Nothing much new. Nothing overly spoilery. But here it is for what it’s worth.
Oh, and I’ve bolded a quote about 2/3rds of the way down that kitties might find interesting about the future of Willow and Tara. It’s vague enough that I don’t think it needs spoiler space.
Happy reading.
EASY AS ‘PIE?’:
ALYSON HANNIGAN RETURNS FOR ‘AMERICAN PIE 2’
By IAN SPELLING
(Distributed by New York Times Special Features.)
Alyson Hannigan, you starred in “American Pie.” You stole the show and uttered the most memorable line of dialogue. You watched that 1999 teen sex comedy blast past the $100 million mark. What’s next — a sequel, right?
Well, not so fast.
“It was definitely an arm twist,” says Hannigan, who eventually did sign on to reprise her role as the flute-playing, sex-fiend dork Michelle in “American Pie 2.” “I was so satisfied with the first movie and especially my character. I could understand, ‘OK, a sequel,’ but I just didn’t think Michelle should be a part of it. I thought you got the bang for the buck. “I was told, ‘No, no, your character will definitely be a part
of a sequel,’ but I couldn’t figure out how that would work and I was really apprehensive.
“Then I got the script and thought, ‘Oh, wow, OK,”’ she continues. “I liked what they’d done and where they went with the character ... I still had reservations about the whole idea of a sequel — there will be such high expectations — but the script was so funny, and if there’d been no ‘American Pie’ I’d have loved this
script anyway.”
Making the film involved a race against the clock. At the time an actors’ strike seemed imminent, and all the cast members, whose Hollywood stock had risen dramatically in the wake of “American Pie,” had to juggle other films — not to mention Hannigan’s television series, “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” — to fit in the sequel.
“Everything was done in a rush because of the strike and also because ‘American Pie 2’ is really a summer movie,” Hannigan says by telephone from her Los Angeles home. “It takes place in the summer, and it couldn’t wait until next summer because it’s supposed to be the summer after the gang’s first year of college. If we were five years older, it would look a little odd.”
Working around her “Buffy” role as Willow was especially complicated, she says.
“I was doing ‘Buffy’ during the first movie, too,” she recalls, “but I didn’t work as often as I did on this one. We were at the end of the ‘Buffy’ season this time, so I was really tired. It was chaotic. I had a 27-hour day — I worked on ‘American Pie 2’ for 12 hours on a Sunday night and then they drove me to the
‘Buffy’ set, where I had a 15-hour day. Fortunately it was a stunt day on ‘Buffy,’ so I could get some rest in my trailer.”
Bizarrely, the plot details of “American Pie 2” are being kept as secret as a Stanley Kubrick script. Hannigan will reveal only that most of her scenes pair her with Jason Biggs as Jim, the sexually frustrated teen who last time around made dessert sexy before falling for lusty Michelle.
“Michelle is working at band camp now, which I really enjoyed,” Hannigan says. “She’s basically still Michelle and in her little Michelle world. Jim comes to her for advice and they have their training moments. I think I can say that — I think that’s all I can say.”
The actress giggles.
“Seriously, you’d think we were working for the White House,” she says. “Script pages we used on the set were on dark paper that you couldn’t copy. The initial script I received had my last name over the entire text, on each page, so if I Xeroxed it they’d know who leaked it.
“It was ridiculous.”
To fans of “Buffy” and “American Pie,” it came as something of a shock when the 27-year-old redhead posed for a sexy pictorial in FHM, a men’s magazine that crowned her 10th among its ”100 Sexiest Women.” Not the look usually associated with the scruffy Michelle or Willow.
“I don’t care if I look good, because that’s not what my career is about,” says the actress, who was born in Washington and made her screen debut at 14 in “My Stepmother Is an Alien” (1988). “It’s not about, ‘Well, I’ve to go for this glamorous role.’ It’s about doing characters that I can play, about making people believe that I’m that character.
“Surprisingly, they’re always the unglamorous characters,” she adds. “I realize a lot of actresses wouldn’t play Michelle — and good, I’m glad they didn’t, because I had a great time.”
To hear Hannigan tell it, she’s having a great time on “Buffy” as well. The show will kick off its sixth season in October, when fans will learn how series creator Joss Whedon plans to resurrect Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar), the show’s currently dead title character, and also what lies ahead for the relationship between Willow and her girlfriend, Tara (Amber Benson).
“No relationships ever seem to go smoothly,” Hannigan says vaguely, fully aware that Whedon, too, likes to keep his stories under wraps as long as possible. “It’s still Sunnyvale, so there could be trouble. But maybe they’ll prevail — who knows?”
When “Buffy” returns to the airwaves, it will do so on UPN, not on the WB network, its original home. Warner Bros. gambled on the show when no one else would, and made the show its signature series in its campaign to snare young viewers. This past winter, however, Whedon and 20th Century Fox Television, which produces “Buffy,” took the money — reportedly north of $2 million per episode for two years — and jumped ship to UPN.
The change in networks hasn’t directly affected “Buffy” yet, Hannigan says, but she was struck by the fact that she and the other cast members attended the recent annual gathering of the Television Critics Association to promote the show.
“We hadn’t done TCA since the first season,” she says. “It feels almost as if it’s the first season again. Also, Joss is obviously an overachiever already, but starting over will make him make sure the show is that much better. He’s very competitive — he wants to see the show do well and ‘save UPN’ and be such a hit.
“I think it’s given us all a new energy,” she concludes. “It doesn’t feel like we’ve done 100 episodes. The change came at a good time — it’s pumping Joss and everybody up again.”
Despite the vogue for television stars leaving their shows for greener pastures, Hannigan is not only happy to return to “Buffy” for season six but also more than willing to consider several more thereafter. She’s less interested in a hypothetical “American Pie 3,” however.
“No, no, no,” she says adamantly — and then stops herself. “Well, I said no ‘American Pie 2.’ But no, this is it. Hopefully people will enjoy ‘American Pie 2’ as much as the first one, but that’s it for me.”
She pauses again.
“Well, unless it’s in 50 years and we do a ‘Cocoon’-like ‘American Pie,”’ Hannigan says, laughing. “That could be fun. I think on my death bed the nurse will come in and go, ‘Band camp!”’
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“Sassy eggs.”