So much has been made of the strong, independent women of The WB's dramas that it's hard to get through a mass-circulation magazine without running into Sarah Michelle Gellar or Keri Russell or the covenish triumvirate of Shannen Doherty, Alyssa Milano and Holly Marie Combs. Add Carmen Electra to the mix and you get the impression that "strong and independent" is magazine code for "sexy and pouty."
Maybe it's good that Alyson Hannigan, who plays the bookish Willow Rosenberg on "Buffy," gets lost in this pulchritudinous power play. What The WB marketing department is doing with its white-hot (emphasis on white) women is really not very different from what ABC did 20 years ago with "Charlie's Angels," except that some of The WB's shows happen to be pretty good.Still, Hannigan says her feelings were hurt when Entertainment Weekly magazine didn't invite her to a photo shoot last year that featured Gellar -- Buffy of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" -- and a teen's dream team of other young female stars from "Dawson's Creek," "Felicity," "Charmed," "Hyperion Bay" and "7th Heaven." The photographer wrapped the women in yards of gauze and placed them in a sylvan setting, achieving new spin on the term "babes in the woods."
"Of course it bothered me," Hannigan said of her exclusion from the diaphonous display. "I was like, well, do they think I'm a boy?"
Hannigan can do the sexy, pouty thing when she wants to. She can also take some consolation in knowing that Charisma Carpenter wasn't contacted by Entertainment Weekly, either. It would seem Carpenter, who plays babe of babes Cordelia Chase on "Buffy," is a slam-dunk choice for such a spread, but Hannigan has a theory about their exclusion.
"For our show, they (The WB's marketers) promote it as Buffy and Angel (David Boreanaz)," Hannigan said, "not as an ensemble show like 'Dawson's Creek.' "
She has a point, even though the "Buffy" cast is a kick-butt ensemble, certainly one of the best on television. But for three seasons, The WB has been careful to place Gellar out front when promoting "Buffy," which is more or less a no-brainer, given her movie-star looks. Now that a spinoff series featuring Boreanaz's hunky good vampire is on tap for next season, he, too, is showing up more in magazines and on the adoration Web sites.
Not that Hannigan is a weeping Willow by virtue of fan neglect. An Internet check uncovered 10 Web sites devoted to her, including one billing itself as the Alyson Hannigan Idolatry Shrine.
Hannigan likes to surf the Internet, but she is hardly the cyber-genius that Willow is in her quest to help best-pal Buffy keep the world safe from vampires and other demon spawn. "I could never hack into a security system on the computer," she said. "Willow's knowledge is far more advanced than mine."
And, bruised ego aside, she really doesn't mind playing the whip-smart, geeky member of the group whose fashion sense isn't too haute and whose guy sense isn't too cool. She also doesn't resent playing a teenager.
"I know I'm not going to be playing my age right now," said Hannigan, who's been acting since childhood and will turn 25 on Wednesday. "I go to R-rated movies and occasionally I'll get carded."
Hannigan, who grew up in Atlanta, says she's just happy to be on a series that's on the top-10 lists of many TV critics (including this one).
"I can't play a 24-year-old in real life. Nobody would buy it. No way," she said. "The bottom line is, this is a very hard industry to keep your head up in, and I'm completely having fun."
Like any actor, Hannigan likes it when her character gets to stretch, as happened earlier this season in an episode that introduced Willow's evil alter ego in a sort of dream sequence.
The bad Willow returned recently in an episode titled "Doppelgangland," but that time it wasn't a dream, meaning the good Willow and the bad Willow appeared together in some scenes.
And, for what it's worth, the bad Willow is very, uh, toothsome.