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The rumours are coming in thick and fast about Buffy The Vampire Slayer's new season on UPN. And who better to ask for the truth about them than executive producer Marti Noxon? Steven Eramo caught up with her to ask her about the recent adventures of the chosen one

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BUFFY WRITER and executive producer Marti Noxon remembers the day she was driving down Highland Avenue in Los Angeles and noticed a billboard for the show. "I said to myself, 'That's a dumb idea. Why are they making a TV show about a movie that really didn't make any money.' Boy, did I end up eating my words," laughs Noxon. This, of course, was before she ever worked on Buffy. She had not seen the show or the feature film on which it's based. When Noxon interviewed for a writing job on the programme she was sent videotapes of the first 13 episodes to familiarize herself with it.

"I popped the first one in the machine and ended up watching it and the rest of the tapes one right after the other. By the time I got to the episode Angel where Buffy [Sarah Michelle Gellar] bears her neck to Angel (David Boreanaz) and tells the Vampire to, 'Kill me now,' I was hooked," she says. "I went from ignorance to complete devotion in about 13 hours. I'm a total Buffy-head now."

The daughter of a documentary film maker father and an actress/artist mother, Raised in Hollywood. Being raised in what she calls an "artsy-fartsy" family, it's no surprise she wanted to be part of the entertainment industry. "When I was younger I worked at the McDonalds across the street from CBS Radford studios," she recalls. "I'd go over there in my work outfit and sneak onto the lot to look around. People didn't take any notice of me because they thought I was in costume. I was so enamoured of the whole 'fantasy making machine', and still am. It didn't take long for me to figure out that I wanted to be a part of that. If things hadn't worked out the way they did I'd probably be in a sad state now."

Noxon broke into the business working as an assistant for a writer and then a director, Rick Rosenthal, who later directed the sixth-season Buffy story Normal Again. She was working as an assistant on the TV series Life Goes On when she sold its producers her first spec script. After a less than successful attempt at pitching feature film spec scripts, the writer/executive producer decided to refocus her efforts on writing for the small screen. Her agent sent samples of her material to Buffy creator and executive producer Joss Whedon and the rest, as they say, is history.

"Oddly enough, by the time I landed Buffy I'd actually been offered a job on another series and accepted it," says Noxon. "My agent was just beginning to negotiate my contract when the Buffy people called and told us, 'We want Marti for our show.' Joss Whedon then actually called me himself and said, 'You don't want to do that [other programme],' and he talked me out of it. Thank God he did. The other show was great but it's not on the air any more, so things have worked out pretty well for me."

Penning the second-season episode Bad Eggs was Noxon's first foray into the world of Buffy. In it, a high school health class experiment in caring for unborn eggs turns disastrous for Buffy and her friends. She got her idea for this story while asleep. "Can you believe it?" chuckles the writer/ executive producer. "I had pitched Joss a bunch of story ideas, none of which he liked very much. Then out of desperation I said, 'Well, I had a dream and in it Buffy and the others are in school and have to look after these eggs in order to learn about fertility and caring for babies. However, the eggs contained demons.' Joss told me, 'I like it.' I was so lucky! I felt like this muse had literally come down from the heavens and given me a present because I was bombing out big time."

NOXON WAS FIRST HIRED ON Buffy as a staff writer for its second season and was promoted to story editor halfway through the year. "I wrote a lot my first year with the show," she says. "It was a dream come true for me and a challenge, too. The thing I think new writers may not be prepared for when they start working in TV is the pace. Once a series begins production there's no such thing as writer's block. If you hit a wall you have to write through it. The part of the job that takes us the longest and is always the most difficult is what we call storybreaking. That's when you come up with the actual story concept and then flesh that out beat by beat in order to get your entire episode. If we're lucky, that muse I spoke of earlier will appear and we'll do it in a day or two, but that's rare. Usually we spend weeks working on the process.

"Once we've come up with all the pieces of the story we could have as little as three or four days to write the script, and then maybe only a day or two for rewrites. It's an amazingly gruelling pace. Fortunately, I had worked for TV producers so I knew what to expect and wasn't taken aback. When you're doing a TV show you rarely see your friends and you don't have a life except at work. On the other hand you're doing what you love so it's all worth it."

Since joining Buffy, Noxon has gone from story editor to co-producer to supervising producer, and at the start of its sixth season to executive producer. Along the way, she has continued to write for the show and contributed a great deal to its growth. "There were some early stories with Angel and Buffy that I felt were very iconic. They were so classically romantic and fun to work on. I also loved contributing to the Oz [Seth Green] and Willow [Alyson Hannigan] story lines. I wrote a few of the episodes that were pivotal with them.

"More recently, I think the Buffy/Spike relationship has definitely been challenging to write. Some moments of that have been very dark and sexy and felt quite real, in particular, the aftermath of their first sexual encounter. I had a good time with that one. I tend to write stories that fall into the drama and romance category. So I'd say my main contribution to the show has been to its twisted sexuality and screwed-up relationships," jokes Noxon.

In Buffy's fifth year, the writer/executive producer pulled double duty with Into the Woods and Forever by not only writing but also directing both episodes. "One of the things I enjoyed most about writing Into the Woods was taking Riley [Marc Blucas] away from his good-guy image," she says. "Although he was a contrast to Angel and some of Buffy's other boyfriends, I can't really get interested in a character until I discover their darker side. That's just me, though. When we finally saw Riley sneaking off into the night to a Vampire brothel in order to have his blood sucked I was like, 'Now I get him!' Of course, I wanted go as far as we could with that. In fact, Joss and I talked at length about how to stage one of the scenes involving Riley and a girl Vampire. He happened to come down to the set to see how I'd actually done it and said, 'Oh, my God, it's even more risqué than I imagined.'

