Charisma Carpenter’s Death Scene In Angel Helped Land Her First Major Movie Role

Charisma Carpenter’s Cordelia Chase started as a queen bee figure on “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” but eventually, her role as a “Mean Girls”-esque clique leader diminished and she started spending more time with the Scooby Gang than the Cordettes. Then her character moved to Los Angeles and joined “Angel” one of TV’s best spin-offs ever. There, Cordelia got a bona fide heroic arc … and, ultimately, an emotional death scene. As it happens, said scene came in handy when Carpenter was looking to move to the next stage of her career. 

In 2010, Carpenter starred in her first major movie, playing Lacy, the partner of Lee Christmas (Jason Statham) in the action hero team-up movie “The Expendables.” As Carpenter revealed in an interview with Entertainment Weekly, she met with the movie’s star, director and writer Sylvester Stallone, who had a problem — the actors who had already auditioned to play Lacy were giving the character too much of an edge. He wanted to ascertain whether Carpenter could provide a softer take. Fortunately, Carpenter had an ace in her sleeve. She showed Stallone Cordelia’s final scene on “Angel” Season 5, Episode 12 (titled “You’re Welcome”), in which she appears to Angel (David Boreanaz) as a vision to give him a final pep talk and a kiss.

“I show that scene at the end — the kiss when I leave — and [Stallone] punches me in the arm like ‘Good job … But you still have to read though,'” Carpenter recalled. “Then he called me in the middle of the afternoon … and he said, ‘We were gonna have you come tonight and read for it,’ and I went.” The very next day, Carpenter got the role. 

Sylvester Stallone’s desire to cast an actor who wasn’t trying to portray Lacy as particularly tough is understandable, since she’s one of the few characters in “The Expendables” who isn’t combat-oriented. Instead, Lacy is a part of Lee Christmas’ off-duty storyline, and their tumultuous relationship explores the home front difficulties of a mercenary lifestyle. Charisma Carpenter reprised her role in “Expendables 2” in 2012.

Though Lacy isn’t among the most prominent characters in the franchise, Carpenter was right to be excited about the opportunity. After all, “The Expendables” reportedly made over $268 million at the global box office against an $82 million production budget, while “The Expendables 2” made over $311 million with a $100 million budget. Having two success stories like that in one’s résumé can hardly hurt an actor — and indeed, Carpenter has continued to work steadily after her time in the action hero franchise. 

Carpenter revisited the role of Cordelia in the 2023 Audible Original “Slayers: A Buffyverse Story,” and she has expressed a wish that her character might return on the “Buffy” reboot, “Buffy the Vampire Slayer: New Sunnydale.”