Emma Caulfield: Self-Professed Sci-Fi Dork

byDayna Gross

Lifetime: Your projects seem to have mystical themes. Are you drawn to supernatural stories?

Caulfield: I think it's just a coincidence. With "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," the last thing I considered was that it was a show about vampires and supernatural elements. I just liked the show and my character was funny. And in "Darkness Falls," my character was a struggling woman trying to get her life together through ridiculous circumstances. And this film is more like "Medium." Or "Medium" meets the movie "What Lies Beneath."

Lifetime: What attracted you to "In Her Mother's Footsteps"?

Caulfield: I seem to have surrounded myself with "vibers," people who are incredibly spiritual. I've heard them give information about others that they shouldn't really know. And my character doesn't realize at first that she's got this [psychic] ability; she thinks she may be going crazy. To have an influx of information and to not have any context to put it in would be unsettling. I liked that about her.

Lifetime: Do you believe in clairvoyance?

Caulfield: I absolutely do. I have close friends who are able to see or feel fragments of energy coming from the past, future or present. Each one interprets it differently. When this one friend of mine is trying to communicate something about someone who's died, her whole body will change. She'll say, "I'm being told to stand like this. Does this mean anything to you?" And the person will burst into tears and say, "Oh, my God! That's exactly how my father stood!"

Lifetime: Ever had a premonition?

Caulfield: I do find myself knowing things before I should. The second before the doorbell rings, I'll walk to the door because I know someone's going to be there — that kind of thing. We're all capable of grabbing that information to one extent or another. We use such a small fraction of our minds. I think it was Einstein that said if we used our entire minds, we wouldn't need our bodies. There's gotta be something to that. Einstein was no dummy.

Lifetime: Anything spooky happen on set?

Caulfield: Nothing really strange. Although I think the house we were shooting in was haunted. I have no basis for that other than just a feeling.

Lifetime: What was the most memorable moment of filming?

Caulfield: The whole thing was pretty memorable. And Matreya, the girl who plays my daughter, is the most adorable thing. As soon as I saw her, I just wanted to put a knife and fork in her and eat her alive, she's just so cute.

Lifetime: We hear you've gone to a few sci-fi conventions for "Buffy." What are they like?

Caulfield: At first, it was just surprising how invested fans were. They'd ask incredibly specific questions about past episodes and I'd say, "Wow, I can't believe you know that." And then I'd think, Well, I'm a sci-fi dork and I know the names of every episode of "Star Trek: The Next Generation," if I'm being honest.

Lifetime: What was your most memorable convention experience?

Caulfield: When this couple who were really big fans said they'd named their daughter after me. And I said, "That's so sweet." And they said, "Yeah, we love the name Anya." I thought to stop them for a minute to say, "You know, that's not actually my name," but they wouldn't have heard me anyway. Talk about devotion.

Lifetime: What's next for you?

Caulfield: I'm working with Farhad Mann, [the director of "In Her Mother's Footsteps"] on another project that my friend wrote, currently called "East of Fairfax." I also wrote a short that I'll start shooting in a couple of weeks. And I wrote a pilot. So, I'm wearing a lot of hats — which is how I like it.