Jane Espenson [scénariste, productrice] (2024)

Pendant les cinq premières années (1998-2003) où elle fut de l’équipe Mutant Enemy, elle a écrit un total de 23 épisodes pour BTVS et 2 pour Angel (1999-2000). Elle a été la seule de l’équipe (à part le créateur de la série Joss Whedon et la productrice exécutive Marti Noxon) à qui fut confié plus de cinq épisodes en une seule saison (pas moins de six dans la septième). A la septième saison de Buffy, elle a été l’un des seuls anciens écrivains à avoir dirigé un épisode de la série.

Ses personnages préférés sont Jonathan et Spike, et selon bon nombre d'interviews, elle a un grand penchant pour le couple Buffy/Spike.

-En 1991-1993 Jane a écrit pour l'empire ABC/Disney dont notamment pour la série Dinosaures un sitcom qui montre la vie de famille de dinosaures parlants.
-Monty (1994), série tv : une sitcom courte de la chaine fox avec Henry Winkler et david Schwimmer qui a disparu au bout de quelques semaines par manque d’originalité.
-Something So Right (1996), série tv : une sitcom montrant un couple : lui, organisateur de soirées divorcé 2 fois, elle, professeur d’anglais, les deux ont trois enfants issus de cette famille recomposée.
-Nowhere Man (1er épisode, 1996) : une série créée par Lawrence Hertzog diffusée les lundis soir sur UPN de 1995 à 1996 puis retirée après la première saison, racontant les aventures d’un photographe dont la vie est effacée en une soirée par une organisation inconnue. Les seules preuves qu’il détient de son existence sont les négatifs d’une photo montrant 4 hommes pendus en Amérique du sud par des militaires.
-Zero Minus Ten (1996), film tv tiré d’un roman d’espionnage mettant en scène un james bond repris par un autre écrivain.
-Ellen (1er épisode, 1997) : une sitcom tournant autour d’une actrice principale, première dans l’histoire de la tv à mettre en scène son coming out dans un épisode qui a obligé le réseau ABC à placer un avertissem*nt parental au début de chacun d’entre eux.

Jane Espenson a notamment travaillé sur les séries Firefly (scénariste), Gilmore Grils (co-productrice déléguée et scénariste), Tru Calling (co-productrice déléguée et scénariste), The Inside (co-productrice déléguée et scénariste), Jake in progress (co-productrice déléguée et scénariste), Battlestar Galactica (co-productrice déléguée et scénariste), Andy Barker, P-I (co-productrice déléguée et scénariste).

(Source : Wikipédia)

Une interview de Jane Espenson au sujet de la série Caprica, dont elle est scénariste et productrice.

Citation :

Writer and producer Jane Espenson has written, or co-written, episodes of some of the most popular and successful TV shows in recent memory. Getting her start on Star Trek : The Next Generation, Espenson also worked on hugely popular shows such as Buffy : The Vampire Slayer, Angel, and one of the most celebrated series ever on TV, Battlestar Galactica.

More recently, Espenson has written for Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse, wrote the BSG TV movie The Plan and she is now Executive Producer on the upcoming BSG prequel series Caprica. Recently, I had an opportunity to talk with Espenson about, among other things, The Plan, Caprica, Dollhouse budget cuts and the move to the internet from traditional media.

CHRIS ULLRICH : What can you tell us about The Plan ? It supposedly shows Battlestar Galactica entirely from the Cylon perspective, correct ?

JANE ESPENSON : Technically, that’s correct, but perhaps misleading. It shows events from the series from the POV of two very specific Cylons, not from the point of view of them as a group.

CU : What was the impetus to create something like The Plan ? Was it a side of the story you or others (Ron Moore, David Eick, etc.) felt was not sufficiently explored in the original series ?

JE : The idea came, I think, from the network, who wanted to know if there was a movie to be done. When we looked back, we saw that we had a chance to tie up some loose ends and have some fun with the events from the early years of the show.

CU : Do all the BSG characters appear in “The Plan” ? Or, is it primarily just the Cylon characters ?

JE : There is a mix of BSG characters in the show — not everyone, but lots of them.

CU : Will we learn more about the Cylon’s religious or philosophical beliefs or more about the creation of the Cylons in human form during The Plan ?

JE : Yes — the former more than the latter. Cavil’s beliefs are explored in particular. Dean Stockwell does an amazing job in The Plan.

CU : Can we expect any surprises or revelations when watching The Plan ? Things hinted at during the original series maybe ?

JE : You will have moments of “Ahhh… that’s how that happened.”

CU : Edward James Olmos has said that after watching The Plan fans will want to go back and watch the entire series again to see “what they missed.” What do you think about that ?

JE : Yes, I think he’s exactly right — Eddie is usually exactly right. The Plan sort of takes you behind events you’ve seen before — like going backstage — and you’ll probably want to look back to see how the same event played originally.

CU : Is “The Plan” supposed to be the final word on “original” BSG as we know it or do you, Ron Moore and David Eick have more movies up your collective sleeve ?

JE : I have nothing up MY sleeve. You’ll have to interview their sleeves to get the final answer on that one.

CU : Turing to Caprica, how did you get involved in that show ?

JE : I got involved after the pilot was done — written, shot, cut. Ron called and asked me to come run the writers’ room with an eye toward easing into a showrunner position. It’s been fun and exhausting and incredibly educational… and we haven’t even started shooting yet !

CU : For those who haven’t seen the DVD yet, can you give us a bit of info about the story of Caprica and the characters ?

JE : Caprica is set in the colonies 58 years before the events that launch the BSG series (the Cylon attack). It’s the story of the events leading to the creation of the first Cylon (not the first skinjob), and the events that follow.

It’s not like BSG in that it’s not a war story. It’s more serialized, with stories based in the lives of characters living in a culture that driving itself toward its own destruction.

We’ve got organized crime and religious conflict and terrorism and show business and corporate misdeeds and robots. The tone is not unlike Mad Men or Rome or Sopranos — lots of events, often dark events, but with a light enough touch to allow all the irony and denial of real life. We concentrate on two families : The Graystones and the Adamas, and the people around them.

CU : Can we expect to see any BSG characters showing up on Caprica ? Some of our favorite Cylons perhaps ?

JE : It’s possible that some BSG characters could appear on the show, but it’s not something we’re making an effort to do.

CU : How far will Caprica go story-wise ? Will we see how the first Cylon / Human war begins, for example ? What’s the “five year plan” for the series ?

JE : This is still open to discussion. We have road maps, but they’re subject to rewrite, elaboration and sudden inspiration.

CU : After a bit of a slow start, Dollhouse has turned out to be a very good show and I’m glad its coming back. Can you tell us about some of the changes that were made during the season to improve the show or take it in a different direction ?

JE : My impression — and this really is just my impression — was that the show got closer and closer to Joss’s original vision for the show. As the show progressed, Joss was able to get deeper into the mythology and meaning of the show, which was all the stuff that fascinated me so much. I love the show and loved working there.

