Absolute Power by Mike Stokes
An interview, conducted during Season 3, with Harry Groener – before the full truth about the Mayor and his plans to ascend had been made clear…

The Mayor of Sunnydale is a tortured man.
     His actress wife of 21 years, Dawn, is teasing him for having the palate of a ten-year old boy just because his favourite foods are bananas and crisps. Television is no comfort, because reruns have seemingly turned Shark Week into Shark Millennium on his beloved Discovery Channel. Adding injury to insult, the belt on his vacuum cleaner just broke.
     These are not the kinds of distractions a man of the mayor’s stature is accustomed to dealing with. Then again, Harry Groener isn’t really a mayor – as the old cliche goes, he just played one on television. But seeing as how no one could have guessed that the little kid who emigrated with his family from Augsburg, Germany to San Francisco in 1953 would get this close to political office, it should still count for something. Unfazed, Groener easily laughs off these nuisances. When his thoughts turn to his first order of business should he ever become a real mayor, of say, Los Angeles, his tone becomes deadly serious.
     “Those found making a call in a supermarket will be taken out and made into hamburgers – and then sold at half price,” he deadpans. “That and anyone with mayonnaise under their fingernails. It’s hard, but it’ll work. You just make a couple of examples of people. It’s a tough world, man. You’ve got to pay the piper. There are rules and you’ve got to follow them.”
     Okay, so maybe he’s not that serious. Fact is, life is pretty good for Groener, and it’ll take more than a gross misuse of cellular technology to take the spring out of his step. Having appeared in dozen of stage, film and television productions over his 20-year acting career, the pernickety Richard Wilkins III has been one of Groener’s most colourful roles to date.
     “They are so good at putting in those funny quirky little lines that make this character so interesting to play,” he praises. “And it’s a really good set. Everybody seems to really like each other a lot and have fun, and everybody’s interested in what’s going to happen with the characters. It’s really fun to be on the show, which is great.”
     Though the groundwork for the character had been laid months before the part was even cast, no one was quite prepared for how peculiar the mayoral germophobe with the shrunken human heads hidden away in his office would turn out to be. And whether it’s a deal with the devil, black magic or bad advice from his guidance counsellor that set him on his path to evil incarnate, the mayor has those closest to him, like Snyder and the police chief, shaking in their Hush Puppies.

“There’s something the mayor knows about the potential of his power which makes him less afraid of people who threaten him,” Groener explains. “That’s interesting to play, because the closer we get to absolute power, the closer we get to the part that corrupts. When there’s no danger, it’s fun. You want to worry about this guy.
     “It’s interesting, because even the vampires are sort of scared of him,” he adds. “Vampires are pretty powerful – they have a few weaknesses, but they’re pretty powerful – but the mayor seems to be confident in his strength. He doesn’t seem too worried as long as things go along the way they’re supposed to go, and he makes sure that happens. His whole relationship with the vampires is interesting. They’re worried, and they work for him. I’m as intrigued about this as anybody else.”
     While fans suspect that it will eventually be Sunnydale’s mayor who will lose the battle by the time his story arc concludes, Groener says that he quickly prepared himself for the inevitable. Like many of the recurring characters on the show, the mayor was expected to make a limited number of appearances, which he surpassed fairly quickly. And though he senses trouble ahead for Mayor Richard Wilkins and his evil cronies, he is as anxious as everyone else to see how it all turns out.
     “When the producers call and say they want another episode, I say good, because he’s not dead yet. As long as I’m still alive, I’ve got a job. Keep me alive!” Groener laughs. “It’s like on soaps when they kill somebody off – they say, don’t believe it until you see the body, then they’re still alive. If you see them actually die, then they’re really dead.
     “Besides, Buffy will eventually overpower and kill and all evil will go,” he says. “She has to do it. She’s the title. She has to be the one who will eventually take out the bad guy.”
     Then again, in a town like Sunnydale, you never know…