Eight years. It’s a long time. And that – incredibly – is how long David Boreanaz spent working on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. And now, with his hard work in the Joss Whedon universe at an end, and with TV and film project offers rolling in, it’s rare that David gets to change to stop and reflect about his time as Angel – but he made time for Angel Magazine recently.
David starts with the most events, namely Season Five, which saw the addition of several new elements to the show, including the arrival of James Marsters’ Spike to the cast. David sees this as a good move by the writers. “When we were approaching Season Five,” says David, “I spoke to [series creator] Joss Whedon about the addition of James, and my first reaction was ‘great’! We worked together on Buffy and our characters really developed. It definitely enhanced Angel’s character. I think it brought out a lot of humour and a lot of quick wit in Angel and I was kind of upset that we didn’t do more shows around the two characters. I think Season Five was probably one of my favorite seasons. It was great TV.”

There was one thing that David did less of on the show’s final year, however. “The stunt work,” David recalls. “There was a lot of stuff that I would have loved to do. I suffered a knee injury last year and I had my knee operated on a year ago – so going into Season Five I was a bit weak and frustrated because I couldn’t do a lot of the moves that I wanted to do. I remember Season One, after one day of work, it was like waking up after a football game, I was so sore! And as much as I could do, I didn’t do a lot of high falls or crashing through windows, I wanted to do them, but the producers wouldn’t let me. Mike Massa – who’s just a phenomenal stuntman, a great person and a great double for me – just did great stunts all the time. As the years progress, you find that these people are so great at what they do. To be true to character, I would do as much of the fight scenes as I could do but I couldn’t get those big high-flying kicks. I’m not that stretched out.

And it wasn’t just the fight scenes that caused trouble. David admits that he had problems getting to grips with one or two of the Angel storylines during the course of the series. “There were some difficult scenes to do during the five seasons,” he reflects. “Season Four was very dark and very muddy with a lot of confusing plotlines. It was heavy with a lot of huge arcs. The whole Cordelia/Connor thing just freaked me out,” David says, referring to the storyline involving his on-screen girlfriend’s affair with his on-screen son. “It was really twisted! it was just a little weird seeing that, and then having to interact with that sometimes was kind of bizarre. And, yeah, there were brief moments where I’d be jacked up against the wall by ome freaking monster and I’d just be thinking this is insanely stupid! But everything that you usually think is horrible or you feel really uncomfortable with is usually the stuff that comes out really good.