Few people were expecting Emma Caulfield to reprise her Buffy the Vampire Slayer role as Anya, least of all Caulfield herself. Anya died in the climactic battle of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a seemingly definitive end for the character. Caulfield tells ComicBook.com that she “never” thought she’d play Anya again until Amber Benson and Christopher Golden came calling with the idea for , the new Audible Original debuting this week, and suddenly Anya was back, along with her demonic alter ego, Anyanka, on a new adventure with some familiar friends and foes.
Videos by ComicBook.com
ComicBook.com spoke to Caulfield about her unexpected return as Anya. Here’s what she told us about working on Slayers: A Buffyverse Story:
Jamie Lovett, ComicBook.com: Correct me if I’m wrong, but as far as I could tell, audio drama is not something you have much experience with from your career.
Emma Caulfield: That’s totally true. Now I do.
What was your initial reaction when they came to you and said, “Hey, we’re doing an audio thing.” Is it something you wanted to try out before? Did it take you by surprise? What was the kind of gut reaction?
I very much wanted to try audio. I’d done a little bit with Robot Chicken and this other indie project called Fantasy Hospital, and I really, really, I just loved it. I think years and years ago, I tried to get a voiceover agent, and that didn’t work out. They were like, “No thanks.” I’m like, “Oh, harsh. Okay, fine, fine, no problem.” Clearly, I’m doing it wrong, or I don’t know. I don’t know what they wanted, but I just didn’t.
There’s definitely a science to doing that. As fun as it was and is, I was surprised by how challenging it was. I was having so much fun doing it that I wasn’t overwhelmed by the challenge. I wasn’t like, “Oh God, I suck. I’m failing.” I was just like, “Oh, wow. This is a whole other muscle I had not used really properly.” And then I think by two-thirds of the way through, and I was like, “I’m fricking awesome. I’m so good at this. Oh my God, I want to do this forever,” and then the project was over. I’m like, “Ah, dang it.” So, I was like, “Please, Audible, I’ll read directions. I’ll read self-help books. What do you need? I’ll read them for you.” Because I just loved it. Love, love, love.
I look forward to Emma Caulfield as the voice of your GPS in the future.
Right? Like, “Hey bitch, make a left. All right. Hang a right.”
You mentioned there was a challenge at first. You’re playing a character from a TV show, and there’s body language involved in that performance that I think was a big part of it. Was that part of the challenge, not having that body language and having to have her personality come up more through your voice performance?
Well, I would say the first challenge I had was remembering how to do Anya’s voice. That was a specific thing that I did. And when I found that voice years ago, it was not something I had even practiced. Some characters just come, and some don’t. That one just came. I was like, “Oh, I got you. I know what to do with you.” And I hadn’t revisited that since however many years it’s been, Jesus, 20 or something. Finding her voice again and getting in there took about four takes, probably four or five takes. I was not quite there and too nasally, not enough of the things that just came second nature to me years ago. But then, once I got the hang of it again, that was pure fun.
I can’t speak for anybody else, but I am actually really okay with not seeing anybody’s reactions to what I’m doing. I think I’ve trained myself so much just in general to listen as a performer because the listening is where the reactions happen, honestly. Know your lines, but you can hear something when you’re going over something in your head prior to shooting something. I mean, it’s never going to sound like that when you’re in person but, especially if you’ve spent some time with the character, you can almost anticipate how their eyes are going to go or how they’re going to move their head or mannerisms that they’ve developed for the character. So, it can trip me up.
So, it was more than enough to have everyone in the room, and glance over and see them, but hearing everybody in my head taps into a whole different part of my imagination, and it was glorious. It was the most fun I’ve had on a job in years. It’s one of my top, top, top, top favorite projects I’ve ever done. Loved it. And I never thought I would revisit that show in a million years. Never. But then knock, knock, and it’s Amber, and I was like, “Hmm, what are you doing? What’s up? What is this?” And that was enough for me.
You get to have a lot of fun in scenes where there’s Anya, and then there’s Anyanka, and I don’t want to give away too much of what happened, but there’s a third party involved.
The other one.
What was recording that? Were you doing and forth? Were you doing one at a time? Because just listening to it sounded wild.
Well, I’m so excited to hear that because I lived it, and it was exhausting and thrilling and weird and, on the spot, because that third one wasn’t going to be like that at all. It’s so hard to talk about it without talking about it. But we were in the moment when it came time to do that. And I was like, “Can I just try something super quick? I’m just going to see if this works.” And I think it was like, “Okay, we’ll just do that bit then. We’ll isolate the audio on that and do it.” And I was like, “Actually, I’m going to want to do the whole thing, all of them together, not break, just go from one to another like this, this, this.” Which is what I did.
And again, not spoiling it, but there are so many variations between Anya’s voice and then Anyanka’s and then the third one; I must’ve looked absolutely batshit crazy for real because it felt crazy, and there’s no way I didn’t look crazy.
There was one take where I got tangled because I was moving so much, too. You do that a lot, something you would never do when it’s being filmed, but to get the emotions right for the sound, I got caught up in my long cord with the headphones, and then I was starting to sweat because I’m getting in my internal dialogue. I am literally beginning a workout right now, going through all these, and there are pages and pages of it. I tried to take off my sweatshirt, but then I was caught in the thing, but I didn’t want to break the characters. Sadly, we weren’t filming then. I can’t believe we didn’t get that on film because that would’ve been forever in my personal blooper reel of all time, though I think we actually kept that take oddly enough, so we’ll see.
Slayers: A Buffyverse Story premieres exclusively on Audible, releasing all nine episodes on October 12th.