CU : Will you be writing more episodes of Dollhouse next season or taking a more active producing role on the show ?

JE : I wish I could. Caprica has me too busy to take on anything outside of that.

CU : What do you think the reduced budget will do to the show next season ? Will it have an impact of the kids of stories that can be told ?

JE : Budgets are smaller all over. This limits the number of sets you can have, the number of speaking roles and extras, number of special effects, and it can cut the number of shooting days which can lead to fewer locations used in each episode. This will favor stories that take place on the standing sets, using only the regular characters.

It moves the action off-screen (you’ll tend to hear about the big riot rather than seeing it). There’s a lot of elasticity in story-telling and you can do a lot of this without it showing too badly — sometimes you even are forced into creative solutions. But you can only go so far and then it’s a show about sock puppets. Budgets are getting awfully small.

CU : Was it always the plan to have Echo realize she was a Doll or, at the very least, that something was “wrong” during the first season ?

JE : My understanding was yes, that was the plan.

CU : Was Ballard always supposed to be a main character on Dollhouse and discover its secrets ? It seemed his role was amplified during the first few episodes to become more of a main character ?

JE : I certainly believed that he was always intended as a main character.

CU : With all the problems series creators seems to face these days getting shows on the air or finding an audience quickly, do you think creators will turn more and more to the internet to make their shows ? Much like Joss did with Dr. Horrible ?

JE : I don’t know. I’d love to see a really pure-writer medium develop. I’m watching and waiting.

Une interview de Jane Espenson au sujet de la série Caprica, mais aussi au sujet des comics saison 8 de BTVS et de Battlestar Galactica ^^

Citation :

Exclusive Interview : JANE ESPENSON LOOKS TO ’BATTLESTAR GALACTICA’S’ PAST FOR SYFY’S ’CAPRICA’

Talking about the BATTLESTAR GALACTICA sequel, why she’s on the show but no longer show runner, BUFFY comics, Danny Strong, hiring James Marsters and more

There are a lot of intriguing things going on both in front of and behind the cameras on SyFy Channel’s new series CAPRICA. The series is a prequel to BATTLESTAR GALACTICA, with executive producers Ron Moore and David Eick shepherding the tale of how and why Cylons were created and how humanity got itself into the fix we saw chronicled in the previous series.

Behind the scenes, Jane Espenson – a veteran writer/producer of BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, FIREFLY, BATTLESTAR GALACTICA and the CAPRICA DVD, to name a few prominent credits – was originally also the CAPRICA show runner, alongside fellow executive producer Kevin Murphy. However, in an unusual move, Espenson opted to step away from her show runner duties in order to focus more thoroughly on her own writing for the series.

Here’s what she had to say about CAPRICA and beyond in this exclusive interview with iF.

JANE ESPENSON : I’m still executive producer. Really the only thing that’s changed is Kevin is running the room now, as we’re breaking the last couple episodes of the season, so that I can go write on the last couple episodes. It’s really pretty much a procedural change, as much as an organizational one. Running the room and doing all the show runner stuff and all the production stuff was taking a lot of my time and it wasn’t the stuff that most interested me and I was really, really suffering from missing the writing, and I wanted to be able to get in for at least these finale episodes and not be distracted by production and actor issues and be able to genuinely do a lot of the writing. So this was initiated by me and Kevin is fantastic. Kevin has this amazing decisive equanimity that is allowing him to see it through, get stuff done, get everything lined up, so that I don’t have to be in the room, I can be at my computer, writing like a fiend. I’ve done more writing in the last couple weeks – I just couldn’t be happier. It was a matter of me asking for what I needed and getting it and it’s really a good change for the show and for everyone involved.

iF : How involved are Ron Moore and David Eick ?

ESPENSON : They’re both very involved, thank the Gods. They’re fantastic. They’ve worked together for so long, they’ve got a wonderful shorthand and I’m just learning, because a lot of the producer things are things I [had] never done before, so I [was] trotting alongside them going, “Wait, what do you do when something’s way over budget ? When do you cast a role in Canada and when do you cast a role in the U.S. ? How much should I be listening to notes from the director, versus notes from production ? How much should I be delegating to my writers versus handling myself ?”’

iF : Were there things you enjoyed about hands-on producing/being the show runner ?

ESPENSON : Oh, absolutely. I [enjoyed] the interaction in the room very much, because whenever there is one of those debates where everyone is all with their hearts in their throats because they really want the decision to be made in favor of the story that they think best serves the characters, and they’re going to be a little disappointed when it doesn’t come down their way and they have to embrace this other path. I never [had] to be the one who’s disappointed, because I got to say, “Oh, no, we’re going on that path.” And that’s wonderful. And I [liked] that if I read something in a writer’s script that I didn’t feel was right for our world, I had the authority to say, “No, no, this feels a little too earthbound, this doesn’t feel like …” for whatever reason, I [could] give the note. I liked having that much say.

iF : What happens now if there is a disagreement ?

ESPENSON : It’s more collaborative now. But no decisions are being made that I would disagree with, so in a way, it’s moot. It’s like, "Do I have the power to veto that ? I don’t choose to veto that." It’s great.

iF : Where there other aspects of hands-on producing you enjoyed ?

ESPENSON : To my surprise, I’m kind of enjoying learning how to make a script filmable, which I never gave enough thought to before, like, “Wait, if we’re on that set one time, we don’t have enough there to make a day on that location, so I either have to move more scenes to that set, or find sets that are near that set, the location that’s near where that set is, to pull up the day.” Learning the line producer stuff so that I can help make our days makeable is kind of fascinating. There’s a jigsaw puzzle feeling to that, that should feel like compromise but doesn’t, because you realize when you actually get the math right and you get the puzzle solved, the show looks better, because you’re not asking people to go to five sets and make them look okay, you’re asking them to go to three sets and make them look spectacular, and you end up with a better-looking show. And the alchemy of that is really shockingly fun.

iF : With CAPRICA, are you finding it hard or easy to write into the BATTLESTAR narrative that already exists ?

ESPENSON : Actually, shockingly easy, because of this wonderful fifty-eight-year cushion between our events and those events. BATTLESTAR was my last home before [CAPRICA] and I still feel very much a part of that. Really, BATTLESTAR’s the mother ship. You don’t feel the need to set up stuff. I mean, we’re setting up stuff in this big wonderful broad-stroke palette that we have to work with, which is, we have the war coming up, then we know the skin jobs are going to arrive, then they’re going to help the Centurions make more skin jobs and we’re off and running. All we have to do is make sure we don’t contradict anything that’s been said about that road to that first war, and not a lot’s been said. We’re inferring things that seem natural to us, which is a lot of fun, because you go, "Before these twelve colonies were unified under one government, they would have certainly had separate national anthems, national creeds, national identities. Maybe they would still use some [different] languages, they would still use cultural markers like the Tauran tattoos that we’ve seen. All we have to do is backtrack what we know and create a livable, reasonable, interesting culture." For sci-fi writers, that’s a dream – that’s not a chore, that’s fun.

iF : Because this is all based on this tying into BATTLESTAR, do you feel in any sense like it’s writing fanfic for BATTLESTAR ?

