Nicholas Brendon, who played Xander Harris across all seven seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, has made his feelings about the show’s most famous spin-off abundantly clear. In a passage from the 2022 book Into Every Generation a Slayer Is Born, Brendon described Angel as “worse than those Twilight f**kers” — a sentence that requires very little in the way of elaboration.
He didn’t stop there. Brendon went on to call Angel “the most boring character in TV history,” before rather pointedly adding: “I’m not sure if I’m talking about David or Angel at this point.” The comment added fuel to longstanding rumours about off-screen tensions between Brendon and David Boreanaz, though neither has ever directly confirmed a difficult relationship.
The contrast with how Brendon speaks about other castmates is telling. He was notably warm about Charisma Carpenter — who, of course, followed Boreanaz to Angel — saying he missed her when she left Buffy. So it isn’t that he’s down on everyone; it’s something more specifically about Angel the show, and possibly Angel the character.
Xander and Angel were always at odds on screen — Angel was older, supernatural, brooding, and Buffy’s great love, everything Xander resented. Turns out that tension may not have been entirely fictional.
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