Trivia / Angel S 03 E 13 Waiting In The Wings

• The Cast Showoff: The ballet episode was originally conceived as an excuse for Whedon to utilize Amy Acker's dancing talent. The only scene that required her to dance was cut from the episode for pacing reasons - but can still be seen among the DVD extras. It did, however, allow him to display former ballerina Summer Glau's dancing talents — and her knack for accents.
  • Summer Glau is arguably an inversion — "Waiting in the Wings" was the very first acting role that she ever took, so when Joss hired her, she wasn't so much an actor who could also dance as a dancer who could also act. In hindsight, however, it becomes a straight example.
• Creator's Favorite Episode: Joss Whedon says on the DVD Commentary that this was his very favorite directorial effort (up to that point, at least, having written but not yet directed "Once More, with Feeling"); that he used to shoot campus dance recitals when he was in college, and that he was "a wanna-be dancer more than I'm a wanna-be almost anything."
• Deleted Scene: The fantasy ballet sequence between Fred and Wesley, available on the DVD.
• Fake Russian: Summer Glau as a Russian ballerina.
• Recycled Script: This is the Angel equivalent of Buffy's "I Only Have Eyes For You", in that two characters relive a love story from the past. Angel even has a line referencing he's been through a similar experience before.
• What Could Have Been: While Joss Whedon was filming the dressing room scene with Cordelia and Angel, he explains that he wanted to shoot it in one continuous camera shot to "get the space, to keep the camera moving, to get the magical feel for the whole thing." However, in rehearsal at the moment that Cordelia stands in front of the mirror, David Boreanaz was standing behind her, reflected. Whedon remembers, "I said, 'That's great, and then we'll go to David's reflections and then we'll go to her here,' and then everybody got very quiet and I believe it was Ross Berryman the director of photography who said, 'You do remember that he's a vampire, yes?'"

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