Charisma Carpenter on leaving Angel

[meganbmoore]

Part of a DragonCon panel in which Charisma Carpenter is a class act under pressure in a room full of Whedon fans (I wouldn't want to have to try to honestly but diplomatically answer those questions), and Julie Benz heroically rescues her in an awkward moment. Felicia Day also talks a bit about filming Dr. Horrible, and poor Kristy Swanson (aka,

Comments

[cerusee]

Yeah. Sadly, that rings true to me. Her whole story rings true. I don't know why--maybe because it sounds a lot like what I'd suspected happened (something was going on in her personal life that was resulting in some very shitty work on her part; she was having some sort of conflict with Joss, and her pregnancy was part of it, she got fired or let go or against her wishes, did not have her contract renewed and was written out of the show as practically an afterthought). It isn't necessarily any more flattering to her than to Whedon and the other producers, but at the end of the day, she was the one out of a job, and being jerked around by her bosses. (Wil Wheaton has some similar stories about the producers of Star Trek who took over after Gene Roddenberry died. He was much more explicit and scathing than Carpenter is here; then again, he no longer relies on acting to put bread on the table. And he was a kid at the time, which makes the way that the producers fucked with him just that much more disgusting.)

It must have been enormously humiliating and painful to her. And she has to navigate all that while talking to fans who are confused about what happened, eager to know as much as possible, and a frankly fickle lot who'll crucify her if she says anything vaguely insulting about Joss Whedon. And she could easily torpedo any possibility of working with Whedon and company again in the future. Like I said, ouch. But she did a pretty good job.

[lady_ganesh]

It certainly falls into a pattern of lead actresses getting screwed over when they got pregnant.