Interview with the Vampire by Mike Stokes
An interview with James Marsters, the first since Issue 7 and conducted during the filming of late Season Five.

James Marsters’ Spike saw some major developments in Buffy the Vampire Slayer‘s fifth season, as we learned how the aesthetic poet William was sired by Drusilla and turned into the rampaging monster we all love to hate. Meanwhile, in the present, he’s become infatuated with Buffy and befriended the lost and confused Dawn.
    “To my mind, Spike has not changed,” James maintains. “He’s always been love’s bitch, basically.”
    James firmly believes that the fifth season saw an unusual evolution rather than a major change in the character; “If Drusilla had had a younger sister, Spike would have tried to save her in the same way, with the same depth of emotion that he did with Buffy’s sister,” he says. “That’s what I thought was so attractive about the character to begin with: he had the contrast of being the really soulless vampire, but was also truly in love. You saw a very romantic, tender side to him, even in the second year. I thought the conflict and the tension between those two things within him was interesting. That’s why he wasn’t a flat, cardboard villain – he was a bad-ass, but he was so much in love. He was a real sweetheart to Drusilla, so that was interesting.”
    Juliet Landau’s prior film commitments meant she was unable to return in the show’s third season, leaving Spike to reappear alone. “Then I hated my girlfriend, Harmony,” James continues, “She was there to deflect my wrath for Dru, as always happens. Poor Harmony! She really got hers!”
    James feels that Spike has effectively come full circle: “He’s back to where he was at the beginning, in a way,” he states. “He’s screwed though, man, and he knows it too! He’s in love with Buffy, but Buffy is never going to be in love with him. He’s so beneath her.”
    James has found it interesting witnessing Spike’s recent developments, although he reveals that he hasn’t had much input into the character’s story arc. “It’s interesting to work with a writer as he moves through his characters,” he says.” “And to some extent it’s undeniable that, as much as you become part of each other’s lives, who I am becomes fodder to Joss’ imagination. But it’s not in my control.”
    However, James notes that there have been elements of his performance that may have informed the way in which the writers have approached Spike. “If you go back to ‘School Hard,’ the first time I saw the Slayer I very consciously played the hunter, both sexually and violently. In that scene I’m looking for her, thinking ‘I’m gonna kill you.’ It’s a leopard look. I’m like, ‘Good going, Slayer, come on…’ I play those scenes like a hunter, and I wonder to some extent if other people picked up on that. I don’t know if Joss did.
    “I don’t have knowledge of what’s happening in the next episode,” James added, referring to the show’s production process. “I have no control. I always try to keep a balance – when Spike does something really mean, I’ve always tried to give him a little warmth. I’ve always thought it was my job to keep the audience with the character. When your character sticks Buffy with a cattle prod, you really need to make sure that the audience isn’t going to think ‘The Hell with him,’ and leave the character. I didn’t want them to go off Spike at that point, which I thought they might. The bit with the cattle prod was over the edge!”
    James has always gone out of his way to ensure that the audience doesn’t forget that Spike is really not a very nice guy, that he’s not someone with whom you’d want to be intimate. “He’s a monster,” he admits. “But if he likes you, he’d be your monster, and he would protect you above all things. But he is a monster. I don’t think women mind if he’s a monster, as long as he’s their monster! Take note, guys,” he grins. “You can get away with anything if it’s all for her! But I have no idea why Spike is considered sexy.”

