Mandy Griffiths
In the 20 years since “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” premiered, Alyson Hannigan has become a household name for her iconic character Willow, her memorable band geek in “American Pie” and her force of nature Lily in “How I Met Your Mother”.
A rarity on the con scene, Alyson was definitely feeling the love in Melbourne with lines out the door for her panel at Oz Comic Con over the weekend. Here’s what we learned:
Her favourite scene from “Buffy”
Season Two’s “Innocence”, when Willow and Oz (Seth Green) are in the van, she asks if he’s going to kiss her and he says no. While it was a quiet scene, Hannigan felt it was a real turning point for the character, when her focus shifted away from her school girl crush on Xander (Nicholas Brendon) and onto the possibilities of Oz.
Most emotional scene to film
Surprisingly – not on “Buffy”! That honour goes to “How I Met Your Mother” when Lily had to tell Marshall (Jason Segel) that his father has died. Jason hadn’t read the scene as he wanted his reaction to be raw, the taxi kept missing its mark so she kept gearing up for it only to have to reset time and again, and the first take they did was so spot on they didn’t do any more. Hannigan says this was the worst part, because she was still so emotional and wanted to work through it on camera. “I had so many more tears to give. I was crying on the way home thinking this is such a waste!”
On being a doppelganger
“My favourite was Good Willow playing Bad Willow. I didn’t think people would buy Bad Willow. I kept saying ‘I can’t pull off leather!’ So I was very comfortable as Good Willow being uncomfortable playing Bad Willow.” They filmed it old school where a stand-in would play the other part off camera, lock the camera, change outfits, play the other side. It did get a bit confusing when she was Good Willow in Bad Willow’s outfit playing Bad Willow and she kept having to ask the crew which one she was doing.
Favourite “Buffy” episodes
“Hush” and “The Body”. “Hush was very challenging, the actors had to really pay attention to make sure they weren’t missing their ‘line’ or jumping a ‘line’. But The Gentlemen were very scary. With “The Body” Joss put his very soul into the script. They should give him a retroactive Emmy. It was definitely NOT the musical – “sorry Joss”.
She and Alexis got together because of Anthony Stewart Head’s wife?
Alyson had enjoyed working with Alexis but it wasn’t until she saw a very cute man talking to David in the distance that she approached to get to know this guy…only to find out it was Alexis. Turns out he looked very different out of his “Wesley” hair gel and stiff suits. Alexis was “all professional” and did not want to get involved with a coworker, so they were very flirty friends for a year. When he went off to Angel the question of dating re-emerged, with a surprisingly vehement Anthony Stewart Head against the match. “Absolutely not! It would be a mistake!” was his advice to Alyson, which he promptly reneged the next day after speaking to his wife. He encouraged them to go for it, and two children later, Alyson likes to remind him how wrong he had been.
