Bell Talks Buffy And Angel

Jeffrey Bell, who co-wrote and directed the finale of The WB's vampire series Angel, told SCI FI Wire that scheduling conflicts and story concerns were the main reasons why Buffy the Vampire Slayer star Sarah Michelle Gellar won't appear in Angel's final episodes. Angel co-creator Joss Whedon had asked Gellar to appear while Gellar was busy. But when Gellar was available for the final episode, producers opted not to include her, because they didn't want the show's finale to be about Buffy, said Bell, the series co-executive producer.

"Buffy [Gellar] is an aspect of Angel," Bell said in an interview. "It would have been great if she could have come in for one of the last couple of episodes, but not the finale. But Sarah was in Japan shooting her feature [The Grudge] right up until we were shooting our last episode. Joss had asked her if she was available for number 20 ['The Girl in Question'] or number 21 ['Power Play'], and she wasn't. So we wrote number 20 [as] a story that dealt emotionally with Buffy, even though she wasn't in it."

Bell added that the finale, "Not Fade Away," "is about our people and everything we'd been through. And we'd already written about Buffy in number 20. So the ship had sailed and there wasn't a lot we could do about it.

"It would have been great to have her," Bell added. "It would have been a huge ratings boon. The fans would have loved it. But not for the finale. That's not what Angel ultimately is about. We struggled so much to get as many of our stories resolved anyway. I can't imagine having added that to the mix as well." The WB will air "Not Fade Away" on May 19.