PASADENA, Calif. -- The WB's most anticipated new series -- "Angel," a spinoff of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer -- won't be on until the fall. But the hype and anticipation has already been building for months.
All of which is a little overwhelming for David Boreanaz, the actor who plays the tortured vampire Angel and will be headlining the new series."I feel like they did on 'Felicity.' Now I know what Keri Russell went through," Boreanaz said with a laugh.
What makes it a bit tough is that he's always being asked not only what's coming next of "Buffy" but what the deal with "Angel" is. And Boreanaz doesn't have much of an answer.
"I honestly don't know that much. I know as much as you guys know," he said. "I'm leaving Sunnydale and going to Los Angeles to take my purpose somewhere else because I can't be around Buffy. And Charisma (Carpenter)'s coming with me. And that's all I know."
He can't even tell anyone what Carpenter's character, Cordelia, will be doing on the new series.
"I don't know. Maybe she'll be my Girl Friday," Boreanaz said.
The actor seems content to pretty much go with the flow -- to take whatever creator/executive producer Joss Whedon has planned and run with it. After all, he admits he never expected either his character or the show itself to become a success.
(And who could blame him? A show about a teenage girl who slays vampires?)
"When we started shooting the first season . . . it was very surreal. I didn't think of how successful the show would be or how successful the character would be. I just wanted to do good work and to learn," Boreanaz said.
"I think after the first season it started to build with a cult following. It's almost like Joss is from another planet. He's controlling people's minds. He's such a creative genius, and he's going to get all these people together to overtake the world."
Boreanaz, 27, seems strangely caught up in being the most famous vampire since Barnabas Collins on "Dark Shadows" and quite unaffected by it. He talks about "Buffy" with a mixture of enthusiasm and bemusement.
Like when he corrects the common misconception that his character was killed at the end of last season when Buffy was forced to stab him with a sword to keep a demon from taking over the world.
"I was more-or-less sent to hell. I don't think I was killed. People always get that wrong," Boreanaz said. "It looked like I was killed because I got stabbed in the heart, but you've got to stab a vampire with a stake to kill him. With a sword, you have to behead it."
But, even as Angel was being sent to hell, Boreanaz knew he would still have a job both this season and next.
"I knew that I wasn't going to disappear. Maybe they just did that so they when we knew we had to renegotiate (his contract), they knew that would be on their table," Boreanaz said with a laugh. "It was an NBA lockout moment for us all."
For the uninitiated, Angel has been a vampire since the 18th century. However, he was placed under a curse by gypsies that restored his soul to him, making him suffer for the murders he had committed. The curse contained a clause -- should Angel experience one moment of true happiness, his soul would again be lost and he would again become an evil being.
Viewers knew that a relationship between a vampire and a vampire slayer would be tough -- but when Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and Angel got intimate he turned into a monster, making things even tougher.
That development helps set up the spinoff, however.
"I start doing Tai-chi. I fall out of the ceiling. I'm naked. I'm regaining my strength," Boreanaz said with a big smile on his face. "Now we're getting back to being attracted to each other. Snow falls. There's tears shed. All this stuff. Now we're kind of bonding with each other again. Well, it's going to come to the point where we know we can't consummate that. So we just go our separate ways."
Not that they're going to be completely separate, even when Angel leaves for his own show.
"Obviously, we're going to have to find somebody to fill that gap," said creator/executive producer Joss Whedon. "It's going to leave a big hole. But I don't think it will definitely spell the end of David's association with Buffy or of Sarah's with Angel because I don't think those two will ever be completely broken apart."
Boreanaz didn't pretend to have any inside information. ("Joss won't reveal a lot," he said.) But he doesn't expect the relationship between Buffy and Angel to come to an end, either.
"I don't think it ever will," he said. "Here you have two characters. You know they can't have sex because I'll be some tormented evil guy and start twisting heads in some high school. And we can't have that, right?
"But it's like that love will always be with us. Those characters will always have that love. So I'll move on to Los Angeles . . . not too far from Sunnydale."
And expect to see Gellar on "Angel" from time to time as well as Boreanaz making return visits to "Buffy."
"That's the intent. Difficult to realize, but, yeah, that's the idea," Whedon said. "And all the characters on 'Buffy' are coming onto 'Angel' as well."
In its third season, "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" is a bona fide hit, particularly with the younger viewers advertisers want so badly to reach. But the upcoming fourth season minus Angel is making Gellar, at least, a bit uneasy.
"I'm nervous," Gellar said. "Part of, I think, the success of 'Buffy' is David and my relationship both on camera and off. He's incredible. He's grown so much and I trust him more than any guy that I've ever worked with. And I'll miss him."
TOUGH LUCK: Gellar has already started lobbying for who she'd like to see become Buffy's new love interest.
"I'm hoping Joseph Fiennes will be replacing David next year," Gellar said with a laugh.
"We got Buddy Hackett. Sorry," Whedon replied.
XANDER THE WAITER? Whedon doesn't tell Gellar any more about what to expect from upcoming episodes than he does Boreanaz, but the actress has a few ideas of her own about what's going to happen next season.
"I had this great theory that we're actually all going to go to college but Xander's (Nicholas Brendon) going to work at the Peach Pit where we go, and he's going to be serving the food there," Gellar gushed. "I, by the way, have no idea. He (Whedon) tells me nothing.
"So, see, if we go to a, like, you know, the Ivy League school that's in California -- 'cause, you know, there might be one in Sunnydale . . . "
"Oddly enough," Whedon interjected.
A COUPLE OF CLUES: Boreanaz didn't have any specifics to offer about upcoming episodes of "Buffy," but he did drop a couple of hints.
"The mayor's going to be involved more," he said, referring to the public official who seems to be in league with demons. And Boreanaz said to expect surprises from all the regulars.
"These characters are changing with every episode and, at the end of this season, everything will become clearer. There are going to be some major, major events that happen to every character that leads up to the season finale that are going to surprise a lot of people,' he said.
THE PRICE OF FAME: Playing a vampire on TV is a great gig, Boreanaz admits, but it does have a few drawbacks. Like fans who can't quite separate fantasy from reality when they approach the actor in public.
"Some have questions of the unknown and the occult and are freaks from outer space who trip you out with some weird question," he said. "I just nod my head and say, 'Very nice. Very good.' "
But he admits he's also sometimes tempted to freak his fans out a bit.
"I was at IHOP (a pancake restaurant) in Philadelphia with my father . . . and the lady who sat us recognized me. She was really nervous. She came over and took our order," he said. "And, afterwards, my father was just cracking up.
"He said, 'Just once, you should just, while you're doing the order, look at them and go 'Aaaugh!' and make the vampire face -- just to seem them drop the menu.' I would never do that, but it's fun to think about it."
Boreanaz added that there are, of course, great things about fame and fortune.
"My parents are so supportive and always have been. They're very proud," he said. "That's the best thing about the success, that my parents are able to see it, live and feel it. That's the best thing that's happened to me."
And he hasn't exactly gone overboard with his newfound success. His first big purchase on his "star's" salary?
"A new suit. Just a suit," he said. "And I got some food for my dog. A big steak."