James Marsters doesn’t try to embrace fame. That’s quite a contradiction, given his popularity on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its spin-off Angel, which not only allowed his star to rise but even cemented his status as a sex symbol – something he laughed at when mentioned.
“In general, my theory is fame is toxic to the human soul. It will tempt you to think you’re better than everyone else, tempt you to think you’re special, tempt you to separate yourself from the population. And the end result is loneliness,” explained Marsters, 53, of Los Angeles, who appeared at the Motor City Comic Con in Michigan in mid-May. “During Buffy, I hid from the world because I just didn’t want to be famous. I didn’t want to admit it was happening. I surrounded myself with people – and still do to this day – that never saw Buffy and don’t care. I try to live a normal life.”
It was The Who’s Roger Daltrey, whom Marsters worked with on Strange Frequency, who taught Marsters how to be famous.
“We’d be out talking between takes and someone invariably would come up – ‘Roger! Roger! Roger!’ Just within the rhythm of his life, he’d sign the autograph, say thank you very graciously, and turn back to me… He wasn’t bothered by it; it was just a normal part of his life. He explained to me, ‘James, this is not gonna go away. You can enjoy it or you can freak out about it. You might as well get comfortable with it and learn how to deal with it and have fun, actually,’” recalled Marsters.
A self-professed drama nerd, Marsters studied at the Pacific Conservatory of the Performing Arts in Santa Maria, CA. and the Julliard School in New York City. A classically-trained Shakespearean actor, Marsters is a veteran of the stage. He has been active in the theater community in Chicago and Seattle.
In fact, Marsters was perfectly content being a poor theater actor. He had no desire to make his living in the movies. However, that changed when his son, Sullivan, was born in 1996. Marsters went to Hollywood to “whore himself out” in order to provide for his family. He felt he’d already proven himself as an actor, given his stage background, and made it clear to his agent that he didn’t care if he was “the new Urkel” – he was in it for diaper money.
In 1997, he landed his most famous role – the British vampire Spike – on Buffy. “(Creator Joss Whedon) wanted a punk rock vampire. I auditioned with a cockney accent and (the producers) asked if I did any other accents. I had an idea to do an old Southern accent that people 150 years ago would’ve sounded like… I thought it might be kinda fun to use that.” At that point, he spoke in a Southern accent. “I auditioned like that. We were told – for that time – a lot of white people sounded like this, but in the modern time would not be speaking like that.” Reverting to his normal voice, “They liked that a lot. They thought it was fun and everything, but they thought Joss’ initial idea was the best. And it was. Joss lived in England for a while; he knows English culture and has a lot to draw from when he writes English characters.”
Whedon stated that Spike and his undead paramour Drusilla (Juliet Landau) were supposed to be the Sex Pistols’ Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen as vampires. “I said to Joss, ‘You don’t want Sid and Nancy. This is ridiculous. Sid Vicious was an idiot; he was also a horrible bassist. The reason why the Sex Pistols were the Sex Pistols was because of Johnny Rotten… I’m gonna give you Johnny.’ He was like, ‘Yeah, whatever,’” said Marsters.
Spike was supposed to be killed off after several episodes. Yet, he managed to become a regular on Buffy and later Angel.
“I was just designed to be Drusilla’s boy-toy. I was gonna be schmuck-bait for Angel (David Boreanaz). The idea would be Angel was gonna have sex with Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and go evil so he could break her heart. His first act of evil would’ve been to be kill me off. I was just the expendable boyfriend for Drusilla, who was gonna be Angel’s new girlfriend. They were just basically matching actors to Juliet, trying to find an actor she got along with and she played well with and had some chemistry with,” he explained.
Marsters has wonderful memories of working with Landau. “I auditioned with her. We’re both from theater and we gravitated towards each other easily and spoke the same language. Juliet is just a fearless actress. She’s not concerned with looking glamorous all the time. She’s not concerned with looking beautiful – she knows that she doesn’t have to worry about all that – she’s really interested in grit, in unnerving the audience, making an acting choice that is brave. I cut my teeth acting in Chicago, and the acting style is just like that – very gritty, very passionate, usually pissed off,” he said.
