And so that was definitely a challenge. It wasn't necessarily graceful on either side. So it was difficult, I think for them to accomplish what they needed to accomplish with a female lead in the position I was in but these things can be done and they have been done and they've been done gracefully in the past with other productions, I'm sure. And I went on to work after Angel on a show that accommodated my breastfeeding and having a six-week-old baby so beautifully. I think maybe I was [the production team's] first [instance handling a pregnant lead].
I was the first. So it was growing pains, I don't know. It was probably the hardest thing I've gone through because I am by nature, a people pleaser and I want to give my best but I also do have limitations and I can only do so much when you're in that state so it was a real challenge.
Then on the other side of that I have to imagine at that point, you'd been playing the character for almost six or seven years so there was a little attachment to that too and the way the character's story unfolds. Yeah, I'm definitely protective of her and very much so. The th episode is really fun but also a little bittersweet.
How did that conversation start in terms of coming back but ending Cordy's story there? This is a well-documented question and answer. I wish there was a way to keep it fresh for you but it's just more of the same.
Eventually, I was approached to come back for the th episode and I said I would with the caveat being, I didn't want to die.
I didn't want to come for Cordelia to die. Then I was told after I agreed to do it that then she would, in fact, be dying. And I think I cried for a good little bit and I was having all the feels lamenting the whole situation in general.
Just the sadness around it all. I would have loved to have seen her not die and on a positive note. And it was just really intense, it just hurt. It just really hurt. There's no other way to put it. I still get verklempt reliving or talking about what that felt like. So, it was intense. The character's still so beloved so I'm sure you get some solace from that?
Sure, it does make a difference. There's a positive in that for sure. No way. I didn't watch after I died. Sorry [laughs] I didn't watch. But you've heard about it? I mean, I've seen clips and I've read fan reaction and stuff. And I know for some there is disappointment that I didn't feel like it was unending ending. There's all kinds of analysis. One thing for sure, our fans are probably the smartest people I've ever encountered.
It's just really intense. The breakdowns and the scholastic points of view of the show and courses being taught about the show and how it's all human made. I think in some regards made bigger and more important than really it is.
But I'm still flattered that some people feel that way about it. But I'm like, yeah more of that. That feels good. It's sweet but it's also just It's a real tricky thing to navigate. Yeah, I mean I think that happens a lot with the genre of television too specifically, you know. Yeah, that sort of legacy gets tricky, you know. You start believing importance, it's just tricky. It's just the most wonderful thing to be still so embraced and apart of the conversation.
And 20 years later, it's the biggest compliment that any actor could ever have and I've never understood actors that didn't embrace and aren't incredibly thankful for the job that made them endearing to a group of people or a huge fanbase. I've never understood people wanting to one and done it and be assertive like, well that was then this is now. I'm moving on to this next job and I don't want to deal with Cordelia at all. I don't want to talk about Cordelia.
I've never understood actors that have taken that position because I just feel like it's such a slap in the face to the blood, sweat, and tears that went into doing that show. By surviving! She later commented on her own post, saying: "The last. Comment I will make on this. There was a rule. He's not allowed in a room alone with Michelle again. There was a lot of damage done during that time and many of us are still processing it twenty plus years later. I appreciate all you've done to demonstrate that support privately as well.
Especially since Wednesday. Athena said:. Click to expand Bit of both I figured, but I didn't know CC had a miscarriage at that time, so I guess my theory was incorrect anyway. VisionGuy Oh Plerr. Like Athena said, if Cordelia had been in those episodes, it would have prevented that whole plot from moving the way the writers wanted it to.
I'm pretty sure Wesley would have gone to Cordelia about the prophecy and ask her how they should procced and Cordy being Cordy would have gone straight to Angel. Conflict over. I really disliked how Cordelia didn't even have a scene visiting Wesley at the hospital after hos throat was slit though.
That's so out of character for her. But according to a lot of people, most of the latter half of season 3 is. VisionGuy said:. Mr Trick said:. I'm actually at this stage right now on the rewatch. Don't remember if Cordy knew about Wes being in the hospital?
Yeah I think she peaked during S3 and the decline is from then on. I didn't mind season 4 Evil Cordy. Still, there's a kind of Puritan logic to it. It falls in line with the dire rhetoric of forced-birth advocates who insist that women must "face the consequences" of their sexual choices, whether that means trauma, unwanted parenthood, poverty, or death. Anything that happens to a woman during or as a result of pregnancy is her own fault.
It could have gone a different way. Cordelia could have fought evil while pregnant, had visions while pregnant, worked through her feelings for Angel while pregnant. Motherhood could have furthered her story, challenged her, isolated her, or called her to be stronger. Cordelia Chase, the rich girl who lost everything, who rebuilt her life from the ground up -- if anyone's arc could accommodate an unplanned pregnancy, it was hers.
It could have worked, if the Angel writers had been willing to imagine becoming a parent as part of her journey, instead of a replacement for it. The fact that they could and did imagine that kind of arc for Angel as he reconnected with his son points to the obvious.
While Angel's transformation into a parent challenged his own ideals and the way he saw the world, that was the kind of character growth the show reserved for fathers. When a woman got pregnant on Angel, her pregnancy overwrote everything previously established about her character.
She was emptied out, replaced. Darla was subsumed with Connor's human soul. Fred became a shell through which Illyria could be reborn. And Cordelia's entire history was erased to make room for Jasmine. Taken together, the show's treatment of its female characters is painfully similar to the pressures women experience in real life to sideline their own health , careers , and autonomy for the sake of their children.
As a mother myself, now, I see that for the erasure it is. With the deaths of Darla, Cordelia, and Fred, Angel says that a woman is a person until she gets pregnant, and that's the end of her story. I wish that, at least once, they had turned the page and kept going.
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