BBC Cult - Printer Friendly Version
Amber Benson - Co-writer/Director

In the beginning
  What were your initial thoughts when you were approached to do The Ghosts of Albion?

I just was hoping that we could create a story that would be compelling, and create characters that people enjoy watching. That we could tell a good story.

How did you and Chris Golden come to work together as writers?

Chris actually approached me about doing a Tara and Willow comic for Dark Horse, and we ended up doing three of them. Chris is a doll - he's a lot of fun to work with.

Has it been difficult co-writing this - something that's on a much bigger scale than a comic?

I realised that we had our work cut out for us, there was so much to do. Instead of a small comic [where] you had a couple of lines of dialogue here and there, you really had to focus on character and create people that were compelling. [Characters] that people enjoyed watching, that were funny, that were human, that were dramatic, that had arcs.

I think that was what was really tough for Chris and I was to create a handful of characters that were not just flat two-dimensional people, they would be real people as well. We worked really hard to bring it to this level.

How have you found working on an audio drama?

It's a lot like theatre. So, coming from a theatre background I realised we had to focus on getting good performances. There's so much to worry about that I realised you had to let it all go and just focus on the actors. Half of that is in the casting, and we've put together a really amazing cast.

Horror stories
  Do you prefer writing the horror or the character stuff?

I like the characters. It's easy to have someone being chased by a giant were-beast, but you have to make him or her interesting so that people feel for him or her while they're being chased.

If you can't create somebody that you're rooting for - unless you are creating a villain - you're creating a non-sympathetic character.

Do you find that you tend to characterise the monsters as much as the people?

We have a couple of people who are taken over by demons, and we try to keep a little bit of the character to them, but with the others we're going for generic fun and scary things. We wanted to make it fun.

Influences
  Who would you say has influenced you most as a writer and a director?

I love Preston Sturges. I'm a big fan of his, and Stanley Kubrick's stuff is amazing.

I think as a writer you read Dostoyevsky and he deals with character and that's what I'm interested in. You read Tom Stoppard's plays and he deals with character with an intellectual kind of slant, and that's really interesting.

Learning religiously
  Did you learn your technical skills on Buffy, or were they something you'd already established?

I've been acting for 11 years in Los Angeles, and so just being on the sets [helped].

In fact, by the time I got to Buffy I'd been on way too many sets. My brain had been stuffed with different ways of [working]. You watch other directors and how they work, and other writers and how they work.

It's like religion - you learn about them all and then you take what you want from each and apply it to your life. So, I've watched different people and how they work and I tried to take bits and pieces of their work.

Selecting spectres
  What made you decide which ghosts to feature in Ghosts of Albion?

I think there was a whole plethora of ghosts to choose from. England has an amazing past, a lot of heroes, a lot of very powerful and charismatic people, but we settled on the three ghosts that we chose because we felt like they had quirky sensibilities.

Boadicea was an amazing woman, she laid waste seventy thousand enemy soldiers with her army of Celts. Lord Admiral Nelson - he's missing an arm and an eye. How much more quirky can you get? And then [there's] Byron, our bisexual poet, who floats around reciting his poetry to anyone who will listen. He led an amazingly varied life and had affairs with all kinds of interesting people.

They were all very great people in their time, and it only stands to reason that they would be protectors of England.

Step back in time
  Is the 19th century a period in history that you are particularly fond of?

Oh, I want to go back before time began, when we were just little things floating in the Mesozoic - no actors, it's much nicer that way, no kidding!

It's interesting, you're talking about a time period when people weren't primitive any more, yet they still exhibited some of the behaviours of a more primitive [culture].

I don't know why Chris chose to do this period. It is very interesting. You have a lot of cool people inhabiting this time period, and that's why we decided to do a Jane Austenesque kind of thing.

American Albion?
  As an American, how did you feel writing for British characters?

I just hope that our jokes don't fall flat! I think [that], because the internet is now an international entity, you're going to have people from all over the world checking this web site out, so we're not gearing this just at a UK audience, we're gearing this for anybody who's interested in the story.

It just happens to take place in England, which is really cool because I love the accent and I love the people. I'm excited to be a part of it just because I get to come here and work with everybody at the BBC, but I think that an international audience will appreciate it, hopefully...

Taking part
  If you had acted in this, which of the characters would you have played?

Oh, I want to be Byron! Byron was the cool one, Byron's got all the good lines. No, that's not actually true, Nelson has quite a number of good lines too, and in fact I think our ghosts actually have the most interesting stuff to say.

They're very witty and dry and they all have a good sense of humour so... definitely Byron. Because I want to date young boys!