It's Always Darkness Before Dawn

From Xpose Special 15 (Destiny Special) - May 2001

Since the start of the season five, there's been a familiar stranger in the Summers house. Paul Spragg asked Michelle Trachtenberg about destiny, and being the sister of Buffy The Vampire Slayer.

There has certainly been a lot to like about the latest season of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, but most obvious has been a superb young actress introduced into the regular cast. Appearing at the start of the season as Dawn Summers, the sister we never Buffy had (because she didn't, but more of that later), Michelle Trachtenberg has made an indelible impact on the show, and she's still only 15. You may also recognise her from her time in the short-lived comedy Meego (she was Maggie Parker), and the feature films Harriet the Spy and Inspector Gadget (she played Penny).

Trachtenberg has been a fan of the show from the beginning, "Joss [Whedon, the creator] has often told me that I am the one of the only season regulars that they have had on the show that really, really knows their Buffy. I mean, every part of it. You can ask me a trivia question from season one to four, obviously including five, and I'll know the answer and give you the background." Proving this she adds, "I really loved Hush and when Buffy and Faith switched places [This Year's Girl/Who Are You]. I like the season finale at the end of season four [Restless], which is actually where my character, Dawn is referred to by name."

Little did she realise then that she would soon be an integral part of the show, and despite having a familiarity with the characters, she still admits, "I was a little bit nervous because the show had already been established. But on my first day I was welcomed with open arms and they really accepted me and made me feel at home, like I'd been there for four years along with everybody else. It was a really wonderful feeling to know that this season was going to be really fun for me because I was working with people that are not only nice, but intelligent and I can learn many thing from them."

"I worked with Sarah [Michelle Gellar, Buffy] before on All my Children for about two and a half years. That was actually the first reason why I started watching Buffy, because I admired Sarah's work , and then I continued to watch because of the original and unique storylines."

Unusually, the 'bonding' process had to be quicker than usual. Where a new character is introduced, they normally have time to find their place in the set-up. Not so Dawn, who had to give a sense that she'd always been in Sunnydale. You see, what even she doesn't know in the beginning is that she is the physical form of a key that serves an as-yet-unknown universal purpose, and everyone in Sunnydale has been given false memories to hide the key's presence. Thankfully, Trachtenberg found blending in quite easy.

"[The cast have] things that we find funny about each other and things that we joke about and I've really developed a relationship with Joss. I understand where he sees my character going and I try to comply with his opinions and incorporate them with mine.

"Sarah and I have worked to create that sisterly comfort that sisters have; they know what the other one is going to do, they can almost see their next move." Has Trachtenberg got any siblings of her own? "Yes, I have an older sister." So does that help make Dawn and Buffy's relationship more realistic? "In a sense, yes, because I know how sister relationships go and I kind of have an insight into what is expected of a sister. Having a sister has helped me in that sense, but because Dawn has this extra-special origin and she is the key to Mankind's survival, I've had to create a lot of Buffy and Dawn's relationship, just from how Sarah and I interact. Because Buffy is the Slayer, they both have an extra-special secret, so they will share that and they both share so many emotions, like in The Body with the death of Joyce [Buffy and Dawn's mom]."

The body was merely the latest in a long line of powerful emotional stories that Trachtenberg has had to deal with this season. "I think that because we don't know very much about Dawn, I was almost able to go a little further in her emotions and the range that she goes though, especially in episode 12, Blood Ties, where she finds out about herself. I did not have a lot of background because 12 episodes is not that long. It's six months in TV land. So I only really had six months to develop a base for a character and then immediately I was thrown this fact about her [and] I had to tap into how she'd react.

"When you're an actress, not only do you have to say lines, and believe lines, you have to make the audience believe what you're saying. And you have to take the lines off the page and no longer make them just words, you have to make them real feelings that a person can relate to. Instead of Having everything be black and white, you want it to be a rainbow."

