me is to talk about me. That's very disconcerting."
She pauses for thought. "That's weird."
Not
as weird as some of the people she meets, I bet. Those
freaks who are into sci-fi/supernatural/horror programmes are
all as mental as a Buddhist in a china shop, aren't they?
"All
TV is a form of escape," Emma reasons, "and some need
to escape more than others. I've met a few fans who were
really very, very strange. They really don't have any
self-perception at all, they have no idea about the reality
they're living in. But I really think those people are
few and far between. At least I'm hoping they are.
Otherwise I'm going to have a hard time sleeping at night."
But
Emma should be able to pick a nutter out from a crowd of Buffy
freaks with ease. She's got a degree in psychology, and
was all set to be a shrink until stardom opened its flashy mouth
and swallowed her whole. How's about doing some psychological
deconstruction of her character Anya, then? Could she
tell us what, for example, is inside her id?
"Oh,
Anya is everyone's id," she laughs. "Anya is
'id' personified."
Of
course! Erm...and remind me, what is an id?
"The
id is our base impulse. We have the id, the ego and the
superego inside our psyche. The id is Freud's way of describing
our animal instincts, the things that our ego and superego keep
in check. I think Anya's struggle represents our id -
and all the characters that surround her are the ego and the
superego helping keep her in check."
As
you might have noticed, Emma is no whining bimbo dunce.
She makes me feel I have the intellectual prowess of Rory McGrath's
beard. It's said that, in between breaks in filming, she
doesn't nip out to the bogs with Buffy to do her nails and gossip
about the size of so-and-so's stake. Instead, she and
the rest of the cast like nothing better than a highly competitive
game of Scrabble.
"Oh
my God," she laughs and sighs at the same time, "yes,
we really do. And they've gotten pretty ugly. I've
had some ferocious games with Marc Blucas where he'll beat me
by one point. He's amazingly good at Scrabble. It's
really annoying."
So
what's the best word you've ever had?
"Once
I had 'melee', and I connected it with two other words on a
triple word score, so I got 80-something points. And he
still beat me. He still beat me, man!" She
getting angry now. "He came back! That's what's
so annoying. I come up with that word, and he still beats
me."
I'm
amazed he doesn't let her win, out of pure fear. Some
of Anya's vampire-fighting in Buffy is utterly brutal.
If any loaded readers were to come across a vampire while
walking home from Tesco's, how should they go about killing
it?
"Hmmm..."
she considers this for ages. "God...if it was just
a one-on-one battle?"
Yeah.
We're allowed a stake and perhaps one other weapon.
"Well,
all you really need is the stake. I think you need to
size up the situation - if you're much smaller, run like hell
and get back-up. If you're not, just get the stake out
and hope it hits. Oh, and remember to aim with the pointy
end out." BACK
TO THE TOP
|
