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Angela Susan DeVash’s grand entrance into the world could be described in one word; normal. There were no near death experiences, she arrived on time, and had a loving mother (Johanna DeVash nee Forsythe.) and father (General Thomas Lee DeVash of the United States Army) who had been married two years prior to the little girl’s birth. Angela would, however, spend her first three years of life on a small Army base in Kaiserslautern, Rheinland-Pfalz Germany where she learned the language fluently, before being uprooted and moved to Fort Campbell, Kentucky at the ripe old age of three. There were several years that the toddler was allowed to be a recluse, but once school started and it became obvious that Angela was going to be quite shy, Johannah decided to take the matters into her own hands. There was an attempt at tee ball (which failed miserably when Angela refused to hit the ball and ran from the field when the coach got annoyed), followed by art classes (a bust, since she refused to color inside the lines), but eventually she found her niche.
It was a large Victorian style house in the center of the city, and while it might not have been the most elite of places to begin her acting career, it would soon become a second home to the now five year old. Each Thursday and Saturday she would arrive at exactly four pm and go through the improvisational games, the monologue books, she would learn and was taught anything and everything that the retired Drama teacher saw fit to mold her into the next Shirley Temple and Angela absolutely adored it. Unfortunately, however, Thomas didn’t seem to get the memo that his young daughter was quite happy in the small, southern, city and opted to retire just before Angela began her seventh grade year.
Opting to move to his birthplace of New York City, lead to a bit of a culture shock for Angela, but fortunately enough, after a week of teenage angst to the highest degree, Johannah had her daughter enrolled in (much more elite) drama classes once more. Another bit of luck happened a few months before the end of Angela’s seventh grade year when she scored high enough on standardize testing and aced an audition (at the end of her eighth grade year) for High School of Perfoming Arts, opting to specialize in theatre.
Once again, she became almost obsessed with perfecting her technique, spending hours going over the lines and the tricks to perfect her technique. It wasn’t uncommon to spot her slinking from one of the studio hours after the final school bell had rang. And it showed. Angela’s acting was much more precise, much cleaner, and there was less critiquing from the teachers than the other girls’ recieved. It wasn’t until her sophomore year, however, that she began to develop friendships (curse you unavoidable shyness!), and several of the girls’ decided that all work and no play makes Angela a dull girl.
So a new trend was started. Each and every weekend, she was pulled from her house and forced to socialize, which wasn’t nearly as horrible as she would have made one think it was. Her group of friends grew slowly, and despite the small amount of popularity she gained, she still preferred to be alone or in the theatre itself. This may or may not have caused her to develop a bit of a reputation as an Ice Queen (ok, ok, so there might have been a few cases of sarcasm gone awry, but that was to be excused, right?), which never quite left her.
The partying became quite worth it during the spring semester of her junior year. It was at a rather large gathering that she ran into, quite literally, the one and only James Somervaille (though, at the time, not quite an actor.). A one night stand occurred and eventually a friendship was struck up. Said friendship turned into a relationship during the final semester of high school and Angela would, quite easily, describe it as the happiest time of her life. The couple clicked and James made her feel confident and comfortable and all kinds of good things. It was, quite simply, love.
Of course this was about the time that James decided that wandering across the country would be a massively good idea, and while New York did offer plenty of production and writing opportunities (Angela had mostly become burned out with the Acting thing) for her, it was mostly in stage, so being the dutiful girlthing she followed the James. Life in Los Angeles was much different than the fast pace times of New York City, and while James didn’t strike it big immediately? The same couldn’t be said for Angela. A few months after arriving into the city of movie stars, she sold a script that had been thrown together in under two weeks to a production company (with the agreement that she would be able to oversee everything that was done.), about a teenage girl who was a cheerleader by day and a slayer of the undead by night. There were rewrites and there was tweaking, all of which Angela agreed to, and by the time that the movie made it to the theaters, Angela had to be escorted from entertainment complex in tears. Lesson Learned.
For the next five years, Angela mostly kept her writing to a minimum, focusing more on the acting side of things, while keeping notebooks upon notebooks of ideas for various productions. Around 1997, however, James found out that he had fathered a child and let Angela in on this little secret. The following months were tremulous to say the least. On top of the landmine that James planted, Angela’s father suffered a massive heart attack and passed away, exactly two days later. The loss of her father, and the fact that James was with her, soothed the waters a bit, but she still had a terrible time trusting him. Each time he went away to shoot a movie, or had a rehearsal, Angela became a nervous wreck. This changed, however, when the tiny baby came into the world. It was a boy, and he was named Dylan Somervaille, and Angela fell in love once more. She had all ways wanted children and some how she managed not to mind so much that this one wasn’t her own. It didn’t hurt, that she hadn’t had to give birth to him, and you know, James had been given full custody.
Having a baby around made Angela feel some what maternal, and just generally want domestic bliss. Despite typically being very verbal about these things, however, Angela only made a few hints about her wishes (which seemingly went ignored by the male half of the relationship), before mostly giving up and becoming mostly fine with being regulated to ‘permanent girlfriend’, and that’s the way things stayed for nearly three years.
It was a trip to Vegas that changed everything. There was a bit of free time for both James and Angela, and thus a vacation was in order. Flying out to Sin City for all kinds of carousing (gambling, strippers, drinking, and just general fun!) for a few days before returning back to Los Angeles to be mature, responsible adults, changed slightly the night after they arrived. There had been a tour of strip clubs, boozing and the idea to get hitched was sprung by a very buzzed James. Angela (who had had a few drinks herself) agreed quickly and it was off to one of the many, many, drive thru wedding chapels. Elvis Presley presided over the services and unlike many couples who wed on a whim, there was no forty eight hour later annulment to be had.
A few years after the Vegas weekend, Angela found herself pregnant with a baby girl who would come to be known as Hartley Jane Somervaille. The pregnancy was mostly error free, though Angela had to spend the last few months on bed rest, just as a precaution. On May 18, 2003 the tiny girl came screaming into the world. From the start, she was quite simply the apple of her father’s eye and seemed to prefer him to Angela. This fact only became more and more apparent as the child grew, which convinced her mother that she was the worst parent in the history of parents and lead to lots of self doubt. After all, weren’t mothers supposed to have some natural knack for this? It took a few months, but eventually Hartley seemed to warm up more to Angela (..Probably due to a very stern lecture James gave the toddler about hurting mommy’s feelings) and the tensions soothed.
Angela’s career as a writer steadily began to take off around this time. After an epic amount of editing and finding a group of people that she trusted, Buffy The Vampire Slayer (A.K.A her “paper baby”) was ready to see the light of day once more, this time as a television series. It took off steadily, spurring a vocabulary of its’ own and developing cult status that was just fine with Angela Somervaille. In two thousand and five she shot out a spinoff of the series called Angel which followed a vampire with a soul as he set up his own paranormal investigation unit. This was also the year that Mason Somervaille (her second child with James). Using the down time that being pregnant created, she created the idea of a Western that would take place in outer space, and thus? Firefly was born, pitched to Fox, and dropped like Pluto after one season.
Dusting off her acting chops, she auditioned on a whim (and at the urging of her not so forgotten agent) for Mean Girls and, despite being a few months pregnant (with her second son, Jude) scored the role of Mrs. Norbury. Hairspray (musicals being her weakness) came next, along with a tiny baby girl named Zoe a few months after her scenes finished wrapping. At the moment, Angela Somervaille is currently working on getting Firefly back to the masses (this time as a movie, under the name of “Serenity”) and giving Fox a second chance with another series: Dollhouse.
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