Buffy the Vampire Slayer fans can return to that universe in Slayers: A Buffyverse Story. Amber Benson and Christopher Golden co-wrote the nine-episode series. Benson is best known to Buffy fans for playing Tara Maclay and reprises that role in Slayers, but she and Golden have both written Buffyverse stories previously. Golden has written or co-written 15 Buffy the Vampire Slayer novels and many issues of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel comics. That includes two comic book series focused on Tara and Willow Rosenberg that he and Benson wrote together.
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With Slayers, Benson and Golden are taking the Buffyverse into new territory, penning the first (and, they hope, not the last) scripted Buffyverse podcast. ComicBook.com spoke to Benson and Golden about what drew them back to the Buffyverse 20 years after the original series’ end and what fans should expect from Slayers.
Jamie Lovett, ComicBook.com: Both of you have a history of writing Buffyverse stories for novels and comics. When Audible approached you about creating a podcast, did you have ideas in your back pocket that you hadn’t gotten to use? Did it take a minute for you to consider, “Do I still have things to offer to these characters?” Was there any pause at all?
Amber Benson: For me, the biggest reason to do Slayers with Chris was to see Cordelia the Vampire Slayer come to life. I worked with Charisma on a film a few years ago, and we had this scene. She and I had never worked together before, but we were in this scene playing this very emotional moment, and it was transcendent, and I was like, “Oh my God, she’s so good. I really want to see her be a vampire slayer.” I think the seeds of that were sown during that scene. To be able to work with Chris and Audible on this and bring that to life was really important for me.
Christopher Golden: From my perspective, as soon as it came up and we started talking about it, it was a checklist populating itself in my head of things that I’d wished for, that I wanted to see happen, but then also this explosion of what ifs and every conversation we had brought out more of that and more of that and more of that and the best thing about it was to be able to make it a true ensemble story so that we could give all of these amazing cast members meat to chew, something to really chew on and focus them and give them emotional beats and arcs that they never had before. That’s been such a pleasure and, of course, any opportunity to work with Amber is always such a pleasure. We just have such a good time together.
AB: We do. He’s my big brother from another mother.
The podcast has characters that are familiar but different. Cordelia is the most obvious, as she’s a vampire slayer here, but she is still very much Cordelia Chase, but also not. What was the trick for you to write in a way that the character and the others who are also a little different still felt like those characters while bringing out those other different sides?
AB: Charisma and I were talking, and she was saying how it was very hard for her to put that together in her mind. In fact, she came to me and Chris when we were recording. She’s like, “Okay, am I doing this right because here’s this world-weary slayer, and then there’s the snark, and how do I balance…” And Chris was like, “Oh no, you nailed it. You don’t have to worry. You’ve got this. Get out of your head. You’re already doing it.”
CG: Well, the interesting thing about that, Amber, to me, is that this version of Cordelia is more like Charisma than the original version of Cordelia for sure. It has more of her in it, I think.
AB: There’s a gravitas to Charisma. I think people think of her as funny and snarky, and there’s a real depth and thoughtfulness to her. She’s a very bright human, and you talk to her for five minutes, and you’re like, “Okay, she’s beautiful and sexy, and she’s really brilliant on top of that.”
CG: Yeah, it’s crazy. The interesting thing, I would say, is that even the characters who exist in the Buffyverse that we know are different because it’s 10-12 years later and they have changed since the end of the show. The Giles that you meet is the familiar Giles, but he’s been changed by the passage of time. The Spike that you meet is the Spike that you knew, but he has been significantly changed by the passage of time. Going into the other world, it’s the same thought process. You are looking at these characters, you look at Tara and say, what was her life like in this new version? What did she not experience that the one we knew experienced? And what did she experience? And you start to put together who that character is and who they’re going to be. I think one of the best helps for doing that was having Indira as a new character, and Laya DeLeon Hayes is phenomenal in that role.
AB: BAFTA award-winning Laya.
