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The Incredibly Strange Story About Willow,
Tara and The Never-Heard-Of Lesbian Cliché, Told by The Writers And Producers Themselves

THEN. SUMMARY: "WE'RE
HYPER-AWARE OF THAT."

NOW. SUMMARY: "BUT OUR
BOY NUMBERS ARE UP."

[Highlighting and comments in square brackets by Ivanova]

Doug Petrie (Sci-Fi Universe 2/21/00):

"Willow and Tara are going to have a good, happy, satisfying relationship," Petrie says. "That's something that we're more acutely aware of and we definitely don't want to touch on 'being a lesbian is bad.'

We've all seen shows where if you have any kind of gay tendencies, you must be killed or made to suffer for no other reason other than you're gay. We're hyper aware of that, so we're more predisposed to have things work out for Willow and Tara. (...) The fact that Tara is not a guy may make things work out better, because we can avoid what we feel is this old cliché."

Joss Whedon (e!online, 5/03/02):
"[Fan criticism] always affects me. At the same time, I need to give them what they need, not what they want. They need to have their hearts broken. (...) If people are freaking out, I'm good. If people are going, "Hmmm...well, that was fine," I'm fucked."

Steve DeKnight (Succumbus Club 5/08/2002):
"Joss explained [Tara's death] exactly the way it was filmed, Willow splattered with blood."

HOSTS: Lesbian cliché thing, I don't get it. I don't even think of them as lesbians. [Think again.]
..."I think it's actually the opposite, we treated them as just two characters on the show. If we had really focused on the fact that it was a lesbian character we would have been like no we can't kill her. (...) We always treated them just like two characters that just happened to be women."

David Fury (Succumbus Club 5/15/02):
"Not about killing Tara, but pushing Willow over the edge. In retrospect, I can see the cliché. That was not our intent, we wanted to show them together and happy. We dramatized them being back together, it created the impression in a lot of people's minds that the event of her death was linked to them having sex. I do understand it, I say, oh yeah. It was not intended, we make mistakes."

Steven DeKnight (Bronze Beta 1/25/02):

"As for Tara getting killed--OVER MY DEAD BODY!"

Joss Whedon (Entertainment Weekly 5/01)

"I have no plans to send Tara anywhere. Amber (Benson) and Alyson (Hannigan) have such great chemistry; they're so great together, and they're very romantic together.

We have terrible, terrible things to do to them because they're on my show, so needless to say, horrible things will happen--but as a couple, I think they work really well.As for Amber, even if she weren't going out with Willow, I think she's become a big part of the heart of the show."

Jane Espenson (Succumbus Club 5/22/02):
C: Lets talk about W/T. The whole Tara death and Willow what happened to her. Obviously people are upset. (...) How do you feel about the backlash?
J: I wasn't aware of it, but we talked about it. What happens [in the cliché] is one is introduced to be killed. [Says who?] She had been on the show, she was not brought in to be cannon fodder. She was not gay bashed, she was shot accidently. [Your point?] We did talk about, we're doing that thing, we're killing the lesbian. But it didn't feel that way to us, because she wasn't that lesbian character. C: But Willow went evil.
J: She went evil out of deep loving grief.
(...)C: People want to know, the backlash, they are going to be tuning out. J: People always say they are not going to watch anymore and our numbers stay the same.
C: But the numbers are down this year.
J: Yeah, but our boy numbers are up. (...) We really like this season, we feel we did a really good job.
(...) J: I am distressed to hear people are going to tune out. Tara was not our only gay character. Willow is still around and is a good role model. [Uhm...she just skinned a man...] There is no reason to say we won't be seeing a little or more of ...um... Tara or something resembling Tara. ... K: Is Willow going to go to jail? J: Um no she doesn't go to jail.

"I am very very sorry about Tara, really. We really feel bad. It is very possible that we did a bad thing. And I don't want to completely exonerate us... it is possible."

I  S  S  U  E  S

Joss Whedon (Bronze Beta 5/24/00):

" ...one post from a gay or questioning teen saying the show helped them is worth six hundred hate letters...Here's the word: Tara's not gonna disappear. She's part of the show, part of Willow's life."

