Angel : Aftermath

Juliet Landau is multi-tasking without pause these days. Famous as an actress for her role as Drusilla, the psychic/psychotic vampire on BUFFY and ANGEL, Landau is also getting a name as a rising director for TAKE FLIGHT, her documentary about Gary Oldman’s music video for the band Chutzpah and for co-directing (with cinematographer Deverill Weekes) the Godhead music video HERO, which Landau appears in opposite Godhead lead singer Jason Miller.

Now Landau has branched out into writing comic books with a two-part installment in the ANGEL series centering on Drusilla. To celebrate the release of the comics, Landau will be appearing at Golden Apple Comics in Hollywood on Saturday, August 8, from 6-8 PM. She gives iF Magazine an exclusive on what’s up with revisiting Drusilla, directing and her new projects.

iF MAGAZINE: How did you wind up writing a comic about Drusilla?

JULIET LANDAU: [ANGEL comics publishers IDW] came to me and asked if I would be interested in doing it. I said, "Absolutely." I got an idea for the script and wrote it in script format, [using the scriptwriting software] Final Draft, and sent it to Chris Ryall and Brian Lynch. They loved it and then Brian and I started working. Brian’s written all of the other issues. From the script, Brian wrote a synopsis of issue one, sent it my way, I reworked it and sent it back. Then we did the same thing with the synopsis of issue two. Then he wrote the first five pages, sent them my way, I reworked them and sent them back. We did that up to page thirteen, then we did it up to page twenty-two. And then with the second issue, I got a cool idea about reworking the beginning and how it should be a little bit different from what we had mapped out, so I rewrote the synopsis [for the second issue]. Then Brian sent the first five pages. I rewrote those and then basically continued and just wrote on to the end of page twenty-two. It was really loads of fun.

iF: Did you recall what it felt like playing Drusilla, or did you just think, "Well, this would be an interesting thing to happen for her character?"

LANDAU: You know, it was funny, because the moment that they came to me and asked me to be part of this, literally, this flood of ideas came, I guess from inhabiting the character over the course of six seasons and having her be such a part of my life. It really was easy to tap back into her essence.

iF: Do we see any other characters that we would know from BUFFY and/or ANGEL in your story, or is Drusilla completely off on her own?

LANDAU: Hmm … there are some characters from the show, but it mostly is Dru on her own. And the time frame takes place just before and just after the Fall [the end of the ANGEL TV series.] The whole concept of ANGEL: AFTER THE FALL is literally when Los Angeles has gone to Hell.

iF: How hard was it to find Dru’s voice again?

LANDAU: It was surprisingly easy to find her voice again [laughs]. I keep a file of all of my work, so I have all of my scripts. At a certain point I pulled them out to look at what I had written and to make sure [in terms of notes on the character].

iF: James Marsters, who played Drusilla’s vampire boyfriend Spike, had written a Spike comic a few years ago. Did you talk to him or anybody else from the BUFFY/ANGEL-verse about doing this?

LANDAU: No, I didn’t. From the get-go, I had such a lovely conversation with [IDW’s] Chris Ryall and Bryan Lynch that it just immediately seemed like it was going to be a really conducive working relationship. I had read all of the ANGEL comics and also the BUFFY comics. One of the things [the IDW people] said to me within that conversation was, "We don’t have the limitations of a budget," and that’s something that’s interesting in storytelling, because I found when I was writing my short film IT’S RAINING CATS AND CATS, I also didn’t think in terms of budget [laughs], so all of a sudden I was thinking "crane shot" and "aerial shot" and that kind of thing. It was fun to be able to do that within that context [of a script for a comic], because you don’t have to build a set and have the camera crew — all of that — so there’s a freedom in that that’s really nice. It’s also been completely great to work with [artist] Franco Urru, who’s done all of the internal drawings. He’s done all of the other ANGEL comics. I sent him reference images for each panel, a lot of Kubrick imagery in terms of the look that I had in mind and a bit of a Japanese aesthetic in that I wanted everything to be sort of sparse and economical, but that Dru would be the element that would stand out in each frame. I also worked with two other artists, Sam Shearon, who goes by Mister Sam, and Mark McHaley, who did some additional cover artwork and bonus pin-ups.

iF: Did you have any say in Drusilla’s wardrobe?

LANDAU: Yes, I did. In fact, I did a sketch and sent it to Franco and said, "I cannot draw at all, but I think you’ll get the gist of what it is I’m seeing in my head," and he drew it beautifully.

iF: Does your two-parter still have that very noir look that ANGEL has, or is it a bit different?

LANDAU: We establish a new world, and I worked really hard at that, because initially the colors that were used felt like they weren’t furthering and telling the story. I don’t want to give the specifics away, but we worked on that and got them in a place that’s very different than what [the comics have] done before and I think they tell the story in a really interesting way.

iF: You’ve added some bonus photo material …

LANDAU: We did a photo gallery for both of the issues of the comic. GEEK MAGAZINE ran a spread on me and basically we had done a bunch of shots and so we are using some of those for the first issue and then we did a separate shoot for the second issue. Will Brattain and Sean Elliott [who did costumes on Amber Benson’s film LOVERS, LIARS AND LUNATICS] styled the second photo shoot. It’s not me as Dru. I’ve been doing a bunch of different press photos and a lot of it is on my website with varying looks and characters, because it’s one of the things I absolutely love about what I do. For this, there are three looks: a blonde, very ultra-glam old Hollywood look, a forties retro pin-up look and in the last, I am done up as the female version of the Brad Pitt/Tyler Durden character from FIGHT CLUB.