CG: BAFTA award-winning Laya Hayes, yeah. Phenomenal in that role, made everybody stand up and be like, “Oh, we really have to bring our A-game here.” But having that character be the entry point, a character who’s a fan girl, who knows the familiar, but also has to learn the new, allows us to give the audience a lot of what they need to learn who the new characters are, new versions.
Amber, you’re also performing in the podcast. Given that you’re also writing, were there things in your mind that you would’ve liked to do with Tara that past Buffyverse stories didn’t allow? Was this an opportunity to say, “Oh, I can do those things now and play that there.”
AB: Because we’re still SAG-AFTRA on strike, I’ve got to be very thoughtful. I think Amber as an actor, hates watching herself and does not like to engage with anything she does, so I really left things to Chris to walk that minefield with the caveat that for me, there is a fandom in this world, and I try to be as respectful of that as possible. They’re very important to me, the people who love Tara as a character, and with the Slayers Audible Original Podcast, I want to be respectful of them, and thoughtful of them. And so, there is a goodness to Tara that is in this podcast that goes all the way through. That was very important for me, to have that so that we could do other darker things with her and still have that baseline and still be respectful to our fans.
CG: It was also that you want to be careful about safeguarding the hearts of those fans because Tara of all the characters has an emotional connection to her fans, and so you want to be careful. But on the other hand, we wanted to take some big swings with Tara knowing that those fans would really trust Amber to bring them somewhere by the time it’s over, that they will feel like they went on the trip, and they were in good hands, I guess is what I’m trying to say.
AB: Yeah. We didn’t want to pull the rug out from under anybody. That’s not interesting to either of us. I don’t want to make anybody feel like, “I got you,” which I think a lot of times happens, creators are like, “Oh, I want to rile everybody up.” We didn’t want to rile anybody up. We just wanted everyone to have a good experience.
CB: Yeah, that’s true. And that’s what I’m saying, but at the same time, we didn’t want to cheat the character by not giving her something interesting and challenging to go through. We wanted to make sure that we are getting her somewhere that will be rewarding to the people who follow along. And hopefully, we get to do more, and we have much larger plans in stores.
AB: I mean, I will say, getting to be in a room with Juliet Landau when she’s making goo-goo eyes at you and wanting to do naughty things with your body is pretty hot. So, on that front, I think Tara definitely has some fun.
You mentioned Indira, a fun new character, and from talking to you, it seems plain that the fans who love these characters are very much at the forefront of your mind. So, I’m wondering, given that Indira is that Ms. Marvel fangirl type, how much is she a reflection of your own experience with fans? Or did you try not to take that specific approach as you developed that character?
AB: Oh, that’s a really interesting question, actually. I think we first saw her as an amazing new evolution of a slayer. The world that we inhabit now, or 10 years previous, is a very diverse world, and that was very, very important. You see that in these new characters that Juno Dawson and Julia Cho play, and we have Laya. That was very important to us. So, we were thinking in terms of her character, but then also we were thinking in terms of she’s the person that lays down the rules for us of this world. And it can be very didactic, that character, that, “Oh, let me info-dump you.” And so, finding her as a fan of this was a great way to have that enthusiasm, and energy, and fun-ness of the info dump and the world-building and the rules. So, I came at it from that point of view.
CG: Laya made it easy to do all of that with her, with Indira. But I also think that from the perspective of who she is as a fan, it’s us also saying, “Hey, by the way, being a fan and having all this knowledge is your superpower. This is something that you bring to the table and that we engage with because we feel the same way.” And so, to have her there to be able to be fan-ish, this is what she’s always wanted, but now here it is. All the scenes with her and Charisma as Cordelia are some of my favorite scenes in the show. I mean, when people listen to it, they’ll understand why the relationship is so good and really is such a pleasure to hear.
Slayers: A Buffyverse Story premieres exclusively on Audible, releasing all nine episodes on October 12th.
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