"So I thought it was great that we were able to show another side of Riley and add conflict to his and Buffy's storyline, although it was a secret conflict until she finally found out what he was up to. Taking that relationship to its conclusion was exciting and interesting. There was no easy answer to how Buffy felt about him or what was the right thing for him to do. I appreciated the complexity of that as a writer and struggled with it, too. Usually you want to find out, 'What's the truth? Does she love him or not?' In that episode I thought the truth was very complicated in that Buffy wasn't sure. At the same time, she realized she hadn't given it a chance. It was so cool to do the classic 'running to make the train' ending - in this case it was a helicopter -and have Buffy not get there in time to stop Riley from leaving.

"As a director, I was really learning the craft with these two episodes. Both of them were a little talk-heavy as opposed to action-heavy and I wrote them that way. I specifically asked Joss if I could have stories to direct that weren't quite as full of action because I wanted to figure out how to properly stage a scene before going to the next level. I did, however, have a monster sequence in Forever. The most difficult thing about that was once we got the monster on the set we found that he couldn't move forwards or backwards. So we spent a lot of time pushing the camera up to him and then pulling it back. We did that over and over again to make viewers think he was actually moving! Ha ha!"

WHEN BUFFY RETURNED FOR its sixth year it was not to the WB Network but to its new home, UPN. This was not the only change for the series. Whedon, Noxon and the show's writers decided it was time for their characters to start experiencing some of life's other ups and downs. "Last year was a controversial one for some viewers," explains Noxon. "Much of this had to do with the Spike/Buffy and Willow/Tara [Amber Benson] relationships. It was an expression of what we felt was a darker, more turbulent time. I mean, adolescence is difficult but it was the early twenties that really kicked my butt. You start making your own decisions and aren't being dictated to by a school or a parent. That can sometimes cause you the greatest grief.

"In the sixth season we wanted our characters to be their own worst enemies and dramatically that felt very real to me. However we got a lot of flack for that. For example, many fans wanted Spike to be the idealized romantic character. We received letters saying, 'He's good now. Why not let him and Buffy get together?' Even if he were in some ways a good person, it was clear to me that he wasn't the right one when it came ro a long-haul relationship with Buffy. A lot of people took issue with that, but I personally felt it was very much true to what we were trying to do. Now that doesn't mean we didn't make mistakes. We tried to lighten things up in places but we may have hit the same notes a few too many times. If I had another regret it was that we wrote Dawn [Michelle Trachtenberg] a little too young. There were moments when I felt like we needed to let her grow up a bit and we're going to try to do that next year.

"Talking of that, in general, the mandate for the seventh season will be to return to some of the show's original themes, which were girl power as opposed to girl angst. So I think we're going to see a slightly more empowered, less tortured Buffy. That doesn't mean she's not going to be put through her paces because, hey, it's still the same show. As always, there's going to be plenty of trouble for everyone, but we're going to try to make things lighter and a bit more humourous.

"Spike's soul searching will continue and Buffy is going to be dealing with the repercussions of the end of that relationship. Meanwhile, Anya [Emma Caulfield] and Xander [Nicholas Brendon] will have their own issues to resolve. I feel like Xander is due for some interesting stuff this year. Nicholas is a talented actor and has created a wonderful character in Xander. Naturally, you want everyone to have something terrific to do every year, but each season there's one character that comes to the forefront a little bit more. I'd also like to do something with Anya as she's another neat character who can be underutilized at times. Willow, of course, is going to have the most to reckon with out of everyone. Giles [Anthony Stewart Head] will be popping up every now and then, which is great, and there's also a chance we may see Eliza Dushku [Faith] again. So there's lots for the fans to look forward to," enthuses the writer/executive producer.

The seventh season of Buffy has not even begun to air yet and there is already talk of an eighth. There is also a question as to whether or not the show's leading lady Sarah Michelle Cellar will continue in her role. As for Noxon, her involvement would depend on a variety of factors. "If the show still feels fresh and exciting then I'm all for it, and I think Joss would agree. After all these years of working on a show you have to come to it feeling excited as well as with an energy and passion. At the same time, what's to say viewers will feel the same way. If they think they're getting slightly warmed over versions of the series then I doubt it. Also, no one can underestimate the contribution that Sarah makes to the programme. It's a huge thing to contemplate even the possibility of doing it without her. I don't know if she'd leave entirely. She might do some episodes, but who knows?

"So everything is up for discussion, and obviously it's going to be a big part of figuring out this season as well as what the future holds. It's very exciting. I'm starting to realize that Joss has created a world that's somewhat like the Star Trek franchise in that even if the show went off the air for a year or two it could come back with different characters or a mixture of old and new ones. I can definitely see 'Buffy The Vampire Slayer: 2010'. That wouldn't surprise me at all."

Petit extrait de la page de news du même numéro :

[...] As for Willow, [Joss Whedon] is reticent about the possibility of a new girlfriend for her - could Amber Benson play a Tara look-alike who Willow falls for in her grief? Regarding Tara's death, which caused outrage amongst the lesbian community, and taking Willow forward, Whedon told E! Online's Wanda, "The only thing that Marti [Noxon] and I admitted is that we debated whether or not Willow was bisexual, experimenting, going back and forth, and we thought after, Tara, we think it really would be disingenuous of us to have her be anything less than gay. So we decided that's pertty much final - that's who she is now. To backtrack on that would make it appear as if Tara's death was something other than it was. Had we not killed Tara, had she just gone off, like Riley did, or something like that, then it would have been a different situation. We could have played a grey area in terms of sexuality. But now we don't feel that that was the right thing to do. We're gonna be more definite about it. Whether or not she finds any romance next season is still in question." [...]

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