ESPENSON : Well, I don’t like fanfic that introduces a lot of original characters. I like fanfic about my main characters, and we’re not seeing those characters, so it doesn’t quite feel like fanfic. What felt like fanfic was writing “Harsh Light of Day” for BUFFY, which was taking characters that already existed and then being asked to put them in unusual and sexy and charged situations. All of writing BUFFY felt like writing fanfic. To a certain extent, BATTLESTAR did. This [CAPRICA] is starting to [feel that way], as we’re getting more and falling more in love with these characters as we’re establishing them. It’s starting to become like [gasps], “Oh, my God, we can see Clarice do this, we can see Amanda do that, we can take these characters to these places.” We weren’t sure [at the outset] where it was natural for them to go. Now it’s starting to get that, but for the first eight episodes, you’re really concentrating on establishing them and turning them into those people who you want to write fanfic about.

iF : Speaking of characters you want to write about, you wrote a five-book arc of the BUFFY comics …

ESPENSON : I believe they are all out and available. So anyone who hasn’t been aware of that should be heading down to HiDeHo Comics in Santa Monica or wherever your local vendor is and pick up the BUFFY comics. I’m very proud of this particular batch. Joss handed me an amazing segment of story and gave me a lot of leeway to do what I wanted to do with it, and I think I may have finally cracked the formula for lots of action, not so much talk that works for a comic book. I may have finally got it.

iF : Is Drew Greenberg, one of your BUFFY TV series writing colleagues, currently working on BATTLESTAR ?

ESPENSON : Yes. He’s sort of on loan to us between seasons of WAREHOUSE 13. They have this long hiatus. Unfortunately, we lost one of our writers, Kath Lingenfelter, who we all adored. [She] had to leave the show for personal reasons. I had this hole in the staff right when Drew was on this hiatus and was available to come work with us, and I was lucky enough that he agreed to come with us.

iF : James Marsters has a recurring role on CAPRICA as a terrorist. How instrumental were you in getting him hired ?

ESPENSON : I was very instrumental in the hiring of James Marsters. I knew he was right for our show, creatively, and [wanted him on] for the joy of the BUFFY-meets-BATTLESTAR, which just gave me personal delight. I knew he was perfect and I pushed very, very hard for him.

iF : Still speaking of BUFFY, how proud of you of your friend Danny Strong, who you wrote a lot of material when he played Jonathan on that series, now that he’s the multi-award-winning writer of HBO’s telefilm RECOUNT, about the Bush/Kerry vote recount in Florida ?

ESPENSON : I’m always proud of Danny Strong. Oh, my God. To have written RECOUNT, and the projects he’s involved in now – BROWN VS. THE BOARD OF EDUCATION – he’s getting the most amazing projects. I’m blown away. He was the actor coming to me saying, "Will you look at my script ?" And just a couple years later, he has leapfrogged over me to A-list feature guy. Fantastic. And it’s totally deserved. He’s brilliant, his writing is amazing. Plus fantastic. I know him really well and I didn’t know he was that much of a genius. When he pitched me RECOUNT [as] just a project he wanted to do, I was very dubious. I was like, "The only people who do movies like that are HBO. You’re limiting your market. Why not do something a little more salable ? And everybody knows how it turns out, you’re going to need to get rights to all these books …" It just sounded like an impossible project, and then bam, he’s the king of the writing world. It’s fantastic.

iF : Given the fact that you presumably are showing the prototypes of the Cylons, will we be seeing actors we recognize as the Twelve ?

ESPENSON : The thing about the prototypes of the Cylons is that it is a bit down the road. What we’ve got right now is one girl and one robot. I don’t know that you would see the actors [who played Cylons on BATTLESTAR]. You would see – well, I’m not going to answer. It’ll be fun to watch it unfold.

iF : Do you have anything else in the works ?

ESPENSON : Really, no. My focus is on CAPRICA right now. There may be projects that I do down the line that I’m incubating, but I have to preserve my entire heart and brain right now, because CAPRICA is all-encompassing.

Petite interview de Jane au sujet de Caprica ^^

Citation :

"Caprica"’s Jane Espenson : "It’s Time For Sexuality to be Incidental"

From Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Gilmore Girls to Ronald D. Moore’s remake of Battlestar Galactica, writer Jane Espenson has a knack for ending up on some of television’s most buzzed about shows. Hopefully, her luck of working on successful shows will hold with the launch this Friday of SyFy’s BSG prequel Caprica.

Set fifty eight years before the events of BSG, the plot of Caprica is to tell the story of how humanity inadvertently created the intelligent machines known as Cylons which eventually despised their creators enough to try and annihilate them. The futuristic world created by Moore in BSG was a complicated one fraught with danger, both physical and moral. Caprica promises to be no less complex.

AfterElton.com recently caught up with Espenson, who is an executive producer and writer for the show, to discuss how the writers are approaching the show’s gay material, what’s in store for the show’s gay character and how much . Please note, this interview does discuss some plot points of Caprica including the identity of the show’s gay character.

AfterElton.com : We’ve talked before about the lack of gay inclusion both on Battlestar Galactica and science fiction in general, so I’m curious as to how the character of Sam Adama came to be gay.

Jane Espenson : Ron [Ronald D. Moore] took the writers on a writers retreat at the beginning of the season, and laid out his vision for the show. He wasn’t going to be guiding us on a day to day basis, but he really wanted to be involved in laying out the arc for the first half of the season, establishing some important things about the characters. He’s the one who said, "Let’s put Clarice in this group marriage," and he also just said, "Oh, and by the way, Sam’s gay."

It was just this thing he’d known from the beginning, from the pilot, long before I was involved. He just laid it out as a fact. I was thrilled, because it had always seemed an omission to me from our world. I think it was something that Ron had tried to put in Battlestar, but it just hadn’t worked out. This was sort of the chance to do it.

At that point, we used the word gay. I actually tried to avoid using it after that, because I think that’s a word from our world, and I feel like in this world [of Caprica], it wouldn’t be a word. People fall in love with who they fall in love with. Why do you have to have a different word for who they fall in love with ? Having a different word for a same-sex relationship struck me as something this culture wouldn’t have thought of since those relationships were just considered on a par and unremarkable.

AE : Given that the show deals with religious conflict and racial tensions and technological strife, why in this particular world do we have all those other contentious issues but the issue of same-sex relationships isn’t there ?

JE : I think that one of the things I’m interested in is how cultures evolve, what they value, what they devalue, and what’s locked in. What do we assume naturally follows and what doesn’t ? You could imagine a culture, as in the Caprican culture, where race is a matter where people have prejudices against, but gender and orientation issues just never occur to them. It’s not part of that culture.

