I didn't know Charisma suffered from anxiety during BtVS!
I think my bosses knew my heart and knew how much I cared, so they wouldn't fire me just because of my work ethic and because of my passion and my extreme effort to overcome what I was going through. Then there came a time, I think it was the third season of Buffy, when they were like, "What can we do to help you?" And I said, "I need an acting teacher on set to run lines with me". Really, what I probably needed to do was to stop running lines. I needed to stop and relax, which is easier said than done. That's so cliché : how do you let go when you're driven like me? So that was my big thing, and my costars were probably annoyed and it didn't bode well with my relationships with them. Not that they were mean; there was no drama like that. But you know, poor Sarah, spending thousands and thousands of hours on a set, I just can't imagine that this girl, six years younger than me, who was working her ass off, consummate professional, and then, it's Charisma's turn! There was shame around it and the anxiety and fear and really empathizing with everyone I was working with. - Charisma Carpenter
When they finally did kill me off, they did exactly what I asked Joss to do, which was to have me eaten. When I knew they were going to graduate from school, I didn't know how they were going to graduate, but I knew that they were seniors and were graduating and I knew that I was no longer needed. I said, "Listen, I know you're going to have to get rid of me one way or another, but I want to be eaten." Because Flutie was eaten. And they agreed to my wishes. - Armin Shimerman
I didn't really see Joss that much. He didn't direct the first episode I was in. It all went very quickly. People were telling me that it was really fun to watch, and so I thought I was really in and then was surprised when Joss walked by me and got in my face - didn't push me up against the wall - but I backed up into a wall and he shook his finger at me and said, "I don't care how popular you are, kid, you are dead! You are dead, do you hear me? Dead." I was like, What the ****? I've come to realize what was happening was Spike was imperiling the theme of the show. Evil is not cool to Joss Whedon, and I really respect him for that. He thinks of evil as being pathetic, which I agree with. In Buffy the vampire slayer, vampires are metaphors for the challenges that you overcome in adolescence. And so vampires are supposed to be very ugly and quickly killed off. And that's why we had the vamp face in Buffy, so that the moment we bite people is never sensual. It's always horrific. He once told me, "I don't like that Ann Rice crap; that's not what I'm going for". He had gotten talked into one romantic vampire character by his writing partner, then David Greenwalt, which was Angel, who just took off like a rocket ship. By the time I got on the show, they were already plans that he would have his own show. I think Joss had said, "Ok, that's one. We'll do one. No more romantic vampires, that's it." Then I came along. The character wasn't designed to be romantic - the audience wasn't supposed to respond to me that way. But I think once you made my hair blond and allowed me to have that much mascara on... it probably explains why the audience thought of me as a romantic character. But that was really dangerous, and this was in the beginning of season two and I think Joss was afraid that the show was slipping away and was just going to become another show about hot, young vampires, which to him is much less interesting. I am forever amazed and grateful that, in the face of that, he decided not to kill me off. To instead, really engage with the character and this universe and this theme. It speaks to his courage and his talent that he did that. Because, I gotta tell you, I produced theater in Chicago and Seattle : I would've killed me off in a heartbeat... probably before five episodes. As soon as the audience said, "Oh he's romantic", I'd have killed me off after two episodes just to, you know, get it out of the way. So I'm very lucky. - James Marsters
"Lovers Walk" was an episode that was not as heavily rewritten as "The Zeppo". My pitch to Joss for that episode was "we should do a Rosencrantz & Guildenstern episode, where it's following a really boring character, and in the background the most exciting, world-ending story is taking place and we just don't even address it". He liked that idea and he ended up doing it. In my draft, the B story was brought to the forefront and the A story was in the background, whereas in Joss's draft of it he had brought up the B story much more. I feel like it might have lost a little of that Rosencrantz & Guildenstern element, but, for all I know, it wouldn't have been watchable if that were the case. - Dan Vebber