In this next part of the interview, Doug Jones gets excited about Felicia Day and her projects that she currently has as well as discusses his time working on an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Read part I of the interview here
AF: How did you line up the role for The Guild? Did you have to audition or were you asked to play a role?
Doug Jones: No it was not an audition; it was more of a Hollywood party thing. Last year at Comic-Con in San Diego at one of the after parties, with a whole bunch of people from the Joss Whedon universe, and I met Felicia Day, as both of us had been guests on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. She’s also had been on the new Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog and a guest star on Dollhouse, so she is just kind of like a Joss Whedon favorite.
Well when I met her at the party, we were both aware each other and we hit it off. A few months later I got a private message on twitter and it so happened to be that we were following each other on twitter she sent me a message saying is there an email address where I can send a script to you. So I said yes and gave her my email address.
What showed up was a script for her other web series that is coming out in August called Dragon Age: Redemption, based on the Dragon Age video game. Actually more like Dragon Age 2 I think that just came out in March. And so I read this and Felicia is the most brilliant writer and she is a charming actress of course.
She’s this fiery red-head with a great sense of humor and it comes out in her writing as well. She really knows how to write for actors, she gives us great dialogue and because she is giving herself great dialogue too. So Dragon Age: Redemption is what really hooked me into the Felicia Day world, which was a great way for this to happen. In Dragon Age: Redemption I play her bad guy nemesis and I’m like the evil character of the series that keeps coming back, episode after episode to wreak havoc.
So I can’t say anything more about that until after the comic-con panel and I see how much they are showing and telling. But it is going to be really worth looking at. You know web series’ now a-days can be anything from a guy with a camcorder and a YouTube channel to something like Dragon Age which is backed by Bio Ware the game company and it is going be out there in every portal on the webernet. So in the end they did have a budget, they had financial backing and great actors and great writing and it was like Lord of the Rings for the web, it was that epic.
So once we hit it off and worked together very well there, the next thing we did together was a movie called Rock Jocks and her production designer and the make-up artist who designed my look for Dragon Age, well he was producing and production designing a movie called Rock Jocks, which is a team of scientists in a secret government program that are shooting asteroids out of the sky before they hit the Earth. They are the ones that approached me, the production team, not Felicia.
They approached me and asked “hey can you play our alien in this.” There is this alien on this secret government team that lives in area 51 or wherever we are doing this, and I am a permanent resident of this facility I’m a huge government secret. I’m an alien from outer-space who helped them set-up the program with all my know how. Felicia was then brought in as a member of the Rock Jocks team, so we got to work again on that.
During Rock Jocks is when she was developing and writing season five of The Guild. I got an email one day while we were in production for Rock Jocks that said “hey would you like to take a look at this script of season five of The Guild.” And I about wet myself because I love that show. So when I read the script for season five of The Guild “oh my gosh”, I was in hysterics laughing the entire time. She just so gets it.
As you know The Guild is all about gamers and about all of the craziness that follows them around that they create for themselves. And season four of The Guild at the end of the show, they kind of set you up for “oh there’s a convention coming in season five.” The whole gang, the season regulars will be heading to a gamers convention and that is where season five takes place. And that is where you will meet Doug Jones playing “I can’t tell you yet” because until I see the panel for season five of The Guild down at the comic-con in a few days I’m not going to know how much I can say. But I know that myself and Erin Gray will be there. Do you remember her from Silver Spoons?
I love Erin Gray. She is also a recurring guest star on season five of The Guild and we are going to be introduced at the comic-con panel. You will meet me at the convention with the gang and we interact mostly with Robin Thorssen’s character. She is delightful. That platinum blonde and her little voice and she is just ediblely adorable to me. So she is the main one from the cast that me and my team of people interact with and we have such a ball.
I’ll give you this up front. I play a man of distinct style wink wink and when you’re done watching season five I hope that all the kids will try to talk like me, if that makes sense. When it is all said and done, filming one particular scene I have never broken down and laughed that many times on film ever. You know those outtakes where people get so tickled about something and can’t pull it back together again? Well that happened to me for the first time on The Guild and I’m very proud of that.
AF: One of my favorite characters you played was the lead Gentleman from the Buffy Episode “Hush.” What was that experience like? Because for half of the show, no one talked. And no matter how many times I watch, you are absolutely creepy.
Doug Jones: Oh thank you. I thought I never say thank you when someone said that. That was one of those dreamy experiences that you can’t see coming. It was one of those deals that my agent at the time called me up and said hey I got an audition for you for Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
I got there and found out that there was no dialogue and there was nothing to study up ahead of time just walk-in, meet Joss Whedon and a couple of writers and he explained what the Gentlemen were going to be and can you smile real big for us and move around like your gliding. Well it was between myself and Camden Toy, the actor who played my right hand Gentleman partner in that episode.
The two of us became the main ones that the show focused on and we had about four others that were also Gentlemen. But Camden and I were the ones that Josh specifically said to his team “Oh my gosh those two guys creep the crap out of me” and he wanted us back in. And because of the height difference I became the leader of The Gentlemen.
So we had such a great time and Camden Toy, this is where met, we have stayed fast and furious friends ever since. We filmed that back in 1999 so that is crazy to me to think that one episode of a TV show from 11-12 years ago, has this kind of staying power but the Buffy fans are loyal and smart and they stick on it and they follow on it, and I owe part of this house to them that I am sitting in as well.
The other thing that was daring was for a TV series to have an episode with over half of it in complete silence like you were saying. Television is all about stimulating every sense that the viewer has so that you can keep them on your channel, right? Because that is what it is about. So when the network heard that this was happening, this episode, they were kind of nervous about it, like if we take the sense of sound away we might lose our audience to another channel because people might say this is boring and click.
Well quite the opposite happened as you know. What that episode did when it got quiet you leaned in and you paid really close attention. So I thought that was a genius act and Joss Whedon was the genius who had the vision to make it happen. So between that and him being the one who actually wrote and directed that episode, which he did not always do, (write and direct every episode). But when he came down from the office to get his hands dirty on that one everyone on the crew knew this one was a special episode.
Part III to follow later.
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