You've written some Darla episodes - how has the character developed.

Well, we shot flashback episodes in the first year and when it came time to end the season we knew we wanted to bring back somebody from Angel�s past. We weren�t really planning on it being Darla, earlier in the season.

But when we looked back at what we had done we realised, "Look we�ve actually introduced this character through flashbacks, with her importance in Angel�s development, so wouldn�t this be the perfect character to bring back." We�d actually laid the groundwork without realising we�ve been doing that. So we brought her back at the end of season one.

As far as the episode Darla goes, I felt like it was time to do a Darla story. We�d seen her in a few scenes in the first couple of [season two] episodes, and then in episode five "Dear Boy", she made herself known to Angel. And we learned a huge piece of information which was that she�s not a vampire any more, she�s human.

By the time we got to episode seven I felt like it was time to really explore what that meant. Joss had invited me down to the Buffy set so we could discuss Angel, and I suggested that we do a Darla flashback, an origins piece in essence, [where we'd be] seeing her before she was turned into a vampire. [It would look at] who was she before as a human, since the story would deal in what it was like for her to be a human now, post-vampire.

So I felt like a big flashback episode was in order, and I remember him saying to me "That�s all very well and good, however on that very night on Buffy we�re doing an episode about Spike's origins, of his flashbacks." At the same time it occurred to us � actually, that makes perfect sense because their stories would intersect in certain ways. Also, this was a way for us to do a crossover without actually doing a crossover, with two completely stand-alone episodes.

When you view them together you get more pieces of information that maybe you would seeing them separately. So that was very exciting for me, and it was also the first episode I got to direct which was enormously fun.