Joss Whedon (OUT Magazine, August 2001):

"Next year...shit's gonna go down. We're going to see more strength in Willow than we have before. Her relationship with Tara will continue but the course of true love is never easy."

"We do have a bunch of people saying we've changed their lives. I always want to put out good role models. But I wasn't there saying, 'I want to help gay teenagers be comfortable with themselves.' (...) To get these responses was wonderfully overwhelming. It turned out to be one of the most important things we've done on the show."

N  O   I  S  S  U  E  S

Joss Whedon (UPN Bronze 05/22/02):
"The gay thing is so passé. We're over that."

Joss Whedon (UPN Bronze 05/22/02):
"I actually wasn't aware of the dead/evil lesbian cliché. (...) I think I don't get out much."

Joss Whedon (UPN Bronze 05/22/02):
"I killed Tara. Some of you may have been hurt by that. It very unlikely it was more painful to you than it was to me. (...) Which is why I knew it was the right thing to do. (...) And I knew some people would be angry with me for destroying the only gay couple on the show, but the idea that I COULDN'T kill Tara because she was gay is as offensive to me as the idea that I DID kill her because she was gay. Willow's story was not about being gay. It was about weakness, addiction, loss... the way life hits you in the gut right when you think you're back on your feet. (...) I love Amber and she knows it. Eventually, this story will end for all of them. Hers ended sooner.

Or did it......?

Yeah, it did."

Marti Noxon (Advocate, July 2002):
"We never thought about the fact that these characters were gay when we were deciding what their fate was going to be. They've been happy and together for longer than almost any couple on our show. In some ways I think it is kind of insulting to the gay community to suggest that we can't do to the gay characters on the show what we would do to anybody else." [And so many of us refuse to be grateful for the favor. An ungrateful bunch, that's what we are.]

"[The negative reaction has] been hard. It's the first time that we've gotten public outcry where I really can't even read some of the letters, they hurt so much. It's very indicative of how underrepresented gay people feel in the culture. Because the kinds of letters we've gotten have been so emotional and so personal and so deeply felt, you realize that every single instance of a positive portrayal of gay love on television means so much to people.".[So, neither all the praise and letters before, nor gay grandfathers or liberal upbringing had clued you in on that?!]

"[My lesbian mothers were] bummed out that this relationship was over [but] have been calling pretty frequently, asking if Tara's coming back, magically."

Joss Whedon (Advocate, August 20, 2002):
Buffy creator Joss Wheden notes that he grew up with a gay godfather and that his mother provided "a liberal upbringing". Marti Noxon, Buffy's executive producer, was raised by two mothers.

"...when you kill a character like Tara, statistically speaking, [lesbians] are underrepresented and so people have a legitimate reason to say 'It's not the same'".

A  W  A  R  E  N  E  S  S

Joss Whedon (The Bronze, August 20, 2002)
[Replying to a post by "Riley's Girl"] Actually I'm really glad you like the show. I'm against intolerance of any kind, but if I only made a show for people with the exact same opinions as me, I'd have a pretty teeny audience. So welcome. The whole point of Buffy is to be inclusive to those who feel excluded, like gay teens and, right now, like Riley's Girl.

N O   A  W  A  R  E  N  E  S  S

Joss Whedon (Wanda at e!online, July 26, 2002)
I [Wanda] asked [Joss] if he could understand why it was painful to lose TV's only positive lesbian relationship. "You have to understand," he said, "I'm not watching TV. You either watch it or you make it. So, when people said, 'Willow and Tara were all we had.' I was like, 'I didn't know that.'"

T H E  R E A L  H O M O P H O B E S

Drew Z. Greenberg (Bronze Beta, Oct. 15, 2002:
In characterizing Tara's death as yet another in the string of cliched lesbian deaths, you indicate that you do not see Tara as anything but a lesbian, you do not see her as the unique character she was, but rather just as a woman who had sex with women, and, in doing so, you reveal your own homophobia, your own prejudice and, more than anything else, your own lack of understanding of what we did with that character.