You can wonder what their Stone Age development was such that that never developed, you know. Why did that get tied to religion in our culture ? Was it absolutely necessary ? I don’t think it was. Look at the Romans and the Greeks. Perfectly thriving, perfectly mature cultures with religion in it, and it didn’t have a stigma against gay relationships. In fact, those were considered the true love relationships that were exalted. The relationship between a man and woman was more procreatory, but the true love that inspires you to write poetry was not that.

AE : As someone touched on during the Television Critics Association panel, your world isn’t about Christianity which is where a lot of our biases against gay people come from. Is that fair to say ?

JE : Absolutely. This monotheistic religion that they’re talking about [in Caprica] is not Christianity. There’s no Christ figure in it at all. There is a sense of redemption and forgiveness of your sins, but of course, what you consider a sin in totally culturally dependent.

Suppose the monotheists win in this world. Would they suddenly start saying hom*osexuality is a sin ? No. That’s why Clarice can be a very enthusiastic monotheist and still be in a group marriage. There’s no conflict between those.

AE : Is the group marriage not a social issue ? I ask because at one point when Lacy first goes over there, she’s sort of, "Oh, I’ve met some kids from group marriages." It seemed to me like she was a little surprised, as if it was kind of unusual.

JE : Yes, she was surprised. It’s a little unusual, but not hugely so. It’s probably the same as if you showed up and discovered someone you knew well was in an interracial relationship and you’d never known it. You’d have a moment of surprise, and then you’d be like, "Oh. I’m surprised because I didn’t know, not because it’s shocking or anything."

AE : Sam is revealed as being gay in a very casual, off-handed way. Nothing on television happens by accident, so what was the thinking in that revelation ?

JE : I particularly wanted him to come out in a very casual way, like you said, and I wanted him to come out in a casual way in front of Willy [Sam’s 11-year-old nephew], so that we knew that Willy knows. If we know that Willy knows, then that tells us in an instant that this is not shocking or something you’d hide from kids. It’s not even the first time Willy’s heard about it. It’s just the way the things are.

AE : We’ve already seen Sam kill once in the pilot, and at the end of episode 103, he is tasked with killing someone rather shocking who we won’t mention here. How do you feel about the character of Sam ? How do you view him ? On one hand, he has a loving home life and a great relationship, but he’s also a killer.

JE : He’s a killer, but he’s not a crazy serial killer or a psycho killer. He is a man with a job. He’s the hit man with a heart of gold. He metes out justice because he doesn’t feel that the authorities are the people who can best do that. He feels that he’s grass roots. The Halatha is an organization of the people and it metes out justice. He’s just the instrument that does that.

I think he would prefer to not be in that line of work ultimately. He talks about if he and Larry were to have a family, he would not want to be in that line of work. I think he has a strong ethical core ; it’s just that his job happens to be a very tough job with tough decisions. If he worked in a hospital and had to decide when that patient was beyond saving, he would probably see it as fairly similar. He has a job that regrettably just happens to involve decisions of life and death.

AE : Maybe I misunderstood the Halatha. Are they analogous to the Mafia or...

JE : Yes.

AE : So you described them as meting out justice. I don’t really think of the Mafia as meting out justice so much as ruling by intimidation and fear.

JE : I guess it depends on who they’re dealing with, if they’re dealing with people outside the organization or inside. If you can imagine some guy in the organization has failed to turn in money he’s made, that’s going to lead to disorder, a mob war, and death. He’s done something wrong. Justice has to be dealt, and Sam would be called in for that sort of assignment. The judge who refuses to release a prisoner despite having accepted the bribe, he’s got to be taken care of. He didn’t play by the rules. It wasn’t fair.

I’m defending the mob ! [laughs] That’s not what I had hoped to spend my day doing, but I’m trying to get Sam’s point of view on it. I do get the feeling that Sam rationalizes it, so I’m trying to get my own line on how he rationalizes it. It helps to understand the character.

AE : It’s a tricky thing, and it’s tricky for the audience too. We all know about the Sopranos and how ruthless they could be, but people followed them and cared about these people who were doing these horrible things.

JE : And of course, you walk the line of, "Oh, does that mean we have an evil gay character ?" Or are we doing a good thing because there’s a gay character who is tough and he’s not, you know, designing the interiors of fine restaurants.

AE : It’s very 2010. I really like the character.

JE : It is a concern we had. I mean, Sam’s a killer, Clarice is a terrorist, and they’re our two most sexually diverse characters. Are we doing more harm than good ? But I kept coming back to they’re complex, real people who we aren’t bending them around to accommodate their preference. They’re the most interesting people for our world and our stories, and making the sexuality incidental. It’s time to start doing that.

AE : What can you tell me about Sam and Joseph’s relationship ?

JE : Sam and Joseph ! I love their relationship. They are good supportive brothers. We’re going to find out more about their childhood history. We have a whole episode coming up well into the second half where we see what they went through as children on Tauron during the war. We’re actually going to go Tauron and see that, and we’re going to learn a lot more about how they see each other.

They support each other. As much as they might fight and argue and yell, they’re trying to save each other, protect each other. They are a good team. There’s a scene where Sam is angry at Larry, and Joseph says, "I don’t have a spouse anymore. Value what you have."

It’s a beautiful scene. I hope it made the final cut. I haven’t seen the final cut of that one yet to see if it’s there. We write more and film more than we have time for, so some stuff falls away, and unfortunately, Sam and Larry’s stuff — the home life of a character that’s not one of our four leads — is stuff that can get cut. We don’t see as much of Larry as I would have liked.

AE : What about Sam and Willy’s relationship ? That seems interesting and confusing, in that I don’t really know what Sam’s motivations are, or that Joseph would approve of what’s going on with what Sam is teaching him.

JE : Sam has to step up when his brother is distracted from raising his one remaining child. Joseph is very much caught up in the loss of Tamara, his daughter, and so Willy is sort of getting ignored and Sam steps into the breach.

No, it’s not what Joseph would want for his kid. Joseph is a Halatha lawyer, but he finds it hard to justify what Sam has to do. Sam is doing the best he can. A lot of the show is people doing the best they can. I think it’s really telling that everything Sam does for Willy is done with the exact right motivations. Ultimately, I think Joseph understand that.

AE : It seems like Sam is exposing Willy to his life and work, teaching him some, um, interesting lessons that I’m not sure Joseph would agree with. But you think ultimately he will see that it’s all for the good ?

JE : I think he’ll understands that Sam’s coming at it with the right motivations. I don’t think he sees it as all for the good. I don’t think he approves of the kid hanging out at Goldie’s and making all those mob friends, but he knows Sam’s heart is in the right place. He sees that someone has to be taking care of Willy.

And Joseph is Halatha himself. It’s hard for him to take the moral high ground. It’s complicated. That’s what I like about it. It’s complicated and very real.

