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Fan Expo Convention Report by Necrodemion

I was at the Fanexpo 2006 Horror/Sci-fi/Comic Book/Anime convention in Toronto last weekend and had a chance to meet our favourite actress and attend her Intimate & Interactive session. What a sweetheart she is! As for the con it was amazing. They told us it was a record-breaking year with some 50,000 people in attendance. Juliet was there Sat. Sept. 2 and Sun. Sept. 3. On Sat. her Intimate & Interactive session started at 12PM and lasted an hour. It was really interesting and among the topics discussed were the following: -When asked how much of Drusilla was the writers and how much was her, she told us that all the dialogue was of course the writers', but little things like Drusilla's distinctive wimper and her laugh (--both of which she demonstrated for us!) were created by her, and the idea for all the licking between Spike & Dru was also the actors' idea. -She also told us how she requested a set of vampire teeth to take home when she first got the part so she could practice talking without having any kind of a lisp, since she didn't think lispy vampires were good enough for viewers. -When asked about her parents' attitude towards her following them into the acting profession, she said they didn't want her to get into acting as a child because they thought it could be harmful to kids, but that once she indicated she would like to pursue this career as an adult they were totally supportive. -She also mentioned how as a child, she had assumed that everyone's parents had their own TV show, since not only did her parents have one, but also so did all of her parents' friends, such as Lucille Ball "(I Love Lucy", "The Lucy Show"), Diahann Carroll ("Julia") and Rob Reiner ("All in the Family"). So she would naively ask her childhood friends, "so, what time does YOUR parents' show come on?" -Juliet and both of her parents all have their own action figure toys, so her sister (a producer/director type) complains it isn't fair she doesn't have one. -She also talked about her new movie "The Yellow Wallpaper", which she had just finished filming in the Atlanta area. She said much of the film's scenes were shot in the attic of an old house. But they couldn't have any air conditioning because it would create noise on-screen. So she had to endure hot summer heat shut in the attic of this old house dressed in heavy period costume with the extra lighting on, causing her to suffer heat stroke. But she said she felt even more sorry for the poor crew. While actors were only there when they had to shoot their scenes and could then leave, the crew had to be there many hours more in order to prepare for shots and set things up, etc. -She shared a memory of one day's filming on Buffy. They were filming a fight scene between Drusilla and Kendra. Since they were using an actual alleyway in LA, they had to shoot the scene in the wee hours of the morning at 5AM. The scene featured Drusilla attacking with her nails, so Juliet had stick-on nails on. But during filming the nails would suddenly start popping off, "bing, bing!" And to make matters worse, at one point during the fight scene the actress playing Kendra accidentally kicked her in the head. But Juliet had to keep going and act in the next take as if nothing had happened, even though her head still smarted. -When asked if she was interested in vampires, or if after appearing as Drusilla she had now become interested in vampires, she answered both times (--in a very cute way) "mmmm...., no." -She treated us with some samples of various accents she can do, including the Slavic one she does on Justice League (she said that the character she plays is Russian but the accent she does is actually Polish because she works with a Polish informant). She also did the New Yorker accent of one of her aunts. And funniest of all was her impression of a waitress in Atlanta when she was shooting her most recent film. When she told the waitress that she does not eat butter or cheese, the waitress hollered into the kitchen "hey, this porr girl here cain't eat NUTHIN'~!" -She also said that spending part of her childhood in England did help her to do Drusilla's accent, but that she still had to put in a quite a bit of hard work to get it just right. -She stated that Spike & Dru were originally supposed to be killed off at the end of Buffy Season 2, but their lives were allowed to continue due to the popularity of the characters. On Saturday the con was completely packed with people. I stood in line for an hour to see her at the signing and when I was just about 10 people from the front of the line, she went for lunch so I had to start all over again. When I came back a couple of hours later for my second attempt, the line was more than twice as long (about 500 people!). But she persevered and gracefully met us all, one by one. It must be an exhausting job. People were constantly taking pictures of her with their flashes, so she wore sunglasses all through the signing. But for the last 100 people or so they stopped all photos so they could speed up the process because it was getting near time for her to leave. On Sunday she was there signing in the afternoon only. Thankfully the line was not quite as bad and I was finally able to get a nice photo with her. (She was donating all proceeds from photos taken with her to her favourite charity.) Ah~, satisfaction! So if you get a chance to meet her, by all means don't miss it. She is totally charming!