With his appearances on Doctor Who and Little Britain, Head says he’s been lucky enough to have four or five iconic English shows under his belt — “What I always find fascinating is I am all things to all men” — but in America, where he has a home in Los Angeles, he’ll always be famous for playing Sarah Michelle Gellar’s sage mentor on Buffy. “Every time I think, ‘Well, everybody must have forgotten it by now,’ there’s a whole new audience. Young kids coming up to me and saying, ‘I love Buffy!’ ” And being so close to the series, which lasted for seven seasons (1997-2003), he understands why there’s been so much fan outrage this week when it was announced that Fran Rubel Kuzui, the director of the original 1992 Buffy movie starring Kristy Swanson, and her husband Kaz were working on a new film without the involvement of series creator Joss Whedon (who also wrote the original movie’s first script).
Doing a Buffy movie without Whedon? “I wouldn’t want to see it, no,” Head admits. “The Kuzuis didn’t do a great job on the movie the first time around. It was Joss’ script at the age of 19, but they changed a lot of it. They said, ‘Look, we know best and we know how to make this movie,’ and it became quite schlocky and high camp.” Head recalls the time when he went to audition for the Buffy series because he loved Whedon’s pilot script so much, and his agent advised him to watch the movie to get the tone of the show before his screen test. “So I did and I went, ‘Oh, that’s not it at all.’ I went in and saw Joss and said, ‘I watched the movie last night!’ And he went, ‘Oh. Did ya?’ I just put it out of my mind. The bottom line is if a movie was ever to be made, it should be made with Joss Whedon, whether it’s a retrospective or not. But it would be madness to do it without him. [The Kazuis] have the rights to because they have the rights to the original movie, but it should be interesting to see. It may be a bit like watching a car wreck.”