AE : In just a couple sentences, how would you describe Sam’s journey this season ?

JE : Sam is motivated by his need to take care of his brother, to do things he never thought he’d do, but he stays very, very true to himself. We’re very conscious that Sam is a fascinating character and he’s caught all of our imaginations. We try to give him a lot to do that obviously doesn’t have to do with his sexuality. We didn’t want it to be he’s there to “be gay.” He’s there to be Sam.

He actually has an adventure with Daniel and Amanda later in the year, where we’re sort of crossing those characters, getting them involved in a project together even after stuff happens earlier in the year where you might think those are the last character to ever come together. We really worked hard to integrate Sam into the show with as many characters as possible. It really lets us learn more about him and his moral code : what he will do, what he won’t do.

AE : There was a poll on BuddyTV about the direction SyFy is going, especially with Caprica and 77% of the folks said they weren’t happy. How concerned are you about having to pull off the feat of doing a prequel, which is always a tricky thing to do, and also doing a very different drama for SyFY. JE : I think if you start writing toward what polls are telling you, you end up in trouble. Then you don’t have an internal compass anymore if things are going right or wrong. You have to keep going back and asking people, "Okay, is this what you want ? Wait ! Let me try this. Is this what you want ?"

You have to have your own internal compass. All you can really do is write the show you want to watch. As long as we’re doing that, we should be on the right track. I don’t think I’m that much different from the average SyFy viewer. I love SyFy. I know what I want to see. If I write something that would satisfy me, I think it will satisfy people who are like me far better than me trying to write for people who aren’t like me and guess what they want. That’s just not going to work.

AE : Are you a fan of Torchwood ?

JE : Yes ! Yes, I am a fan of Torchwood.

AE : Do you think the character of Captain Jack opened the door for SyFy the network, and sci-fi in general, to be more open towards characters’s like Sam ?

JE : I have no idea how much Torchwood affected anyone at SyFy’s executive suites. I know it made me feel more comfortable going like, "Okay, the SyFy audience will be cool with this." It’s also just an amazing show with the unexpectedness of the plotting, the willingness to embrace dark subjects.

The Children of Earth miniseries that was their Season 3, oh my God, how brilliant ! The decision that he can’t save his grandson, his grandson has to die. Yes, that’s a very Battlestar-y/Buffy kind of decision to pay the dark price. Go there. Don’t make everything sweet and wonderful and all tied up. Make it ugly and rough and emotional.

The way they own Jack’s sexuality is very admirable and very much like what we’re trying to do. The people around him have to be comfortable with it because he’s comfortable with it. It’s fantastic. Love Torchwood. Love it, love it, love it. Russell Davies is a genius, and all those people in the Russell Davies camp. I’ve been fortunate enough to meet them and wow. What a room full of geniuses. Fantastic.

Jane Espenson va être scénariste pour l'adaptation télévisée de :

Citation :

HBO's 'Game of Thrones': The 'Buffy' and 'Battlestar' connection

A "Battlestar"-"Buffy"-"Game of Thrones" connection? Be still my nerd heart!

HBO has confirmed that Jane Espenson, a "Caprica" executive producer who has also penned scripts for "Dollhouse," "Battlestar Galactica," "Buffy" and a host of other cool shows, is one of the writers for the TV adaptation of "Game of Thrones," which was recently greenlit by HBO. Espenson will write the sixth episode of "Thrones'" first season as a freelancer.

Also writing single episodes of the drama: Bryan Cogman, a script coordinator for the show, who'll pen the fourth episode of the season, and George R.R. Martin himself. Martin, of course, wrote the book series on which "Game of Thrones" is based and has been closely involved in the project since it was announced. Martin is one of the show's executive producer and a former writer for TV show such as "Beauty and the Beast" and "Twilight Zone."

The rest of the 10-episode first season of "Game of Thrones" will be written by David Benioff and Chicago's own D.B. Weiss, the team who scripted the pilot and have overseen the television adaptation from its inception.

The pilot for "Thrones," which stars Lena Headey, Sean Bean, Jennifer Ehle, Peter Dinklage, Jason Momoa and Mark Addy, was shot last fall. Production resumes in Northern Ireland in June and the series is expected to debut in the first half of 2011. People are being hired for various production jobs now, so if you live in Northern Ireland, this is your chance to be a set decorator or "standby chippie," whatever that is.

As always, for more news regarding "Thrones" and Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" book series, be sure to check out Winter Is Coming, Westeros and Tower of the Hand. Here's a link to all my previous "Game of Thrones" coverage.

ONTD, if you're thinking of taking this post and reproducing it in its entirety on your site, don't. I'll just send a DCMA notice and you'll have to take it down again. Don't.

Aww, Afterelton a dressé un top 10 des femmes qu'ils ont aimé en 2010, et on retrouve Jane Espenson à la 3ème place !!

Citation :

3. Jane Espenson

If her involvement in such gay-friendly shows as Ellen and Buffy the Vampire Slayer weren't already enough reason for us take note of Espenson, her involvement this year as co-executive producer on SyFy's Caprica would've sealed the deal.

After all, it's Caprica that gave American viewers Sam Adama, a gay character on an American science fiction show that was finally as interesting and complicated as Torchwood's Captain Jack. In fact, AE readers liked Sam so much that after just half a season, he came in at #22 on our poll of the greatest gay characters.

The first time I met Jane, she and I totally hit it off. I love knowing smart, funny, outspoken, passionate and incredibly pro-gay women which totally describes Jane. If I had been lucky enough to know her in high school, she and I absolutely would have been best friends. In fact, she is the friend that every gay guy should be lucky enough to have whether it be in high school or beyond.

But most of us will just have to settle for knowing Jane through her work. Lucky for us, it's almost as good as the real thing. --Michael Jensen

Une interview récente de Jane Espenson ^^

ATTENTION SPOILERS !

Une Ôde à Jane Espenson Je viens de trouver ce fanreport de quelqu'un qui était présent lors d'une session de Q&A avec Jane, au WriterCon, et awww, *j'adore* Jane Elle y parle du Spuffy, de combien elle regrette que Spike soit mort en pensant que Buffy ne l'aimait pas vraiment, alors qu'elle était sincère et avait mis du temps à le comprendre ; elle y parle aussi de Spike et de Jonathan notamment. Ainsi que des fanfictions et de combien elle trouve ça fantastique ^^

Oh et j'avais oublié, mais il y a également une seconde partie à ce texte :

Jane Espenson a été nommée dans la catégorie "Drama Writing" pour un épisode de Caprica ^^

Citation :

Caprica (Jane Espenson, Michael Angeli - "Gravedancing")

Voir la liste ICI

Voici le journal de bord de Jane Espenson, posté sur un site qui propose des plongeons dans la vie des scénaristes ^^

Une petite interview de Jane Espenson ^^ La phrase à retenir : ''Don't write for an audience. Write what you want to see.''