When asked which was his favorite scene with Landau, Marsters couldn’t choose. “All of them! All of them! God…” he fondly recalled. “I can only say that I was cast on Buffy because Juliet liked me. The whole thing was predicated on how does this actor meld with Juliet… We were comfortable around each other. We intimated something hinky was going on below frame… If you go back and look at some of those shots, it actually looks like ‘What are they doing?’”
Landau expounded on that. “James is an actor’s actor,” she explained. “We’re supposed to have been together for 200 years, and you can’t be shy with someone after 200 years. The characters had great chemistry; that was a huge ingredient. Their love story was so interesting because it had gone on for centuries, balancing out their evil and diabolical sides. They had a tender side; it was a bit kinky, but it was fun.”
Marsters attributed Spike’s popularity to Whedon, calling him a “very brave writer.”
“To Joss, evil is not cool; evil is not sexy. That’s why he made us look so horrific when we bit someone; he didn’t want that moment to be sensual in any way; he wanted it to be scary,” said Marsters. “His show was really about all of the problems he faced in high school and vampires were a metaphor for those challenges. He got talked into one romantic vampire and that was Angel. It wasn’t his idea – it was his writing partner David Greenwalt’s. So Angel took off like a skyrocket, and Joss was like, ‘Okay, we’ll just have one and that’s it.’”
He continued: “So then I came along and – for whatever reason – the audience was perceiving me as a romantic character. That was not what Joss was going for. In some ways, that started to imperil the theme of the show. Now you have two vampires the audience’s perceiving as romantic in a show where that’s not the point at all. Joss – instead of doing the thing I would’ve done, which would’ve been to kill me off immediately – decided to keep me around and explore the character and somehow make it work and not ruin the show. That takes a lot of talent and a lot of balls, frankly. I owe my career to the fact that Joss had the courage do that. Having to find a way to fit a square peg into a round hole unleashed Joss and the writing staff’s creativity. It meant that there was a really interesting journey for Spike.”
And what a journey it was. Spike eventually became Buffy’s love interest. “I said, ‘Joss if you ever want me to have my shirt off on the show, just give me a few months to work out, okay? Just give me a little warning.’ He’s like, ‘Oh, good. You have the summer because next year you fall in love with Buffy.’ I’m like, ‘Great, obviously she never reciprocates, right?’ ‘Not really. You guys are gonna have a lot of sex,’” said Marsters.
There was a scene in “Seeing Red,” a 6th season episode of Buffy where Spike unsuccessfully tries to rape Buffy. In the end, Spike is horrified by his actions and intentions – as was Marsters, who was very disturbed by that scene.
“That was probably the hardest day of my professional life. That was not a good day. In hindsight, I’m glad we did it; I’m proud of it,” he said. “As an artist, you don’t want to be comfortable. I think when you’re out of your comfort zone, that’s when you’re doing your best stuff. I wouldn’t take it back at all, but I didn’t enjoy going through it.”
James Marsters shared his insight on Buffy’s staying power. Even though the show ended in 2003, it lives on in comic book form as Whedon oversees Buffy’s further adventures. Marsters even penned a few Buffy comics himself.
“This is a secret of Buffy that I think is one of the biggest reasons it lasts is that Joss asked of himself and every writer to come up with their shame, come up with the day that they regret, the day that keeps them up at night, the day they don’t talk to anyone about, then slap fangs on top of that pain and share it with the world. That’s true for every single episode. I think that amount of vulnerability and bravery resonates with the audience. Sometimes you know why, sometimes you can try to guess what the experience was that led to this kind of episode, sometimes you can’t tell at all. But I think it’s always under there and it always resonates,” explained Marsters.
He pointed out that Whedon is really good at hiring nice people, many of whom he’s worked with on other projects.
“He’s aware that the creative environment is like designing a pre-school. Artists are usually broken people who have found a way to be whole through the environment of art. To design a creative environment, you have to design a place that would be safe for a small child. If you do that, the little inner child’s gonna come out and play. But if it’s a harsh environment, it’s gonna be a lot harder to get creative. Joss understands this. He made a place where nobody was peeing on the floor and it was all good,” he said.
