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Alexis Denisof - Interviewed on location for Carpe Noctem in Los Angels, August 22nd 2001
Born in the USA
Where you were brought up?
I was born in America on the East coast and then lived many years in Seattle and then New England before moving to London when I was a teenager.
I had decided to be an actor at that point and went to study at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art.
I thought that I would probably be there for a year or two - or maybe three - but I fell in love with London and England and I stayed. Many years went by and I worked and lived and loved and finally came back to LA about 3 years ago, having never guessed I would have lived all those years over in London.
I still have a house there, lots of good friends and lots of funny accents as a result.
Transatlantic Talk
How did you develop your highly convincing British accent?
When I arrived [in London] I was a fully-fledged kind of American teenager, but as the years went by I integrated more and more.
All my friends were English and I was studying dialects and things. I just gradually started to sound more local, so that by the time I came back to America, I had to relearn an American accent.
I felt like a native, but people would say "Where are you from?". I feel very fortunate to have had both [accents].
Is it a problem to snap back into the British accent?
I feel like I have both inside me, so I feel comfortable about them. I鈥檓 sure I make some mistakes occasionally, but people are kind enough to overlook them.
Wesley speaks the way he speaks and I still go to London regularly so I can hear it in my ear, and if I鈥檓 really in a panic I can put on the old World Service of the 成人论坛 and get it back.
Starting on Angel
Could you tell us how you came into Angel?
I knew pretty early on. We wrapped up season three of Buffy and Angel went into production for their first season earlier than most shows during that summer. That was when I went to England and did Randall and Hopkirk and a small movie here, Beyond the City Limits.
When I came back from England there was a call waiting for me from Joss. By then they had made up their mind and resolved that they wanted to bring my character onto the show, but they just weren鈥檛 sure how or when.
Joss is a pretty brave and risky show creator and he likes to keep people on the edge, so they did away with a regular character. I think [it] makes us all feel a little bit more tenuous with our time here with these show.
You tend to be much more punctual and learn your lines when you know they really are going to kill you off if you don鈥檛. There鈥檚 a lot of incentive there when they start doing away with characters around you.
The trouble was how to fit him into Angel, so they needed some time to get Angel up and running as a show and figure out the dynamics of the characters before they knew exactly how Wesley would appear. Once they got into the writing groove they came up with the idea that he鈥檇 been away on his motorcycle being a rogue demon hunter.
He rolls into town and bumps into Angel and underneath it all he is desperate to find a paying job so that he can settle down and get some work, but plays it all off as being that he鈥檚 come to their rescue.
Working for Angel Investigations
How a one-shot character became a series mainstay.
It was exciting right from the start because, when Wesley joined Buffy, Joss really had just invented that character to be around for one or two shows. He ended up being a little funnier and a more enjoyable foil for the other characters than they expected.
So every week he would sidle up to me and say "I think we might have something for you in the next show, so are you going to be around?" I鈥檇 say "Yeah, yeah, I鈥檒l be around", so that whole season ended up going by with Wesley finding something or other to do.
But, it wasn鈥檛 going to work to have him stay at Sunnydale. There was already a Watcher there, so it wouldn鈥檛 really be practical for him to stay there on a permanent basis.
Angel was just getting up onto its feet, so when they did see the way in which they wanted Wesley to join Angel investigations it opened up a world of possibilities for my character. Obviously we had to reshape him a lot because the man who was on Buffy was not a character that you would want to have around all the time on Angel.
There was a lot of reshaping and a lot of qualities that we talked about, that in the long run we would want to explore. We鈥檙e still in the middle of that. We鈥檙e shooting season three and there are some very radical differences in the character that have grown organically through the seasons. So it鈥檚 really been a nice journey and I鈥檓 so fortunate to have these creative people making it possible.
When you鈥檙e a guy
Tell us how you tackled impersonating Angel in Guise Will Be Guise. What was in that blood you were drinking?
I should find out, I haven鈥檛 been feeling well ever since.
That was a really fun show for my character because it was such a contradiction to have Wesley attempting the persona of Angel and having all the doors open magically for him. The world operates around Angel but to have that for Wesley was a very new experience for him.
I really enjoyed that show, they came up with great things like drinking the blood and the rules of a vampire. Having to adapt to that made for some enjoyable comedy, remembering about not being able to walk into a room and all sorts of things like that, and, of course, a punch doesn鈥檛 hurt Angel but it stings a little when it鈥檚 Wesley. It was a really fun show and a very funny idea, one that the writer - Jane Espenson - had been wanting to do for ages.
As far as I was concerned it was fun to do and it was good for the character. He came out of himself a bit and discovered some confidence that he really needed at that time, so it was a chance for him to grow through that episode.
The character鈥檚 been changing ever since the beginning, but there are times that you can look back on and see where there are intense evolutions in the character. That鈥檚 one of them.
From pratfall to professional
Talking about the evolution of the character, did you have a problem in the early days with the pratfalls?
Well, they leave your back a little sore. I had to massage out some bumps in there as a result. Wesley was a lot goofier and sillier when he first arrived, he was a much tighter person.
When we had it in mind for the character to join the show, we knew that we would take a long time to evolve him and to bring things out, but in the meantime it was a golden opportunity to use him to great comic effect.
So in the early days that he would frequently find himself tripping over his own foot or poking himself in the eye or something silly to undermine his rather grand ideas about himself. I like that. One of his appealing comic traits was as a man who took himself very seriously. He fancied himself as James Bond but was really probably more of a Clouseau.
Those are fun moments to play but the actual falling over has meant many bruises and bumps to pay for that comic moment. Is it worth it? I don鈥檛 know, there may have been one too many falls.
Wesley finally gets some
You finally got a girlfriend in season two, didn鈥檛 you?
Yeah. The nice upshot of being Angel for that show (Guise Will Be Guise), was that Wesley got to meet a hot babe and actually get a little for a change. It had been a pretty dry area for him.
Although, there are allusions made to his sex life from time to time, that he may be more than meets the eye in that department, he鈥檚 going out and having a wild time and keeping it quiet.
But this was the first time we really see him on screen with somebody and I think what I liked about that was that it was handled in a very normal way. They met in extraordinary circumstances but they maintained a very kind of domestic un-glamorous, un-grand lifestyle.
You just see them in quiet moments together, and when you do come back in to see the relationship again we see that it鈥檚 progressed each time without a lot of explanation. We just cut into a slice of their life later on.
That gave Wesley the chance to be more of a normal guy instead of this slightly eccentric outsider clowning around. It gave him a much more approachable side and revealed a vulnerability on an emotional level that was important to make him a more rounded character.
Randall and Hopkirk
You came back to Britain to do Randall and Hopkirk. Was that a fun experience?
Oh, it was delightful. I鈥檓 a huge fan of Charlie Higson and Paul Whitehouse, and The Fast Show is still one of my favourites.
I happened to be in London over that summer on a break from Buffy. We had just wrapped season three and I did a movie here. Then I was travelling, seeing friends and having some time in London and my agent there called up and said "Oh they鈥檙e remaking this old series". I had really liked the original so I was curious to see what Charlie and Paul would do with it.
When I met Charlie, he had an idea about this character that seemed to fit well for me, so, yeah, it was great fun to do. I was very pleased to work with them and on was a pretty quirky character as well. A seemingly suave, protective man who turns out to be a complete psycho and is killed by a double bed.