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Taken from the X Pose Magic, Mystery & Unknown Special
Dear Girl
Over seven years, Juliet Landau has been onw of Buffy and Ange's most persistant players, despite only popping upfor a few memorable episodes each year. David Richardson catches up with the actress...
Before Angel took its final bow in May, it delivered one final love letter to several different characters. "The Girl In Question", a kind of Buffy crossover that wasn't, took us back to 1894, when Angelus, William the Bloody, Darla and Drusilla were a feared Vampire quartet. It was a journey back to the franchise's very roots, reminding us that while Buffy Summers once was solely responsible for protecting the world of the livingm these characters ruled the world of the undead. "I came in during the second season," says Juliet Landau of Drusilla's introduction to Buffy the Vampire Slayer. " I had seen a couple of episodes and I immediately loved the whole concept. The writing was great, and the whole idea of high school as a nightmare and taking it to far extremes using dark forces was well executed." Landau was first suggested for the role after Joss Whedon had seen her work in the movies Ed Wood( as Loretta King) and Theodore Rex (as Dr Shade). " I went in for this meeting and I had a couple of pages of Drusilla scenes and a description," the actress recalls. "It was incredibly free, really fun and we just started bouncing ideas off of each other. I did a little bit of the character of how I thought, and I left and they paired me with the three or four final choices for Spike. James (Marsters) came in and immeditaley we just worked so well together, it was really fun. In his audition we came up with things in a moment that were used in the first episode. For that whole second season when we would get scripts we would work together and rehearse and come up with ideas." Joining the ranks of a cult TV show could be disorientating for many actors, but not for landau. Her father in Martin Landau, her mother is Barbara Bain, the principal stars of '60's adventure series Mission: Impossible and '70's sci'fi space hit Space 1999/ Consequently she spent her formative years in London, while her parents were filimg the latter show at Pinewood Studios. " I have an action figure now, and it's just odd because my parents have that too," she says with glee. "My sister was saying, "I'm the only one without a doll, it isn't fair!" Its sort of a surreal thing. Did her parents have any advice about appearing in a popular genre series? "I don't know if they had advice," she responds. " I think they both have such a passion for what they do, and I gained that from them." Landau certainly made her mark with the character: originally contracted for just 11 episodes, Drusilla, with Spike, was effectively written out at the end of Buffy's second season, but Whedon was unable to lay the characters to rest. Several attempts to return Drusilla in Buffy failed because of the actress's busy work schedule, which only heightenedthe effect when she strode onto the screen during the Angel season two episode "Dear Boy", and went on to share the limelight with Julie Benz's Darls for the rest of that year. "I had never met Julie before, and the stuff we had to do together was different to what I'd gotten to do before on Buffy. Drusilla was out on her own, feeling some of her own power and teaming up with Darla." The pairing proved a match made in hell, defining an assured second year for Angel that was lessened only by Drusilla and Darl's sudden disappearance. "Yeah, we were set on fire and then we left! People ask me about that but no reason was given. Often what they'd do is kind of cycle so that once you get thick with one story is would be supsended for a while, and then it would be brought back in again. That was one of those things. Landau would later guest star in the Buffy episode "Crush", before beginning a recurring stint in that show's final season- although in an interesting twist Whedon chose the actress to play a representation of the year's villian The First, rather than reprising Drusilla. "Drusilla is already such a complicated character. On top of that to then be a whole other entity was an interesting thing." Landau appeared as Drusilla in 22 episodes total, although the character made such an impression one might have suspected the figure to be much higher. Now Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel have both beendusted, an immediate return to Drusilla seems unlikely- but Landau admits she does not leave her behind easily. " I think the thing that appeals to me most is that fact that she's not just a villain," she defines. "There's so much dimesion to the character. There's the sweet love story with Spike, she's a little touched, crazy...there are so many colours that its really fun to flesh out a character like that."