*sigh*

[lirazel]

Oh, Joss. I do not understand your infatuation with Eliza Dushku. She's very excellent at playing a specific kind of character (badass, uninhibited: Faith, pretty much), but she has a very limited range, and I would rather Joss do a project with literally any other Dollhouse cast member than him try to do something with her again. With the amount of incredible people in that cast--Enver and Olivia Williams and Reed Diamond and Dichen Lachman and pretty much everyone else--I can't imagine why he'd rather work with Eliza. *sigh* But clearly, everyone at whedonesque disagrees with me.

Also! Just in case someone missed it, this thread (and yes, you have to read all the comments, since that's where the fun is) might be the greatest thread in the history of lj. Just sayin'.

Thank y'all so much for going with the Three Sentence Fic-a-Thon. It's making me really, really happy, and there's some great, great, great fic being written. Keep it up!

Comments

[penny-lane-42.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes. He's obviously (understandably) impressed by her acting abilities (I love what he said about her being like Jimmy Stewart), but she's very much the professional (which I love about her), and he seems to want playmates.

Mostly, though, I can't stop thinking about the way he treated Charisma Carpenter when she got pregnant. As much as I love a lot of his work, that makes me wonder about him in RL.

[ohwaluvusbab.livejournal.com]

I'm curious about the whole Charisma Carpenter business. The things I've heard are that she was apparently a supreme diva who was unprofessional. What's the business with Joss and the pregnancy?

[penny-lane-42.livejournal.com]

She got pregnant the summer before S4 of Angel and didn't tell Joss about it beforehand (I don't believe she should have to: who knows if it was planned? Besides, it's her pregnancy; he's got nothing to do with it). Joss got pissed and instead of thinking of a plotline that would incorporate the pregnancy and still leave her her dignity, he went with the Cordy/Connor/Jasmine thing. Then he didn't tell her he wasn't bringing her back on in S5. She found out through the press. She found out she'd lost her job. Through the press.

Then came AtS's 100th episode special (which turned into "You're Welcome"). They wanted SMG to come on, but she was either busy or just didn't want to. So they asked Charisma. She wasn't thrilled about coming back, but she thought the character deserved a great send-off, so she agreed to do it but only if they didn't kill of Cordy. She was on set (I believe) for filming and Jeffrey Bell pulled her aside and told her they were going to kill Cordy. She was understandably upset. I believe she wanted to pull out, but she read the script and liked it well enough and decided to do it because she felt the character and the fans deserved it.

I do believe that Charisma was deeply unhappy with the direction they were taking Cordy's character and that she didn't do her best acting in S4 because she was so upset. (She's fabulous in "You're Welcome," though, so she obviously wanted to send off the character in style). Which is not very professional.

But. It sounds to me like Joss was at fault just as much. I know that we'll never know for sure, but from everything I've heard, he virtually punished her for getting pregnant. And especially coming from a guy who calls himself a feminist...that's not cool.

So yeah. I think it was an ugly situation all around and no one acted the way they should have.

[queenofdenile.livejournal.com]

I love love LOVE Cordelia and thought Charisma was great, but I heard a different version of the story. I heard that she waited until the very last minute to tell him she was pregnant, after the staff had written the latter part of S4 leading up to a big confrontation with Angel vs. possessed Cordy. Since Charisma would not be able to pull off those scenes in her condition, they had to rewrite everything. I've also heard numerous stories about her being *incredibly* difficult to work with.

Obviously there are two sides to every story, but Joss going out of his way to screw over a pregnant woman out of spite doesn't seem to fit with some of his other actions. I mean, when they fired Glenn Quinn, Joss told the press and the fans that he had always planned to kill off Doyle, when really Quinn's drug problem made it impossible to work with him. But Joss allowed the fans to get angry with him, I guess to not jeopardize Quinn in any other opportunities.

So anyway, I really don't know which version is true. That's just the one I heard.

She found out through the press. She found out she'd lost her job. Through the press.


See, that's the exact same line Alyson Hannigan gave - she said the cast had to find out that BtVS wasn't returning through EW and SMG didn't have the courtesy to tell the cast herself. Then Nicholas Brendon, James Marsters, and Anthony Stewart Head immediately denied AH's statement and said she was full of shit (in a much nicer way than I just said it). So that comment raises a red flag in my mind.

[ohwaluvusbab.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. I'm not really inclined to believe either 'side' of the story, after reading queenofdenile's post below. It was probably a mixture of both. Meh.

[madcap-shiny.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I don't know, I remember reading an interview that took place right after Buffy ended and SMG said something like "now that Joss isn't yelling at me everyday [...]" and I went "huh. Either she is being wicked unprofessional, or Joss was totally an asshat to her, and from what I have seen SMG is one of the classiest ladies, so...huh."

I don't know this story! I remember reading awhile ago that there was some kind of behind-the-scenes weirdness, and I think CC had to be talked into coming back for You're Welcome (?), but I have not heard any other details.

[penny-lane-42.livejournal.com]

I've replied about the CC thing above. It's an ugly situation.

But yeah, SMG is so professional that she'll actually try to tell you that she thinks it was a good idea to do Scooby-Doo, so I kind of suspect he was an asshat to her.

I think he's probably really, really good to the people he hits it off with (Hannigan, Acker, Dushku, the entire cast of Firefly) and not so much to people he doesn't. Also...I just get the feeling sometimes that after years of people telling him he's a genius that he's a little self-satisfied and that he doesn't like it when people don't pander to that.

I could be entirely wrong about that...but that's the impression I get.

[next_to_normal]

I have heard it both ways. I've heard that Joss felt SMG wasn't grateful enough to him, because Buffy is what made her a star. And then I've heard that SMG felt Joss wasn't grateful enough to her, because it was her acting that made his show popular. Could be a little bit of both, I guess, although SMG doesn't seem to have a diva bone in her body so it's hard to see her making a stink about not getting enough gratitude from Joss.

Either way, it definitely seems like they didn't get along. If nothing else, I find it telling that Eliza got a career intervention from Joss because it hurt him to see her in crappy horror movies when she's "so much better than that," whereas SMG, who has far more talent, didn't get a similar intervention when she did a string of equally bad horror movies.

[penny-lane-42.livejournal.com]

I agree with this comment 100%. I think we're very much on the same page about the whole thing.

I'm just gonna be sitting over here, fangirling SMG and wishing that she'll get better parts in the future and that she's loving being a mom.

[next_to_normal]

I'm just gonna be sitting over here, fangirling SMG and wishing that she'll get better parts in the future and that she's loving being a mom.

Word. :)

[eilowyn.livejournal.com]

Joining the above corner of SMG fangirling, adding my mourning of The Wonderful Maladys to the mix (moment of silence, please).