Marsters let out a big belly laugh when asked if he minds being remembered as Spike. “I don’t mind at all! My God!” he exclaimed. “Genre is able to say things more clearly than other forms. Sometimes science-fiction and fantasy can address social issues much more directly. That to me is very exciting… I might go on to other hit projects, but I don’t know if I can touch the nerve of the world like I did with Buffy – or be part of something that touches the nerve of the world. That’s pretty rare, so I have no problem at all (being remembered as Spike).”
Although best remembered as Spike, Marsters has other notable roles, a few of which he was reluctant to take initially including serial killer Ted Bundy in The Capture of the Green River Killer, Capt. John Hart on Torchwood, and Brainiac on Smallville. In fact, he flat out rejected the role of Bundy, who murdered numerous young women in the 1970s and died in the electric chair in 1989.
“That is the kind of role I usually turn down right away. Anything that has to do with sexual assault, I try not to be involved in – it’s just too painful for me… When I was contacted for Green River Killer, my initial response was ‘No, thank you,’” he explained.
However, John Pielmeier, whom Marsters knew from his theater days, called him personally and asked him to take the part. “I said, ‘John, for you I’ll do it but I’m not doing any research. I’m not gonna get into Ted Bundy. I’ll come there and be myself and read the lines.’ He said that was fine because the thing about Ted is he comes off as an absolutely normal person, but once you know what he’s done, the amount of people he’s killed, the most unnerving thing about him is how normal he seems, how charming he is. John said that was probably how I should play it anyway. I did no research at all. I read nothing about Bundy. I learned nothing. I went in there, shot for a day, and we got the scene in a few takes. The director (Norma Bailey) was really happy. I felt like I was phoning it in. But they were pleased with how it came out because I didn’t try to go all dark with it,” explained Marsters.
He loved working with Oscar winner Hilary Swank, Oscar winner Kathy Bates, Emmy winner Lisa Kudrow, Gerard Butler, Gina Gershon, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, and Harry Connick Jr. on 2007’s P.S. I Love You. Marsters played John McMarthy, a friend of Holly (Swank), whose husband Gerry (Butler) dies of a brain tumor. After Gerry’s death, a grieving Holly emotionally withdraws from her life. Prior to his death, Gerry arranges through his mother-in-law (Bates) to send several messages to Holly, all ending with “P.S. I Love You.”
“I learned something there too, which is that the big stars – the real big stars – they’re COOL!” praised Marsters. “It makes sense. The people who pull attitude and think they’re so wonderful and so above everybody, those are usually people who’ve been on television six months. Because if you want a long career, if you lose your perspective and lose your humility, people just don’t want to work with you. Hilary was so humble, so hardworking, so kind… Kathy proved what I said about the big stars.”
According to Marsters, Bates had a high fever during a long day of filming. Not once did she complain. “For 11½ hours, they were over our shoulders on Hilary, then at the very end they turned around for close-ups. When they turned around for Kathy, I would’ve thought they would’ve started with her shot to get her out but they ended with her,” he said. “I thought she was gonna have a word with the director (Richard LaGravenese) about this. But all she did when we’re about to enter this set (was say), ‘Okay, men from the boys, guys. Go!’”
He also bonded with Butler. “(Butler) was amazing. We just had one scene together – he’s dead through the whole movie – we’re in a bar. He sits down next to me” – Marsters does a Scottish accent – “‘All right, we’ve got 15 minutes to become best friends.’ He looks at his watch and spends precisely 7½ minutes – he used to be a lawyer – telling me every horrible thing he ever did in his life, stuff only a best friend would know about. Then he goes, ‘Okay, 7½, your turn.’ So I told him all the horrible things that I’ve done and within 15 minutes, we were best friends.”
Marsters was the first person to ever play Superman villain Brainiac in live-action on Smallville, which chronicled the life of Clark Kent (Tom Welling) before he puts on the cape and becomes the world’s greatest hero. At first, Marsters wasn’t excited about this role.