Je suis bien d'accord avec sa manière de voir les choses

Citation :

Battlestar Galactica writer goes back to the future

AMERICAN TV writer Jane Espenson was in Australia recently to teach the local creatives how to write genre television - specifically science fiction but more broadly anything created with a strong and unapologetic sense of its audience in mind.

At least, that's what Film Victoria, which paid her way, thought it was getting. But as she took to the stage, Espenson - whose credits include sci-fi epic Battlestar Galactica, its prequel Caprica (now on 7Two) and, soon, the Dr Who spinoff Torchwood - told the would-be writers in the room to ignore all notions of the marketplace. ''Don't write for an audience,'' she said. ''Write what you want to see.''

Whoops.

Espenson also had another, less contentious, bit of advice: watch what you want to write. ''Work backwards,'' she said. ''If there's a TV show you really like, watch your favourite episode and re-create the outline. Now you'll know what a good outline looks like. That's how I taught myself.''

Espenson wrote about a dozen spec scripts following the working-backwards principle before she landed her first paying job. She tried her hand at Seinfeld, Roseanne, Frasier and Cheers before finally getting an in on Star Trek. From there she landed a traineeship with Disney, which led to a staff writing job on Dinosaurs (the Jim Henson prehistoric Muppet sitcom) and, eventually, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel and Battlestar Galactica. She has just finished a stint as the show runner (the head writer-producer who manages a show) on Caprica and is about to write three episodes of Torchwood.

Espenson clearly knows her sci-fi and fantasy, both as a creator and fan, and when she talks about writing for herself, she might as well be talking about writing for an audience. She respects them; she's one of them (gabba gabba hey).

''I've heard people say sci-fi nerds are people who don't fit in here, so they're looking for a different world where they would fit in. I don't buy that,'' she says.

''When you meet sci-fi fans, they're fully functional, lovely people but they do tend to be frustrated by the pettiness in our world and are in love with infinite diversity. They're broad-minded, broad-seeking people.

''Sci-fi fans are very special and demanding. If you can create a world that is real enough to satisfy their quest for something that is real and is not here, you've really hooked into something.''

Certainly, no one could accuse Caprica of not giving that a red-hot go. Set 58 years before the events of Battlestar Galactica, the series explores life on the 12 colonies from which Battlestar's 50,000 human refugees will later emerge. The planet Caprica is the focal point but what goes on in the outlying colonies matters, too, if only as utterly plausible background noise.

''We made a great effort to make the worlds you're watching feel as real as our world,'' Espenson says. ''I had a writer called Bob Harris write a big, long document for us, where he went through all of the colonies other than Caprica … and came up with personalities, languages, cultural backgrounds, capital cities and all that kind of stuff so they felt real and grounded and inhabited, so when our characters would talk about them, if they made a joke where the punch line is, 'Well, he's from Aerilon', we knew what sort of joke it would be.''

Many American shows have ''show bibles'', a kind of form guide that details all the background that informs characters and storylines, but this was just one of Caprica's. ''We had a number of them,'' Espenson says. ''This was just the one that told us what all the other planets were about.''

It's that level of detail, she says, that gives this kind of genre film and television its richness.

''When people say they don't like sci-fi or fantasy, I say, 'Oh, so you didn't like The Wizard of Oz, Blade Runner, Big, Back to the Future, It's a Wonderful Life'? So many beloved movies and shows, when you think about it, have some aspect of alternative reality. People don't realise how much of what they love is this genre.''

: ICI

Nouvelle interview de Jane Espenson : http://www.comicus.it/blog/on-screen/focus-on-intervista-a-jane-espenson/

Citation :

Jane Espenson is one of TV's best-known writers and has been for a few years, now. Some of the best Buffy episodes were written by her ("Band Candy", "Earshot", "Intervention", "Storyteller"...) and she also worked with Joss Whedon on Firefly, Angel, Dollhouse and even in comic book form with Buffy's season eight. She also wrote many episodes of Battlestar Galactica (including the Emmy-nominated web episodes) and was one of Caprica's showrunners. She co-created Warehouse 13 and wrote episodes for Gilmore Girls, The O.C., Tru Calling and The Inside, among others. Currently she's working on the new US season of the UK show Torchwood, and that's where we reached her to ask a few questions about her work.

Torchwood just started shooting! Is the series any different than "normal" US shows? Did Russell T. Davies bring the "UK way" to produce a show or are you following the US one (assuming they're different)? How did you find writing in this very unusual 10-episode-long story arc format?

Torchwood is being produced mostly in the US style, but it's inevitable that some UK touches are still there. We spent more time in the room as a team than the UK people were used to, but the short season allowed us to have all the plotting and a huge amount of the writing entirely done before any shooting started, which I think is more of a UK thing. On the day that shooting started, we were closing in on some pretty polished drafts of the seventh and eighth episodes, and I believe nine is in really great shape too. It's so wonderful not being on that meat-grinder/treadmill combo that happens in the middle of a long season, where there are episodes that require attention at every step of the process.

The best part of Torchwood is the people. Russell T. Davies and Julie Gardner are incredibly positive and very generous with their time. I think we're all giving this our all because we believe in them so much.

What was your involvement in Warehouse 13? You're credited as co-creator, but I understand you stopped working on it even before the show started. Did you come up with the idea? The characters?

A very talented writer named D. Brent Mote had written a sharp early draft based on his original idea. I did a rewrite per notes from SyFy that included some character work. Another writer then rewrote that and then a final writer rewrote THAT, resulting in the show as you know it. And some time during all of that, there was the writers' strike. So by the time the show began production, my contribution was pretty distant. But I'm thrilled by the show's success and proud of my small part in it!

You're one of the few Buffy writers Joss Whedon wanted back for Season 8 and you had to work on a particularly important story-arc, "Retreat", where you had to deal with the "in comics we don't have to worry about budget" concept more than anyone else. Is it different to plot and write a story-arc in comics than it is on TV?

Writing comic books is really really really really hard. It's very visual. It feels more like what I imagine directing would be like. And it very much affects the kind of story you come up with. It's not just a case of "what's the most visual way to tell this story". It's also, "what's a story that naturally unfolds visually." And then there's the matter of the size of the story. It's amazing how much real estate is consumed by small interactions on the comic book page. When you get it all to fit together – the right amount of story in the right number of panels, it feels like solving a Rubik's Cube.

Were you aware of the way the season would end, back when you wrote your stories? And did knowing (or not knowing) influence what you wrote?

Joss told me some of what would follow my arc, but I don't believe I knew everything all the way to the end. But that feels normal to me – we always knew a bit of what the end of our current season of televised Buffy would look like, but not everything.

You wrote "Shindig", a great Firefly episode, and even though it's been a few years, now, like many other people you don't seem to be "letting go" of those particular characters, since you edited two collections of essays about Firefly and you even wrote an official short story, recently. Both this story and "Shindig" featured Kaylee as main character. Is she your favorite character or is it a coincidence? Do you think these characters will keep living in some form "forever"?