Spike’s relationship with Dawn has enabled more character development. “I used to bite people, and now I’m saving kids,” James says ruefully. “But if you’re in love with someone, everyone they love becomes important to you because they’re important to you. And in a short amount of time that becomes it’s own relationship.
    “Spike and Dawn got put in contact with each other, so maybe he’s not so bad, which of course means they must be setting me up for something. My mind just spins! I don’t know what the Hell they’re up to. I never know what Joss Whedon is thinking. I really don’t. Nor do I really want to anymore. I just want to go through this experience. They’ve softened me so much that I think I’m going to go evil. Spike’s never the same two seasons in a row. Maybe they’re going to have to kill me. I have no idea.”
    But James is adamant he enjoys working with Michelle Trachtenberg, aka Dawn. Kristine Sutherland has described how the young actress brought a new energy to the set. “She rocks as an actor!” he agrees, enthusiastically. “She’s great to work with. She’s a total pro! She is so talented – it’s so unfair! How dare she be that good! I wasn’t that good at her age – I sucked when I was her age!”
    James recalls the emotion of that moment on the crane in the final episode of the fifth season, as Spike and Dawn both realise that the vampire cannot help her. “‘You’re going to die – I failed you,’” he explains. “‘I can’t do anything to save you. They’re going to stab you to death. Sorry!’ It’s interesting, because the inertia was carrying us at that point. We’d been running from Glory on the set for weeks, in pretty uncomfortable shooting conditions at times. It was sweaty, hot and dusty, and bad for weeks. Everybody knew it was the 100th episode and everybody knew that it was the last time Joss was going to be on the set every day. So it was the end of a significant period of time on the show.
    “In  some ways, filming that scene was easy,” he adds. “Joss came up there and we shot it a couple of times. He knows which moments are key, so he always makes sure that those are right. He gives more direction than any director, certainly on film. Most directors are afraid of giving direction. They’re worried they’re going to take you off and make you uncomfortable by asking you to act too much. But Joss knows how to get what he wants from the actor and the scene without doing that.”
    Even an episode in which Spike didn’t appear has James raving. “People were saying, ‘someone’s going to die on Buffy, can you tell me who?’,” he recalls of his experience at conventions in the weeks prior to the transmission of ‘The Body,’ which saw the passing of Buffy’s mother. “It was just phenomenal,” James says of the episode. “It just made me more and more proud to be on the show. It’s like, all bets are off. Just when you think  you know what the show is, it’s something completely different. I don’t know what the heck he’s going to do next!”
    And James is adamant that Spike didn’t belong within 100 miles of ‘The Body’. “It was part of Buffy’s journey that was not having to deal with vampires. The challenge was not vampires that day. That would have been horrible, and of course that’s why they didn’t do it. The episode was marvellous. The visual language of the episode was very much like a film – there weren’t a lot of close-ups, there wasn’t a lot of coverage.”

Working on Buffy is still an intensely physical experience for James. From his first day on the set, he’s wanted to do as many of his own stunts as he can, learning moves from Steve Tartaglia, his stunt double, so that he can use them and increase the credibility of the fight sequences. “If my feet don’t leave the floor, then it’s basically me,” he says. “There have been a couple of times when, frankly, I thought they were going to wake me to do the shot, but they didn’t. It’s probably between 60-70 percent me and 30-40 percent Steve. I love the fights.”
    James’ favourite sequence came in the flashback fight on the subway train in ‘Fool for Love’ when he disposes of his second Slayer. “That was a 15-hour long fight day,” he recalls. “I think Steve was in for maybe two shots, otherwise it was all me. The train wasn’t actually on the move, it was being jerked around by the teamsters, so that was pretty intense. But it made it a little easier to fight on than it looked.”
    That segment also showed how Spike obtained his distinctive coat. “Yeah, from the back of a dead Slayer,” he says. “On one of my first entrances on the show, I wanted to rob the body of the guy I had just tagged. But the director saw Spike as an immortal prince and said he wasn’t like that. I thought, ‘No, Spike’s Sid Vicious – she’s got a nice coat, just take it man!’ So I was glad about him taking the coat. I always wanted to show Spike picking up off the bones of a dead body – the carrion,” he smiles. “I always wanted to show him putting on his eye-liner and make-up too,” he laughs, “But I don’t think we’ll ever do that now. The time for that has come and gone.”
    With a new season ahead and new challenges for his alter-ego, James reveals that he’s genuinely pleased that the fans still want to see more of Spike. “We’ve basically turned the character on his head this year, and we risked flushing him down the toilet. When I found out that he was going to be a wuss, I was like ‘Screw this!’ – but it’s amazing,” he admits. “It’s exactly what the producers were hoping for. It’s made the character much more complicated, sweet, pathetic, vulnerable, recognisable… I’m so thrilled.”