“I told (series creator Alfred Gough) I was a Batman guy. If you shoot Batman the right way, he dies. So when Batman goes to work, it’s always exciting; you don’t know if he’s gonna come home. At the apex of any hero’s journey, the hero’s life needs to be in danger… he must be willing to put his life on the line to help people. That’s when it gets truly exciting,” he said. “With Superman, if you shoot him, who cares? He’s gonna be fine. Everyone knows he’s gonna come home at the end of the day – unless you give him Kryptonite. So what happens is you have to constantly pull out Kryptonite and that gets repetitive. So, for a movie, you can do that and it works. But for a TV show, you can’t pull out Kryptonite 22 episodes a year.”
However, Gough explained to him that Clark is a teenager; therefore, he’ll be vulnerable every single week to everything a teenager’s vulnerable to – his family, his girlfriend, his school, his sense of identity, his sexuality – not just Kryptonite. “I looked at him and said, ‘My God, you did it! You unraveled Superman!’ That’s exactly what you need to do. What a genius take on Superman. It worked. The show ran for 10 years and never ran out of material because that central idea was always in play. I had a great time on Smallville,” said Marsters. “They told me what was coming down the pike as far as plot because I was the one who was planning everything… I think Tom actually believed we’d become friends. He told them, ‘Don’t tell me who the villain is. I want to play this as the character.’ I think that’s a very smart choice. He might not have even known I was Brainiac because he really bought into the fact that Milton Fine was his new mentor. I loved pretending to care about Clark Kent. We’re up in the loft of the barn, staring at the moon, and I’m telling him, ‘Clark, you have to forgive yourself. Life is all about forgiving those around you.’ I’m giving him all this wisdom when I’m thinking inside, ‘I’m gonna kill you. Come here, little fish.’”
James Marsters got to kiss John Barrowman on Torchwood, the Doctor Who spin-off – which was his one of his favorite moments. “That was one of the finest days I ever had as an actor. It was a wonderful dialogue scene, followed by a wonderful kiss, then a fight scene,” he said. “I bit John on the first take and he’s like, ‘You bit me?’ I told him, ‘Hey, I haven’t seen you in 300 years.’”
Of all the co-stars he’s kissed, including Landau and Gellar, Marsters stated Barrowman was his favorite. “I’d kiss John above anybody,” he said. “Women like guy-on-guy action. I had no idea. I know we guys like to watch girl-on-girl. But when two guys go at it, it’s something some women enjoy very much. My fiancé (Patricia Rahman) was on the set. She was enjoying herself. I’d kiss her and then John. I got more sugar that day than I’d gotten in a long time. We’re married now. We’ve been married for six years. Sometimes I think I should call John and spice it up again, have him come over.”
Barrowman, who’s openly gay, shared his memories of that shoot with Marsters. He laughed long and hard when he heard that he was Marsters’ favorite co-star to kiss. “I have been told that I’m quite good at it. James is not too bad himself. That scene we had together… it’s become iconic,” said Barrowman. “When we were doing it, what we did was not expected. People didn’t expect those two anti-heroes to walk up to each other and just start snogging in the middle of this bar. They snogged it out and then beat the crap out of each other – it was a brilliant piece of writing.”
At first, Marsters didn’t want to be on Torchwood; he wanted to be on the parent show. However, that changed when he got the script. “When I met with (creator) Russell T. Davies he said Torchwood was his Buffy. I don’t understand what he meant by that. Buffy was a subversive show for its time. It was subverting the lie that women can’t defend themselves. Russell wanted to do his own subversion; he wanted to subvert the lie that gay people can’t be heroes. I like to think of myself as a subversive artist, so I was very proud to be on that show,” said Marsters.
Fans would love to see Marsters, Juliet Landau, and Julie Benz reunite with Boreanaz on Bones, which enters its 12th and final season this fall. “That would be fabulous. I would love it,” he said. “I haven’t heard anything about it.”
Besides acting, Marsters is also a musician and plays in the band Ghost of the Robot. He spoke about how Prince, who died April 21, inspired him.
