In Joss Whedon’s film of Much Ado About Nothing—Shakespeare’s witty battle of the sexes—Amy Acker, as Beatrice, takes a showstopping pratfall down a flight of stairs. “That was Joss’s idea,” she says. At 36, she’s a seasoned native of the “Whedonverse,” having been cast more than a decade ago in Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer spin-off series, Angel, and most recently in his 2012 horror film, The Cabin in the Woods. But the actress, who is married and has two children, is also a seasoned Shakespearean: her first stage job out of college, in fact, was playing Hero in Much Ado About Nothing. “I would be lying to say I didn’t dream of playing Beatrice,” she says now. Acker’s Angel co-star Alexis Denisof plays Benedick. They read the parts together several years ago at Whedon’s house, and in 2011, when the writer-director-producer decided to make a no-budget screen adaptation on a break from The Avengers, Acker and Denisof were the first people he contacted. “We really had no idea what was happening,” says Acker. “I was kind of thinking I would show up and Joss would have his Flip cam or his iPhone and it would be like a glorified reading and we would film it.” Instead, Whedon and his wife, Kai Cole, turned their Santa Monica home into a set, and the costumes and props (town cars, iPods, walkie-talkies) are decidedly 21st-century. In the end, Acker says, the 12-day shoot came down to “people who love each other getting together and doing a project that they’re passionate about.”