Head of the Class by Matt Springer and Mike Stokes
Recorded during the production of Season 3, this issue it’s the turn of everybody’s favourite principal Armin Shimerman.

The year 1999 was a rough one for Armin Shimerman. After seven seasons on the syndicated series Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, his prickly Ferengi Quark closed up shop for the last time. The tenure of his second job, as principal of Sunnydale High, also came to an abrupt end when he became impromptu snake food for a giant serpent demon during the graduation ceremony.
    “That was a life-changing experience in many ways,” says Shimerman – not that being devoured by a computer-generated monster can be anything but. “The week that Buffy killed me off is the week that I finished filming Deep Space Nine, so it was kind of a traumatic week. I lost two shows in one week.”
    Neither really came as much of a surprise. His DS9 departure coincided with the series finale, and on Buffy… Well, as Alice Cooper says, school’s out forever.

“When I heard that they were graduating, I figured that I had to be a graduation gift,” Shimerman quips. “And I went out just the way I wanted to. Not necessarily exactly the way – I never thought about being eaten by a snake – but I did want to be eaten, because that’s the way Flutie went out.  I’d always said I wanted to go out the same way that Kenny Lerner did, and I got my wish, so that’s good. I sort of measured Snyder by Flutie. Flutie had four episodes, and I thought that would be my stay as well, maybe about seven episodes. Snyder just stayed and stayed and stayed.”
    In fact, Shimerman originally auditioned for the role of Flutie, but it was either a grand scheme or a twist of fate that allowed him to leave his mark on Buffy with a character and performance so perfect, it made it nearly impossible to let Snyder go.
    “When they were originally casting the show, they were looking for a Flutie,” he recalls coyly. “After the reading was over, I walked by a writers’ room. As I walked by, I saw two life-sized cut-outs of Captain Kirk and Worf inside the room. Being somewhat in a playful mood, I popped my head in and said ‘How come there isn’t one of me in here?’ They laughed, and we chatted for about a minute and I walked on. Then, after Flutie had been killed off, they made an offer to me about playing Principal Snyder.
    “To this day, I not sure whether it came from that reading I had from Flutie, from that little tete-a-tete I had with the writers, or the third scenario is that they forgot all about that and maybe they cast me for my work on Deep Space Nine.”

But now, with two plum roles that have brought him phenomenal scripts, much renown and steady pay-cheques dusted, what’s an actor to do? Mainly Shimerman has filled his schedule by writing novels: his first book, a DS9 novel called The 34th Rule, co-authored with David R. George, was released in 1999, winning acclaim and fans alike. Another sci-fi tale entitled The Merchant’s Prince followed and another novel is scheduled for 2001.
    “The great fun in that was creating a character in the 21st century who had many Elizabethan attributes.” he reveals. “I drew upon my Shakespeare background to create this character – actually, I didn’t create him, he’s historically true, someone who actually lived – but his thoughts and what he did are all things I created.”
    There’s also more acting on the horizon for Shimerman. He started a play the day after DS9 ended filming. So even after saying farewell to two television series in one season, Shimerman’s cup is already running over, with a role in movie Crossed Fingers coming next. Still, he says that he’ll miss his work on Buffy.
    “I really enjoyed working with the cast of Buffy and the crew,” says Shimerman. “I’m sure those friendships will continue, but it will be sad not to see them on a regular basis as I did when working on the show. I looked forward to the days when I was there. It was a kinder, more festive set to work on than Deep Space Nine. I’ll also miss the writing in a sense that the show had the cleverness and an insight into teenage angst that I really enjoyed being a part of. I really thought that we were investigating what it was to be a teenager through the metaphor of vampires.”

Of course, Buffy has proven more than once that characters can come back from the dead – who knows, Snyder may still be alive in the Mayor’s charred remains. It’s a long shot to be sure, and Shimerman is ready to move forward and see where his charmed career takes him next.
    “I’ve been a lucky person,” he says. “I’ve had a lot of big breaks that don’t necessarily read as big breaks, but the combination of all of them together is a huge break.”
    And that run of luck has taken him from the sewers of New York on Beauty and the Beast to the depths of space in Deep Space Nine and most notably to the halls of Sunnydale High on Buffy, where he may be gone, but his performance will not be forgotten.