Blood Ties also provided one of the scariest scenes in Buffy so far when Dawn cuts her arm to try to prove that she's 'real'. "It was difficult for me to grasp this concept. But it was understandable why Dawn would immediately, from finding out these horrible things about her, try to disprove them or try to put sense to it. That was one thing that I would do and if I find something does not make sense, I will not accept it.l have to try to put logic to it and I have to try to break it down and think about it. It wasn't difficult to understand why Dawn goes and cuts herself, but the challenge was to again make the audience believe that her pain has come to such a climax that she had to such a climax that she had to cut herself. It was like a volcano that erupted. I wanted it almost to be quiet and not really understanding it, and the next time you see Dawn. it's like Boom! She's gotten it within the commercial break."

Then there was The Body, an episode dealing with the death of Buffy and and Dawn's mother that was carried purely on the performances of those involved, with no music present. How did Trachtenberg feel when she saw the script? "I was first of all amazed at how peacefully, in a sense, and how to the point it was written. We were all, with our dialogue, a little bit more blunt, and when I read the scene where Dawn finds out that her mother is dead, it was shocking.

"What the audience doesn't get to see is the close-up images and you don't get to hear the words of Dawn hearing about the death of her mother. The actual words are very powerful, but the most powerful thing is just seeing it from afar and it lets the audience imagine their own words and their own reactions. And because there wasn't any additional weight, like background music. Sometimes when something is sounded out in a movie the sad music starts to play, but there was nothing.

"In silence so many things can happen, and that's what The Body, in my personal opinion, illustrated. I think it was really wonderful collaborative effort; the end result, obviously Joss being the writer and director, [he was] letting each of us experience our character's emotions by ourselves and then letting it be a collaborative effort. We really put our all into The Body, and we had, in the weirdest sense, a lot of fun with it because I got to see a whole other side of my character that I didn't know before."

Presumably, she has been happy with her performances so far, then. "It's a really difficult question," she considers, "because personally when I watch a video of myself I always think 'Oh I could have done that differently or 'I could have done this a little bit more' I take the opinions of the people around me and hear what they've thought about it, and the feedback has been pretty good and pretty positive. I hope to keep making you guys think positively about my character, and to me, I can always try and be better."

As we speak , Trachtenberg is on set for filming of the season's penultimate episode. Is this the first part of a season concluding two-parter? " I can't tell you!" she exclaims, laughing. "I guess what I can say is that the latter episode, it's pretty much the resolution of the entire season, everything that has been mentioned thoughout the season and every little problem collected within the last few episodes will either be explained or a resolution will come from them. You guys will find out a little bit more about Glory and Ben and Dawn and the Key and the gifts of the Slayer, etc."

So she's not going to reveal how they're connected? "Oh no, of course not! I'm keen to your tricks!" she replies firmly. One more try: what everyone wants to know is, will she be in the next season? "And that is a question that I cannot answer. You guys will have to, of course, watch the season finale. I'm sure you will all be hearing many rumors over the Internet and you can believe them and not believe them but we will never ever tell what will happen." She laughs again. As if to explain her reticence, Trachtenberg adds, "My friends will stop by [the set] and see what's going on, but they're not allowed to read any scripts either and they can only stop by when the scenes that we are filming will not give anything away. ! trust my friends, but they can accidentally slip!"

Going by her CV, it seems Trachtenberg has a certain something that lands her major roles. Her theory on the matter is that, "I'm a confident person, in the sense that I believe if I put my mind to anything, I can achieve whatever I set my mind to. I don't think I will ever be confident that 'Oh, Cm such a talented actress that I will always be the leading lady.' My confidence comes from me, Michelle, as a person. I don't necessarily believe that I will act and be lead forever, but I want to continue to act for a long time. I love to do what I do, I want to try and jump into different venues of acting; I want to direct one day and I want to produce one day, but I guess that would be a question to ask the casting director, why am I getting cast in lead roles.

"I guess a person off the street could come in and read for a director and do an incredible job, and an actor who's been in the business for years can come in and do a cruddy job. It depends on how a certain actor understands the character. If they really understand the character they'll be able to audition better, because in a 10-minute audition they can open up a window to that character that they're playing and let the director have five hours of information from that little 10-minute audition."

It's not all work, though. Or is it? Even when she's on set, Trachtenberg explains that "I am taking a three-minute break from school to speak to you. "It's okay, I was doing trigonometry: I don't miss it," she confides, before adding, "I can figure out Pythagorean theorems arid the square roots and the tangents of every number while singing and dancing and talking, All very simple to me."