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Drusilla is a fictional character from the fantasy television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997–2003) and its spinoff Angel (1999–2004), portrayed by Juliet Landau. She is a vampire with the ability to read minds and see some future events, but she is also mentally unstable. The premise of Buffy the Vampire Slayer is that an adolescent girl named Buffy Summers (Sarah Michelle Gellar) is endowed with superhuman strength to fight monsters and evil creatures in the fictional town of Sunnydale. She accomplishes this with the help of a small group of friends called the Scooby Gang. Drusilla is introduced in the second season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer as the lover of Spike, another vampire whom Buffy must fight against.

Drusilla was turned into a vampire in 1860, when she was a devout and chaste young woman with troubling visions. She became the obsession of Angel, who enjoyed watching her descend into madness after torturing and killing her family. To seek refuge, Drusilla intended to enter a convent, but Angel sired her—or made her a vampire—the day she was to take her vows. They roamed Europe with Spike and Angel's sire Darla for a few decades until 1898, when Angel killed a young Gypsy woman and was cursed by her tribe to be re-ensouled, causing him a century of guilt and miserable torment, which leads him to help Buffy. Drusilla is a parallel to Buffy, who also falls in love with Angel. She appears sporadically as one of Buffy's antagonists and the character crossed over to a spinoff series focusing on Angel's continuing redemption, which is set in Los Angeles.

Creation and casting

Buffy the Vampire Slayer received critical praise and good ratings for its first season. Each season presents viewers with an antagonist that is trying to bring about an apocalypse in Sunnydale, called the Big Bad, which the Scooby Gang must unravel by the season finale. In the first season, the Big Bad was an ancient vampire named the Master (Mark Metcalf), who is the head of an evil cult fascinated with prophecies. He is imprisoned in a cave below Sunnydale. The monsters and elements of horror in the series were used to symbolize real problems for adolescents. Buffy kills the Master in the first season finale, leaving a vacuum for the writers to fill. Where the Master endeavored to end the world because he considered it his duty to do so, the villains of the second season practice their evil for evil's sake. Drusilla is one member of several couples whose relationships are the focus of the theme "love gone rancid", according to Buffy studies author Roz Kaveny.

Juliet Landau, daughter of Hollywood actors Martin Landau and Barbara Bain, was the only cast member of the series not to audition for her part. Whedon saw her performance in Ed Wood and approached her agent with a character description, including Drusilla's relationship with Spike, which was based on the choatic affair between Sex Pistols bass guitarist Sid Vicious and his girlfriend Nancy Spungen. Landau met with Whedon, producers, and the casting director, read a few of Drusilla's lines and included several of Drusilla's affectations—glassy-eyed stares and fidgeting hands—and was offered the role half an hour later. Landau stated that the character's trajectory appealed to her: she was interested in the idea of Drusilla coming to Sunnydale in a frail condition and recovering to be much stronger and more frightening. Landau participated in auditions to cast the actor to play Spike and counted reading with James Marsters, who eventually got the role, as one of her favorite experiences on the show. Landau and Marsters were included in the promotional materials for the second season with the tagline "Evil has a few new faces".

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Drusilla and Spike appear for the first time in "School Hard" and their stories are told in bits and pieces throughout several episodes. They have been attracted to Sunnydale for its hellmouth and for the Festival of St. Vigeous, when vampire powers are their greatest. In the previous season, the Master created a messianic vampire character called the Anointed One (Andrew J. Ferchland), who inhabits the body of a little boy. The vampires of Sunnydale take their cues from the Anointed One, who bids them to attack Sunnydale High School on parent-teacher night, when Buffy has been ordered to appear by the odious Principal Snyder (Armin Shimerman). Spike and Drusilla are clearly in love with each other—a relationship which has not been shown on the series before—although Drusilla is very weak and appears ill. It is revealed that Spike and Drusilla have just barely escaped an angry mob in Prague, and Drusilla is weakened and must be tended by Spike, who is completely devoted to her. Buffy thwarts the attack on the school, which does not bode well for Spike as he is chastised by the Anointed One. In the absence of a strong leader, the vampires of the town are vying for who will take the Master's place. Spike rashly kills the Anointed One by caging him and exposing him to sunlight, then turns and says "From now on, we're going to have a little less ritual and a little more fun around here."

Buffy's romantic interest, Angel (David Boreanaz), knows Spike and Drusilla and warns Buffy not to underestimate them. In the previous season, it was revealed that Angel is a 242-year-old vampire who killed a young Gypsy woman among the many people he murdered, near the end of the 19th century, causing her people to curse him to be instilled with a soul. He spends the next century tormented by what he had done as a vampire. He is drawn to Buffy because he wishes to make amends, and because he falls in love with her. In his former soul-less existence, he was known as Angelus, a particularly cruel monster. Buffy also discovers in "Lie To Me" that Angelus and Drusilla have a past as a couple. Angel admits to Buffy that he tortured Drusilla's family, and to find refuge in her grief she fled to a convent. On the day she was to become a nun, Angelus turned her into a vampire.

Drusilla's extrasensory abilities are exhibited from her first appearance. She portends future events in visions, then tells about what she has seen in enigmatic statements that confuse other characters and viewers. Her clairvoyance is often so muddled that her statements are mistaken for insane ramblings—which she also gives. She states without solicitation that she misses leeches, she chastises one of the dolls from her large collection, and switches topics seemingly without reason: "Do you like daises? I plant them, but they always die. Everything I put in the ground withers and dies. Spike, I'm cold."