“How could he not? Wow. In 1985, I was doing a version of ‘When Doves Cry.’ I had two tape-recorders and I figured out how to layer tracks just using two tape-recorders… It worked pretty well except that one tape-recorder’s playback was slightly faster than the recordings, just by an imperceptible amount. The finished product sounded like a squirrel was singing,” said Marsters, laughing. “It was a comical version of ‘When Doves Cry.’”
Prince is one of those artists like Miles Davis who comes along once in a generation and his impact is omnipresent, no matter what musical genre, according to Marsters. “You can’t be a musician and get away from Prince, whether you realize it or not,” said Marsters.
Currently, he’s working on a TV project he can’t talk about. He’s also adapting Shakespeare’s Macbeth into an independent movie. Not only will he be playing the titular character, he’s involved in the writing process. “I feel like if you adapt Shakespeare, you have to know what you’re changing and why because if you change the wrong thing, you can mess the engine up,” said Marsters. “Frankly, Shakespeare is the dirtiest, bloodiest writer I’ve come in contact with. That man is filthy, especially the comedies if you really understand what those jokes are talking about. They are dirty jokes.”
No stranger to voiceover work, Marsters provides the voice of Lex Luthor for DC Universe Online and narrates New York Times best-selling novelist Jim Butcher’s The Dresden Files. Butcher’s series chronicles the adventures of a hard-boiled wizard named Harry Dresden, which Marsters calls a cross between Harry Potter and Sam Spade.
“I love voiceover work. Frankly, a lot of tools I learned in theater I had to ditch when I came to Hollywood,” said Marsters. “Theater is basically hanging words in the air – the proper color, the proper rhythm, the proper speed. The difference between night and day in theater is how the words are handled; the difference in something that is dangerous or something that is humorous – it all depends on how the words are hung in the air. If you do that in film, it looks so fake and so actor-ed, it’s such a lie – the camera doesn’t buy that stuff in a heartbeat.”
He continued: “When you’re on stage, your face is very small and your eyes are almost invisible yet you’re trying to communicate the inner workings of the human mind to people who are half a football field away. When you’re in front of a camera, it’s as close as a lover – you don’t get that close to anyone unless you’re in bed with them. It’s very intimate. You don’t have to perform anything, you don’t have to express anything – you just have to live it. I spent most of my professional career developing tools for stage. You miss using them, so when you’re doing voiceover work, you really are hanging words in the air. So I get to pull out those old tools and start using them again.”
For Marsters, conventions are plenty of fun for him. He enjoys meeting fans and engaging in conversations about “pretty much anything.” A fanboy himself, he’s been attending conventions since he was 13, particularly Star Trek conventions where he was dressed as Spock, albeit with a big, blond afro. Sadly, he has no pictures from those days.
During Q&A panels at conventions, he dares fans to try to embarrass him, guaranteeing them they won’t. At one convention, a fan asked him if he’d ever host The Bachelor. “Yeah, we’d call it ‘James’ Crib and Hoes,’” he answered, eliciting laughter from the audience.
Marsters provided his insight on reality TV and why it’s so popular. “Mediocrity sells because people are sometimes uncomfortable being touched in a place they don’t expect to be touched. Sometimes projects that are surprisingly or brave or more useful tend to not have as much success. Raging Bull didn’t get the Oscar. It took people a while to wake up to the fact that it’s an awesome film. A lot of times, those really good projects are not the big moneymakers initially. It’s only in hindsight that we realize another great piece of art has been given to us. Sometimes that’s a badge of honor,” he said.
Conventions are one of the last places in society people come together and actually talk, according to Marsters. “We still have movies and concerts, but to actually come together for fun – to talk – is rare, at least in my world… I find that being part of a convention is helping build a community on a level that I was never able to do before (producing theater). I also find that people at conventions tend to be pretty smart. Genre attracts people smarter than the average bear. I tend to meet at least one scientist every time I go to a convention – or a doctor. I have a friend who helped design the MARS Rover… He came dressed as a Wookie. I’ve met people from NASA, the CIA, the FBI, people who cannot tell me what they do for a living but really enjoy the projects I’ve been in for over years… This happens every time. I always meet someone with an interesting job, and – frankly – I like to talk to people.”
