![]() ![]() ![]() That approach was only going to be interesting for a short time, though, both for the actor and the audience. I would come in a couple of times each episode to kind of twist the scene a little bit and then leave. You got to watch him be really quite pitiful and at that point I was really, functionally and structurally, the wacky neighbour. They put a chip in my head, and that was really about watching someone be completely unplugged from his source of power. It was only when Spike became foolish and vulnerable and probably less sexy and less dangerous that Joss actually thought, ’Well, hey, this is a person who I can explore humanity with.’ So, when I came onto the show (full-time), they really highlighted a kind of toothless vampire. ![]() "It was watching that episode come together and seeing that I was really willing to embrace that side of the character that had Joss get interested in bringing me on as a regular. That guest shot was to provide the basis for a more permanent return to Buffy for Marsters. He was a drunken, heartbroken sod, really, when we saw him in season three, and I was just in one episode that season." He discovered Spike to be really quite pitiful. She was busy doing a movie and so Joss rewrote that episode to be more about Spike. Luckily for me and unfortunately for Juliet Landau, she was unavailable. "Joss often has some characters come back for an episode and so he planned an episode where Dru and Spike came back into town. My tenure was over and there were really no plans to come back," the actor admits. "What was that, season two? And that was it. Having survived the whole year, Marsters had thought his days as Spike were definitely numbered. But they didn’t, and I finished the season. I don’t think that they would’ve built him up that far if they hadn’t been planning to kill him. So, they built the character up as being extremely dangerous and extremely cool. The rest of us when we go to vampire are meant to frighten or meant to be loathsome, really. The only vampire to have his pretty face and his pointy teeth was Dracula himself. It’s one of the reasons why the vampires on the show are ugly. I progressed into a disposable villain, and I say disposable because in Joss’ universe, evil is not cool. I have a feeling that he would’ve killed me off as one of his first acts of evil villainy. That girlfriend was going to be Drusilla. Drusilla was the main character, I think, and I haven’t asked Joss this, but my sense is that Angel (David Boreanaz) was going to go bad after sleeping with Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and take a new girlfriend, as often happens in high school. I think that Spike was first designed to be a disposable boy toy for Drusilla (Juliet Landau). "I don’t know that he had the whole master arc worked out when he hired me or when he first developed the role on paper. "I’m not sure that Joss had a conscious plan for Spike," says Marsters, referring to Buffy and Angel creator Joss Whedon, the man who hired him, turned him into a regular, killed him off and then rehired him. It’s been a long journey for Spike, one which actor James Marsters was happy to relive for dreamwatch as he spoke in tremendous detail about Spike’s arc over the course of his days on Buffy. ![]() That’s to say that Spike died in Chosen, the Buffy the Vampire Slayer series finale, but before that episode culd even air the WB announced that Marsters - and Spike - would pick up stakes and move over to Angel, which the network renewed for a fifth season. James Marsters was dead when this interview took place, but now he’s merely in limbo. I never thought Buffy should reciprocate." "I thought it’s be interesting, if he had a real psychological reason to want to reform, to watch they guy choose to be good and how frustrating that could be. Undead Spike is now really dead, having bought the big one on Buffy finale Chosen, but James Marsters is back in action on the new season of ANGEL. ![]()
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