Season 2

• School Hard
• Halloween
• Lie to Me
• What's My Line
• Surprise
• Innocence
• Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered
• Passion
• I Only Have Eyes For You
• Becoming, Part One

Season 5

• Fool for Love
• Crush

Season 7

• Lessons
• Bring on the Night
• Lies My Parents Told Me

Angel

Following Buffy's third season, Joss Whedon and David Greenwalt liked Angel's character so much that they created a spinoff series for him, that aired immediately following Buffy for the next two years. Angel is set in Los Angeles, and the series focuses on the possibility for redemption of all its major characters. Its premise is based on the idea that Angel and three friends—including two characters who crossed over from Buffy—run a detective agency in film noir style, that investigates supernatural occurrences. They come up against a law firm named Wolfram & Hart that represent some of the most evil characters in the city. The second season of Angel explores the main character's limits in his dedication to good while being antagonized by the shady lawyers from Wolfram & Hart. It simultaneously highlights the bizarre familial connections between Darla, Angel, Spike, and Drusilla.

To make Angel less a hindrance to their evil schemes, Wolfram & Hart bring Darla back from the dead in "Dear Boy". The episode includes flashbacks to Angelus meeting Drusilla for the first time, as a young woman walking down an English street with her family. Both Darla and Angelus can sense she is different; Darla must instruct Angelus about her special abilities, and because of Darla's guidance and Drusilla's uniqueness, he becomes obsessed with her, tortures her entire family while she watches, then intercepts her at a convent where she has fled to kill her and make her a vampire as he is.

Season 2

• Dear Boy (Drusilla and Angelus meet first, pointed out by Darla, showing Angelus how to hunt. Drusilla with her two sisters walking down a street. Darla and Angel can smell her special abilities) Darla returns to LA in human form, brought back by Wolfram & Hart
• Darla (crossover with "Fool for Love", backstory re Boxer Rebellion and meeting Spike) (Holder, et al 2002, pp. 251–259.)
• The Trial (Drusilla, sponsored by Wolfram and Hart, once more makes Darla, her "grandmother", a vampire)
• Reunion (Drusilla prepares Darla to be reborn as a vampire, they go shopping and murdering afterward, then show up at Holland Manners' house during a party and kill the guests) James Contner: Landau "marvelous actress...a very studied actor" who likes to work and experiment. Landau called Contner after the episode and told him she received positive comments, felt it was "the best show she'd ever done as that character". Landau: Drusilla has her own manicure (black w/ white tips when weak, red with white tips when stronger)--shopping for clothes brought back the Sid and Nancy analogy. Landau liked to experiment w/ the character.
• Redefinition

Season 5

• Destiny
• The Girl in Question

"The reason the Angel and Darla picked Drusilla was because of her extrasensory perception and ability to have visions. That was definitely a part of Drusilla prior to becoming a vampire. However, being tortured by Angel, the terrible things he did to her family, and what happened in the convent were huge in shaping who she is as well. So all of those components definitely figure in together. In the back story Joss filled in for us, Angel tortured and killed Drusilla's entire family in front of her. She fled to the convent as a means of seeking refuge. What then transpires with Angel has a darkly incestuous element because he's the father figure, he "makes" her who she is. There's that thread and she gets turned around, and her sensuality and sexuality got released in this unusual way. I don't think she would have been the same person in that realm, without that having happened." -- Juliet Landau

"It encompasses so many dynamics, and it's what's wonderful about the writing on the show. She is my grandmother, because she sired Angel and he sired me. She becomes my baby because I bring her back, so there is that familial connection as well. We are bound by this deep connection to Angel and our lengthy history. And there's the aspect of how one character's evil exacerbates the other. We bring out the worst, or what we consider the best, in each other." -- Juliet Landau

Insane rant in "Redefinition": I see such pretty fire....and pain...so much suffering...The flames are lovely...they dance, and the fire licks like a cat...and the screams, oh, it's like star music..." predicts the fire Angel causes to kill them both (unsuccessfully). Landau believes Darla underestimates Drusilla: "If she had listened to me about the fire we would have been in much better shape. You know, I'm pretty right on. I say things in sort of a poetic, unusual way, but she;s been around me long enough to read between thelines. Somehow her own feelings for Angel and her own stuff, she started to get annoyed and not pay attention."

Bibliography

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• Davidson, Joy (ed.) (2007). The Psychology of Joss Whedon: An Unauthorized Exploration of Buffy, Angel, and Firefly, Benbella Books. ISBN 978-1-933771-25-0
• Dial-Driver, Emily; Emmons-Featherston, Sally; Ford, Jim; Taylor, Carolyn Anne (eds.) (2008), The Truth of Buffy: Essays on Fiction Illuminating Reality, McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers. ISBN 9780786437993
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• Wilcox, Rhonda (2005). Why Buffy Matters: The Art of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I. B. Tauris. ISBN 1845110293
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• Holder, Nancy; Mariotte, Jeff; Hart, Maryelizabeth (2002), Angel: The Casefiles, Volume 1, Simon & Schuster. ISBN 074342414X
• Ruditis, Paul and Gallagher, Diana (2004). Angel: The Casefiles, Volume 2, Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0689871457