In the same way, Dawn was the next Riley. When we did Dawn, part of the mission statement was, let's have a really important, intense emotional relationship for Buffy that is not a boyfriend. Because let's not have her be defined by her boyfriend every time out of the bat. So, Season 5, she's as intense as she was in Season 2 with Angelus, but it's about her sister. To me that was really beautiful.

With Willow, we'd talked about the idea [of her becoming gay] and the opportunity was dropped in our lap, so we said, Let's do it as a sort of metaphor with this other witch. It's very physical, it's very romantic, it's very private. Then, we'll see where it takes us, and where it took us was to something more specific. We were pretty much accused of being coy and we had a lot of fun making metaphorical jokes. But we decided, yeah, these two have real chemistry and this is clearly a romantic relationship and there's no reason not to physicalize it because it means we will get a lot of really funny hate e-mail.

What, you were bored? You weren't getting enough as it was?

We weren't getting a lot of hate mail. I kept thinking we were going to [for earlier aspects of the show]. We were shooting one scene in the very first episode, and [executive producer] David Greenwalt was standing next to me saying, "You're going to be murdered." And I'm like, "What?" But ultimately people accepted what we were doing until Willow came out, and then not so much.

But we don't really think about that, any more than we were thinking about the people it would help. Then people came to us and said, "I was able to come out because of your show," and we were like, "Whoa! Well, we meant to do that." We're very conscious of our responsibility, but you can't make stories based on it, because stories are by their nature irresponsible. It's gratifying that we got to do something that really mattered to people. That wasn't why we did it, but it sure was cool.

This season you've had to come up with the ultimate villain, and the First, being disembodied, presents some challenges. Now you have introduced an evil priest as its main henchman, and I think he could be the scariest bad guy so far.

He's pretty creepy, isn't he? I love Nathan [Fillion]. He's an extraordinary actor who would not have been available had a certain door not shut, however temporarily [a reference to Whedon's series "Firefly," starring Fillion, which was canceled last year]. I want to come down against the patriarchy and there was simply no more potent image. At the same time, I'm not coming down against priests. This guy clearly is not one. He's very bad at it.

His denomination is kind of unclear.

Yeah well, again, it's the image of the thing. I believe that religion has contained within it an enormous amount of misogyny, and that cannot be denied. That's something that I will always bridle against and that image [a priest] is potent because of that. However, I have nothing against religion as a concept, or as people practice it. Religious institutions on the other hand, I believe cause people to fly planes into buildings. It's very dangerous. I do think that he is the creepiest priest. He is the most bald-faced misogynist we've had since, well, since last year, with Warren.

You've created a world where religion isn't to be trusted but some conventional religious items do have power in it. Crucifixes and holy water are still harmful to vampires.

Ultimately, I'm dealing with a vampire myth. It's not any huge secret that I'm an atheist. For me, the most radical thing I ever did was have Riley go to church. I thought that was really cool. It makes him really different from the people in my universe, and somebody who is new to me. I've never met a well-adjusted person. It's weird.

So I am an atheist, but I'm telling a vampire story and everyone knows that vampire stories involve crosses. You haven't seen many of them and we haven't done much with holy water, though we've used it on occasion. We pretty much stick to stakes. That iconography is not something I want to explore. However, I do use Christian mythology. Buffy, resurrected much? She pretty much died for all of us by spreading her arms wide and ... well, I won't go into it. That's what I was raised with. As much as I learned Greek myths and as much as I read Marvel Comics and watched "The Prisoner," I grew up around Christianity and Judaism and those are the prevalent myths and mythic structures of my brain.

Every vampire fiction reinvents vampires to its own needs. You take what you want. I took that they have to be invited into the house, which a lot of people apparently didn't know about. I had always grown up thinking this.

They're sometimes said to not be able to cross running water.

Yeah, I didn't use that one, although I've never had anyone jump over a stream. The idea of them looking like monsters and then looking like people, that was in "Lost Boys," and that was very useful for us. You could have somebody fool you, or someone like Angel seem like he's not a vampire and then he is one. You make up rules that you need and jettison the ones you don't. I had to jettison one of the rules from the movie, which was that Buffy had sort of a cramping every time she was around a vampire. In a series I didn't want her to always know when she was around a vampire. And that's too bad in a way because it was a very primal, feminist concept that she literally feels it in her womb, as it were. But I had seven years and she needed to be surprised.

Recent Stories