"Forever" is fairly long. But I certainly see Firefly continuing as a science fiction touchstone for a long time, yes. It's got a coolness factor that will keep it from getting that oversaturation backlash.

I guess my use of Kaylee was a coincidence? Maybe? I'm not sure. She's the Firefly character most like me, I suppose, so maybe I understand her best. Really, when asked to write the short story, I thought in terms of combos – which characters seemed like an interesting mix. I love Wash because he's funny, and it seemed like an interesting opportunity to combine the two of them in a very "internal" thinky story – the exact opposite of the kind of story I was talking about for comic books above. It's a really fun change of pace for a TV writer or comic writer to get to write a lot of inner monologue stuff.

Let's talk about Caprica. Even though it was canceled, it sort of had a real end. Was it the end you had in mind for the first season and you originally wanted to show us what would happen after that in following seasons, or did you speed things up to show us the series' real end?

We did accelerate the story a lot at the end, but not because we had any notion of trying to give viewers a conclusion to a canceled show. The cancelation (actually it was simply not renewed) happened long after the episodes were written. Instead, it was just the result of a sense that we wanted to get to the good stuff, that we should pick up the pace a bit for the good of the show.

Will you be involved in Blood and Chrome or you feel you've done "enough BSG"?

I don't expect to be involved in Blood and Chrome just because I'm working on other projects now, but if I were needed to write a freelance episode, I would love it. I don't think there is such a thing as "enough" BSG.

Besides Torchwood, what other shows or projects are you working on at the moment? I read you're writing an episode for the upcoming Game of Thrones series, is that confirmed? Can you tell us something about it? (Are episodes written each time from a different character's point of view, as the book's chapters are?) Any other projects you can tell us about?

I did write episode six of the upcoming Game of Thrones series and I get the feeling that it's going to be amazing. Everything I've seen is so polished and gorgeous. I don't think I'm giving away a spoiler by saying that episodes cover multiple chapters so they don't stay in one point of view.

I've also got a couple possible pilot things cooking, one to potentially co-write and one on my own. I can't talk about them yet – and any pilot has the odds against it ever seeing the light of day – but I'm really excited by both of them.

Final quick question! A classic. What other TV shows do you currently watch and enjoy?

I love Glee. Youth! Energy! Emotion! Songs! It's so much fun. And I like the best of the reality shows: Project Runway, Top Chef, Amazing Race. And despite my involvement in Torchwood, I'm just now going back to watch the Russell Davies years of Doctor Who – so great!

Un article sur Jane Espenson :

Citation :

Jane Espenson: Writer, sci-fi thriller, one nerdy lady
By Suzanne Kelly, CNN
January 28, 2011 3:53 p.m. EST

(CNN) -- If Jane Espenson were to write a personal profile for an online dating service, it might read something like this:

Motivated, creative woman who is not afraid to confront complicated issues ranging from imagining ways to kill off threatening vampires to interspecies sexual encounters (hey, I don't judge!) seeking like-minded mate who won't mind sharing me with my other passion, writing.

Old enough to remember "Barney Miller" but young enough to be responsible for identifying a fault with a warp drive that was slowly tearing the time-space continuum, heralding the development a new generation warp drive. Food enthusiast and forward thinker.

It's probably not the kind of ad many of her Midwestern childhood friends would identify with, but it's just the kind of credentials that attract suitors in the world of thrilling television series, where executives need to keep the creative flow of ideas coming in order to feed the demand. Jane Espenson is up to it and then some.

Growing up Jane

As writer or co-executive producer of some of the biggest cult science-fiction shows of the past decade, Espenson, 46, gets a sardonic kick out of her job.

"When I was a kid, I really identified with the character of Joe Rossi on 'Lou Grant.' He was this writer who knew he was good, and all the other characters thought he was so obnoxious, but I would watch him at home and think that I wanted to be that: a good writer and proud of it. If I've succeeded, then I've managed to become obnoxious! Heh!"

Born and raised in Iowa, Espenson was the kind of girl who often asked for more homework.

But during non-study moments, shows like "M*A*S*H" and "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" captured her imagination, turning her into a self-proclaimed addict of good television.

She soon wanted to create her own form of entertainment, even if it would take her a while to realize her potential (on shows like "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," "Battlestar Galactica," "Caprica" and "Gilmore Girls," just to name a few.)

As a teenager, Espenson found out that the producers of "M*A*S*H" accepted scripts on spec, without promise of payment or future work. Even though she wasn't an established writer, she set out to write her first episode.

"It was a disaster," she recalled. "I never sent it. I didn't know the correct format. I didn't know the address of where to send it, and then I thought, they can't really hire me until I finish junior high anyway." Jane went on to college at the University of California, Berkeley, honing her skills in computer science and linguistics before being called back by her passion to write.

She read that "Star Trek: The Next Generation" also accepted scripts on spec while she was still in graduate school, at the age of 25, so she tried again.

"I wrote three of them," Espenson said, "and they called me about the second of the three and told me they wanted me to come in and pitch."

She wasn't really sure what that meant, but she went to L.A. anyway to meet with the show's producers and give it her best shot. They ultimately didn't use her story ideas, but they did use one of the premises she put forth.

"The premise was that every time we go to warp speed, we find out we've been tearing the time-space continuum, essentially polluting, and they ending up doing that and even developing a special kind of warp drive we see in later shows."

Espenson's own career didn't hit warp speed immediately, though, and she knew that she had to try multiple entries into the field if she were to succeed. In 1992, she received an ABC Disney writers fellowship. She packed up her things and moved to L.A. but knew she had a lot going against her.

Namely, she was a woman and therefore a buzzkill in the writing room.

"It's like being the one girl in the locker room," Espenson said. "You are simultaneously the beloved little sister and the odd person out."

Espenson had a number of successes in the early '90s as a writer for both comedy and science-fiction. In 1997, she joined the staff of "Ellen" as a writer-producer. It solidified her roots in comedy and helped her learn not to take herself or her situation too seriously.

Success measured in the "Buff"

Espenson learned to make her feminine side work in the male-dominated writing rooms she inhabited for much of the '90s. When she went to work for an animated show called "Dinosaurs," she learned that being different had its advantages.

"There were all the boy writers and me, and it was that way for years," recalled Espenson. "It was a good thing, because I got to watch the whole process."

Although Espenson had amazing experiences on that show, later writing rooms were far more harsh.

"There is a rule where you can say anything in this room, so people try to be as shocking and appalling as they can. That becomes the prize, and a lot of times, that was at my expense," said Espenson, who insists that she has no bad feelings about it. "It's a good education. You learn to roll with it. You become one of the guys, or you become the girl. I tried not to do either of those things."

But she found that being a girl didn't matter nearly as much as having ideas that could sell. She realized that the day she went to get a writing job on a new show called "Buffy the Vampire Slayer."

First came an interview with the show-runner, responsible for the day-to-day running of the series. On "Buffy," it was sci-fi favorite Joss Whedon.

