Connor and Cordy

Vincent Kartheiser (Connor) spoke to the BBC about working with a pregnant Charisma Carpenter:

“Whenever you have some outside source affecting someone on the set, it’s going to have some sort of outcome that’s going to be different, but she was a great sport and would suck up the pain even though you could see that she was in it. She didn’t like really wearing her shoes to set, which I understand because I have sisters and [pregnant women’s] feet get so swollen.

I guess the only technical thing that came up was during our love scene. I was terrified because they were like, “Well you’re going to be on top,” and I was like, “Oh my God, she’s four months pregnant and I’m laying on top of this woman.” So I was hovering about two and a half feet over Charisma throughout the sex scene, just to make double sure that I wouldn’t harm her or her child.”

Vladimir Kulich

Vladimir Kulich played The Beast during season four of Angel. Born in Prague, he began his acting career at the State Theatre of Czechoslovakia. Kulich speaks several languages fluently. He moved to to Canada and then the US, where he was cast in guest-starring television and feature roles. His most notable performance to date is as Buliwyf in The 13th Warrior.

The Beast

The Beast was a huge demon who was constructed entirely from rock. It had two distinct curved horns and bright yellow eyes. Cordelia began to see visions of The Beast, who eventually clawed it’s way up through the Earth, emerging at the very spot where Connor was born. The Beast was brought to Earth from a Hell dimension where it was previously banished in order to pave the way for Jasmine’s entrance to the Earth. A killing machine, The Beast easily beat Angel, Gunn and Lorne and massacred many residents of L.A. - including most of Wolfram & Hart. The Beast conjured a rain of fire over Los Angeles, during which Cordelia and Connor made love - resulting in Jasmine’s conception.

By order of it’s master - who was secretly Cordelia - The Beast killed the Mesekthet, a member of an order of mystical beings known as the Ra-Tet, who was disguised as a little girl at W&H. It then hunted down and killed other members of the Ra-Tet - Ma’at, Ashet and Semkhet. The final Ra-Tet, Manjet, was killed by a possessed Cordelia in secret. The Beast pieced together the remains of the Ra-Tet - the metal wings from Ashet and Semkhet, the heart of Ma’at, the orb from Manjet’s head and the dark energy of Mesekthet in order to block out the sun.

Believing that their only hope was in Angel’s evil alter ego Angelus, who had known The Beast in the past, Angel Investigations had a shaman remove Angel’s soul and turn him into his true vampire form. Angelus stabbed The Beast with a knife made from its own bones, as the only thing that could kill the Beast was the Beast itself. The death of the Beast undid the spell to eclipse the sun.

Apocalypse Now

Apocalypse Now is a Vietnam war movie made in 1979, directed by Francis Ford Coppola. It is based on Conrad’s book The Heart of Darkness. In Restless, Xander brings a video of Apocalypse Now for the Scoobies to watch. Later, Xander dreams of the scene in the movie of the encounter between Lieutenant Willard (Martin Sheen) and Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando) in which Principal Snyder plays the role of the Colonel. In Gingerbread, Snyder says, “I love the smell of desperate librarian in the morning” which is an adaptation of the famous line from the movie, when Lieutenant Colonel says, “I love the smell of napalm in the morning”.
A third Snyder-related reference to Apocalypse Now is in The Puppet Show. At the end of the episode, we get to see the dramatic scene that Buffy, Willow and Xander perform. One of Xander’s lines is: “Darkness! And horror of darkness.” At that moment, the camera cuts to Snyder sitting in the audience. The most memorable line of Conrad’s book belongs to Kurtz (the character that Snyder spoofed in Restless), who says, “The horror. The horror!”
The Angel episode Apocalypse Nowish is a clear reference to the book and film.