Interview de Marti Noxon

par Andy Mangels

Interview parue dans le numéro 90 (fin janvier 2002 mais daté de mars) du magazine britannique Dreamwatch. Spoilers sur les saisons 5 et 6.

:: "NASTY" NOXON ::

Sex, violence, and addiction... It's all in a day's work for Buffy's Executive Producer, Marti Noxon.

Executive Producer and writer Marti Noxon recently made her on-screen debut, singing in the role of Parking Ticket Woman in the Buffy musical episode Once More, With Feeling, but this California girl has been involved with Buffy since its early days. Having written 21 episodes of Buffy - almost one-fifth of the total episodes to date (plus one outing on Angel) - Noxon's scripts have established several major elements of the Buffy mythology. A few of Marti's contributions? The term Scooby Gang. The Mirror Vampire Universe. Willow's use of black magic. Riley's departure... and, recently, Buffy and Spike shagging. Here's the woman behind the Slayer...

Dreamwatch: Prior to coming to the Buffy team, you did some stage writing and sold one TV script. What helped you find your voice?

I think that writing for the stage was probably what the thing that finally made my work click... Until then, I was making the classic writer mistake - I was writing to sell. Once I got off the idea of making my living as a writer and got into the idea of what did I have to say and what was important to me, I started finding that I had this strange dark sensibility. That's when I found my weird obsessions... which Joss [Whedon] would call suicide and pain and a little S&M on the side [laughs]. Ghosts and the supernatural. The fascination with the darker side of things finally revealed itself.

You turned down a staff job en The Pretender to stake a claim on Buffy. You quickly went for scripting to story editor...

Yeah, it was pretty fast. I was hired as a staff writer, which is the most basic position. Bad Eggs was the first Buffy script that I ever wrote. Then I did a rewrite on another episode that Joss really liked. We had a small staff that year, and he just started to throw a lot of stuff my way. I wrote more in that one year than I have the entire time I've been here! I probably worked on five or six scripts in total. I thought that it was what it was always going to be like.

You've been quoted as saying you think that it's important that parents know they can turn Buffy off, because of the violence.

I think what I actually said was that I felt parents should watch with their kids, and they should be aware that not every episode is appropriate for young children at all. We really write to an adult sensibility with a lot of stuff that kids would enjoy, but I worry sometimes with the violence, but moreso with the sexual content. Sometimes the shows get pretty sophisticated sexually, and we also do a lot of equating sex and violence... a lot of dark energy around sexuality.

I think that kids should be with their parents and able to talk about what that is because I don't think that those ate healthy models for children. A lot of the relationships on Buffy are pretty dark. Even the recent episode with Willow and the whole magic thing spinning out of control [Crash], there were some pretty gnarly allusions there. Sometimes, I think we're protected because it is often metaphoric, so it's not as literal and it may not hit kids in the same way.

It wasn't technically drug addiction, it wasn't technically rape when Rack put his hand on Willow. So you can get away with stuff [metaphorically], but I think sometimes the feelings are still really dark and bad that come out of certain episodes. I think the majority of the ones I worry about are the ones that Joss or myself do, where the content starts to get a little nasty.

The lesbian aspects of Willow and Tara's relationship have been quite a publicity-generator for the show. You have elements in your background that make this a personal issue...

Yeah, I do. My mom is gay, and she came out when I was about 13. For the later part of my childhood, I was raised by two women. So, definitely some of the stuff that I have written about their relationship has been informed by that. I'd say the only thing that really affected the storyline is the sense that what my mother told me is true. It's much less about the sex of that person than it is about that you happen to fall in love with someone of the same sex. It's not always a huge political statement.

The network has been good, particularly UPN. The WB was more cautionary. They were concerned about them being in bed together and other factors, but UPN has been even more comfortable with their physicality. We haven't done a really sexy scene with them. We've done spell sex. We've done metaphor sex. But we haven't done naked sex like we have with the straight characters. That's probably the next frontier. I'll get back to you on that one! [laughs] It may be time to see how far we can go there. I do believe that's where a real fight [with the network] would happen.

The Buffy arc has been very strong, just because I think she is learning to live again and learning to find her way in a world that now feels very, very strange to her. I think the progression of her relationship with Spike and everything is all about her trying to come back to the world of the living. The other part of her arc - and I think that is shared by the other characters on the show is about growing up and facing adult responsibilities at the same time that they that they're still figuring out who they are.

The absence of parental figures is making all of them have to face themselves in a new way. Xander getting married is kind of a confrontation with a bunch of adult responsibilities that he may or may not be prepared for. They're all doing the same thing.

They try to choose a lifestyle that is all about evading responsibility. They're using their special talents to try to do less, not more. We've tried to make that parallel evident, but I think it sometimes gets lost in their goofiness. Really, the point of them is that these guys are steadfastly refusing to grow up. They want to play video games and meet girls and really do little else. They're going to use their smarts to try to figure out ways to get around regular jobs and regular lives.

I don't think of her as being genuinely evil, especially not at this point. Tara, she can use magic and she's OK. But Willow is finding out she's an addict, and what you do about that really defines who you are. If magic takes her to an evil, dark place, it's really of her own making. A lot of times, the bad stuff that happens to a character is really external, and this season most of the characters are making their own problems.

I think that this season is different. We have sort of parallel storylines going on. I can promise you that they will all make sense as a single concept in the end. But it's a little greyer. I enjoyed the clarity and cleanliness of stories you could do in high school - cheerleading or pressure from your parents - but the truth is that as you get older, stuff isn't quite as neat. I do think the show is reflecting that. Also, just in terms of the 'Big Bad,' I think that we had exhausted so many possibilities. We could not do another apocalypse.

I think the next frontier for Dawn is trying to forge her own identity. I think that's a question for the show and for her; what's her place, as she gets older and isn't just a kid anymore? I'm eager for her to sort of shed the TV kid job. You've seen hints of trouble in her world right now, but I think we'll start to go there this year - and then I think next year it's going to be a major theme.

Amy has reappeared, and she'll be part of the universe from time to time. We don't have any plans for her beyond the episodes that she's appeared in. I heard recently that [Eliza Dushku] would like to come back on the show sometime. We love her, so anytime we can get her... Drusilla may come around again. She'd have major feelings about what's going on. There's no plans in the works right now, but it's something we've talked about. Giles is gone, but he'll definitely pop up from time to time when Tony's in America.

There's going to be a big, big sweeps wedding. It's going to be episode 16. We've often said that romance in Sunnydale never goes well for very long, but they have the best shot of being a happy couple I'd say, of all of them.

Ten episodes have aired so far. What can you say about the second half of the year?

There will probably only be two more episodes before the end of January. They're both not going to move the storyline forward a whole lot. They're stand-alones. Nick Mark directs the twelfth one. We won't get to Buffy's birthday until episode 14. We're doing it late this year. Steven S DeKnight just wrote an episode that will air in early February which is really dark.

You haven't seen the last of Tara and Willow, that's for sure. Tara is in 16 out the 22 episodes this year. And Spike and Buffy's relationship is going is going to continue to progress and devolve.

You're writing the next-to-last episode of this season, part one of a two-parter. After that, what are you doing in the future?

My contract is up at the end of this season, but we're talking in earnest, so as far as I known I'll still be here. That's my hope. Long-term, I have ideas for shows of my own, and I'm eager to pursue some of that, but I am also not going to walk away from the best creative partnership I've ever experienced in my life. As long as Joss Whedon will have me, I'm pretty much in camp.