"It was terrifying but lovely," Espenson said.

Whedon ran his show a little differently from others. If you wanted to get hired, you had to pitch something great. So when Espenson threw out her ideas and heard that one of them had just been shot but not released, she knew she had the same mindset.

It was confirmed when someone else who was in the room that day told her that after she'd left, Whedon walked over to a white board and wrote just two words: Hire her.

Fans loved Buffy. The blonde high school student whose extracurricular activity happened to he hunting vampires was a cult hit, and working with Whedon served as a lesson for Espenson in how to stay true to character.

"Joss' credo was that we needed a reason to tell the story. He would ask, 'What's the Buffy of it?' " Espenson recalled. "It's about the journey, and it's her journey, and we kept coming in and pitching stories which were cool and had a great sci-fi hook, but Joss made clear that Buffy needed the emotional hook."

Espenson recalls, in one instance, waiting years until Buffy's right-hand man Xander was ready for an idea she wanted to write for him.

"I remember finding out that Nicholas Brendon, who played Xander, had a twin brother, so I pitched a story on that premise," Espenson said. "But Joss said Xander wasn't ready and held off for three years until it was the right emotional time for that character. He brings that kind of discipline."

"Battlestar" and beyond

When Espenson joined the cast of "Battlestar Galactica" for season four in 2006, she found herself in familiar territory as the only female writer in the room. She worked for Ronald D. Moore, whom she ranks among the best show-runners she's had.

"Ron was wonderful," Espenson said. "His ability to grasp things and know things so quickly and so decisively what will work is amazing. We gather around a cell phone and call him to pitch a story, and he would be in an airport somewhere and would just sit there and listen, and I'm thinking, 'oh, there are so many things we're leaving out.' And he'd just start saying, 'OK, I like it. Here's what you need to do,' and he would start rearranging scenes to make it work."

Espenson went on to become co-executive producer of the show as well as executive producer of the "Battlestar" movie "The Plan."

The experience was enough to whet her appetite for creative control, so when SyFy network executives offered her the job of show-runner for a spinoff called "Caprica," she went for it.

In her own words, it was her biggest mistake.

The job lasted a year, and the show was cancelled last fall. Espenson took it in stride and says she realizes that the demands of being a show-runner stretched her abilities.

As a self-proclaimed control freak, she found that she was controlling all the wrong things. Although she's extremely proud of the show and is happy to launch into praise for those who worked on it with her, it's hard not to notice the rare moment of raw personal reflection that gives insight into the Espenson mind.

"That's exactly why I wasn't a good show-runner," she said. "I'm too honest about my fears, so I just did it again. That's the biggest mistake I've made in this interview."

But don't buy it just yet. Espenson is a woman who knows what she does best.

"I think I'm a really, really good writer, which sounds awful, but I feel strongest when I have my fingers on the keys," Espenson said. "Projecting confidence and having the whole big vision thing in your head and knowing how to balance other things, that is all stuff I never bothered to learn."

She hasn't written off the idea of running another show some day, but she freely admits that next time, she'd do it differently.

"I think there's a way to run a show when you learn how to delegate the bits you don't do well," she says. "I'd do it again if it were the right project, but this time I'd have more partners around me."

Right now, it's not bad being Jane.

She's writing for "Torchwood" on Starz while working on a SyFy pilot titled "Good Cop, Dead Cop."

And she keeps interesting company. She had dinner with her old friend Joss Whedon and a bunch of other colleagues not long ago. They sat in a California restaurant and talked about the latest round of "Buffy" comic books while tossing around ideas for things to come.

Ah, if one could only imagine ...

Une interview de Russel T. Davies sur Torchwood (avec GROS SPOILERS !!!!) et il y parle de Jane Espenson et aussi de Buffy :

Extraits sur le sujet :

Citation :

SFX: You’re a fan of those shows yourself. Do you turn into a Buffy fanboy when you meet people like Jane Espenson?

“Oh yes, I sit there and say, ‘Tell me about “Storyteller”, about how you did that. Tell me about why you killed Tara.’ I’ve worked with her all these months now and I keep thinking of new questions! I sat there the other day and said, ‘Why did you kill Jonathan?’ That was the strangest decision! I do think the death of Jonathan on Buffy was really strange and thrown away. And we had a great dinner, and she tells you all about what was going on at the time and what it was like, and I love all that! And John Shiban, he’s directed Breaking Bad – I love that. And Doris Egan, with her stories on House, is just hilarious. I just love it all.

Jane Espenson rejoint l'écriture de la série "Once Upon a Time" ^^ (POSSIBLES SPOILERS !!!!)

The duo join the producing team on the Snow White drama set for fall.

Jane Espenson and Liz Tigelaar have come aboard ABC’s new drama Once Upon a Time. Espenson will co-executive produce, while Tigelaar will serve as a consulting producer.

Espenson, who penned 10 episodes of Starz’s upcoming Torchwood: Miracle Day, also wrote a recent installment of HBO’s Game of Thrones. Her credits include Warehouse 13 and Caprica, in addition to Buffy the Vampire Slayer and several other Joss Whedon series.

Tigelaar is best known for writing and creating the CW’s short-lived teen drama Life Unexpected, which wrapped its second and final season in January.

Set in a world where fairy tales are real, Once Upon a Time stars Ginnifer Goodwin (Big Love) as Snow White and Jennifer Morrison (House) as her long-lost daughter. Robert Carlyle and Josh Dallas co-star as Rumplestiltskin and Prince Charming, respectively.

Lost writers Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz penned the pilot for Once Upon a Time, and will exec produce with Steve Pearlman (V). Mark Mylod (Entourage) directed the pilot.

Espenson is repped by CAA and Hansen Jacobson Teller Hoberman. Tigelaar is repped by WME.

Jane à un panel, "It's about time !" :

http://vimeo.com/25775400

Nouvelle interview de Jane qui nous parle de Torchwood ^^

Jane Espenson commente un épisode Torchwood : "Miracle Day" :

SPOILERS !!!

Pour mémo, les épisodes écrits par Jane :

Citation :

Scénarios écrits pour Buffy : Effet chocolat, Intolérance, Voix intérieures, Désillusions, L'Esprit vengeur, La Fin du monde (en collaboration), 314, Superstar, Le Double, Triangle, L'Inspection (en collaboration), Chagrin d'amour, La Quête, Résurrection, La Tête sous l'eau (en collaboration), Tous contre Buffy (en collaboration), Fast food, Vice versa, Connivences (en collaboration), Ça a commencé (en collaboration), Rendez-vous dangereux, Sous influence et La Fin des temps, partie 1 (en collaboration)

: Wikipedia.

Jane Espenson et sa nouvelle web-série, "Husbands", première photo promo :

Spoiler:

L'histoire en gros : un mariage qui n'était pas supposée arriver finit par arriver et ça s'avère être au final une très bonne chose.

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