Revenge of the Nerds by Matt Springer
“Just when I thought I was out… they pull me back in,” Adam Busch says. He’s quoting Al Pacino from The Godfather, Part III, but it’s as true of Sunnydale as it is of the Corleone’s. Once you’ve been in Sunnydale – heck, even if you’re pushing up daisies – it can be impossible to stay away. Spike tried to leave, and he came crawling back sans Drusilla. Anya tried to leave, but she ended up liplocking with Xander. Even Angel can’t resist popping back to his old haunt for an occasional rendezvous with the Slayer.
    Adam Busch, Danny Strong and Tom Lenk are all on return visits to the Hellmouth. Only this time, they’re not just a creepy robot builder, the guy who gave Buffy her Class Protector award, or Vampire #3. They’re the Troika – a force to be reckoned with. They’re Buffy’s ‘archnemesisises’.
    Off-screen, there’s nothing sinister about them. They don’t seem to suffer from any strange social dysfunctions. They don’t even know how to play Dungeons & Dragons. They do, however, know how to make us laugh and cringe, sometimes within the same scene, as three of the creepiest villains ever to try and tackle the Slayer’s turf.

Frodo Lives!
Danny Strong may be many things – a fan-favourite Buffy actor, a successful screenwriter, a sensitive ladies’ man… But as he himself admits, he wouldn’t know a Frodo from a  Fredo. In other words, he’s no geek.
    “Even as a kid, I was never really a big sci-fi fan, and none of my friends really are,” Danny admits. “We just shot a scene where I asked them what ‘Padawan’ was. It was like I finally crossed the line. Jane Espenson just threw her arms up; she was like ‘Aargh! You’re not even a real geek! You just play one! Padawan?! Come on!’ And then she walked away. It was really funny. What I’m a geek about is the Coen brothers. I’m a movie geek; I’ve seen every Coen brothers movie many, many times. I know what it’s like to be a fan of stuff.”
    When it comes to guest spots on Buffy, Danny’s an old pro at this point. He made his first appearance way back in Season Two’s ‘Inca Mummy Girl.’ He’s been spotlighted with major roles in two stand-alones, ‘Earshot’ and ‘Superstar’. He even had a couple of lines in the unaired Buffy pilot. That means that as we watch the Troika slip further into their dark plans, it’s Jonathan’s journey that may be the most painful.
    “I love that it’s taken a darker turn,” he says. “The stuff that we did in the beginning was really funny, but it felt like we’d tapped it out. I didn’t know where we were going to go, because we’d done four very comic episodes, and I was feeling that it might get old for the audience. Right when I was feeling that, I got the next script, and we kill someone. I think they felt the exact same way – it was time to turn this on its head.”
    And when he’s not in front of the cameras, Danny is busy cooking up screenplays to land him behind the camera. He’s had one script optioned already and is hard at work on new projects. “I feel like I’m more interested in writing as my long-term career these days,” Danny says. “Acting’s really fun, but the writing’s really fulfilling. I’m hoping to segue into writing and directing, and hopefully I’ll be able to continue acting here and there.”
    If nothing else, Danny has the satisfaction of a Buffy guest run that is unparalleled on the series. He’s also had the unique opportunity to develop a character through a series of small glimpses over five seasons of television.
    “I think it’s making Jonathan grow up in a way he never had,” Danny says. “With ‘Earshot’ and then with ‘Superstar’, it’s very clear that this guy’s not getting it. He’s not getting that things take time and you can’t have an instant fix to your problems. That’s something I need to learn. What sucks is that I’ve been trying to cast spells. I got all these Wicca books and I’m just going nuts, and it’s not working out for me.”

Mr. Roboto
It’s not easy being Adam Busch. Not only does he have to lead the evil Troika in their misadventures against Buffy and the Scooby Gang, but he’s got to bust his butt to keep his fellow Troika actors in line.
    “It’s hard supporting them, having to keep getting them to rise up to the level that I’m at,”  Busch deadpans. “It’s a lot of struggle – constantly having to, basically, direct the scene myself.”
    You might begin to think Adam’s as sinister as his Buffy character, Warren, but then, he cracks. “I’m just kidding,” he says. “We’re just such different guys that we learn so much from working with each other. There are certain things that, when I get a script, I can’t wait to hear the way Tom’s gonna say them. I could never call the way he’s gonna say a line. I could never predict it.”
    Just as unpredictable as Warren himself, especially as portrayed by Adam. When he first turned to his fellow geeks and asked, “So, you guys wanna take over Sunnydale?”, it seemed like an innocent-enough proposition – that is, as Sunnydale threats go, especially considering the last big bad which tried to unleash Hell on Earth. But when the Troika’s latest plans in ‘Dead Things’ resulted in the death of Warren’s ex-girlfriend Katrina, their once-wacky hijinks suddenly pivoted towards the dark. And none of them went darker than Warren.
    “As far as I can tell, it’s the first human villain they’ve had,” Adam says. “I’m not just being evil for the sake of being evil; I’m dealing with human, complex emotions. I feel like everything he does, you see the moment where he turns to it. You see him try to do the right thing, and either fail, or finds it’s too hard and just be too scared of it, and thus turn to evil things. For a show like that to be dealing with such a complex human being is really a lot of fun.”
    Adam has learnt plenty about the weirdness that is life in Sunnydale through portraying Warren. But with a couple of other supernatural beings on the Buffy cast roster this season, he’s also had the chance to pick up a few pointers from the best.
    “We did this quick insert-scene – it was just a shot of me looking at James Marsters’ chip, him lying flat on a table in my lair and me running this little phaser over his head,” Adam recalls. “Every time we’d do it, the director would go ‘Action’ and James would inhale really deep. Then we’d do the scene, and he’d go ‘Ahhhhhh.’ Finally, they got it, and I’m like ‘Dude, what are you doing?’ He’s sitting there with his legs on the table, and he pats me on the back, hops off the table and goes, ‘Vampires don’t breathe, chap.” I said, ‘It’s a dark, dark world you live in, James.’ It’s a darker world than I know.”
    “Well,” he shrugs. “Maybe I’m starting to know.

Return of the Living Dead
The Buffy casting office seems to have a real gift for recycling actors. Brian Thompson was unforgettable as Luke in ‘Welcome to the Hellmouth’ and ‘The Harvest,’ but was still able to lather on a thick coat of Smurf make-up and become the Judge in ‘Surprise’ and ‘Innocence’.
    Similarly, Tom Lenk first creeped out Buffy fans as Cyrus the vamp, one of Harmony’s minions in Season Five’s ‘Real Me.’ “I was in make-up the whole time, and they mentioned one time that they brought people like that back, but I never really thought they would,” Tom says. “When I auditioned for Andrew, it was written as though he were the leader of the pack. I knew that whatever bizarre character I had, it would definitely not be the in-charge type. When I picked up the script, they had changed the dynamics of the group so that I wasn’t the leader. They sort of custom-fitted it for me. That was cool; when does that ever happen?”
    In his second time through Sunnydale, Tom has had the chance to wreak a lot more havoc on the populace as the meekest of the geeks in the Troika. He’s loved every minute of it, but some of his favourite scenes have revolved around Andrew’s unmistakable Star Wars obsession.
    “I liked the ‘Death Star, dude!’ scene,” Tom says of the teaser for ‘Life Serial.’ “That was a pretty great moment. I was also pretty obsessed with the Boba Fett scene in ‘Smashed,’ I must say. There was one take when he throws Boba to me, and I dropped it. I was frantically screaming, ‘Boba! Oh, Boba!’ I was a little out of  control. We love our friends in the prop department.”
    When it comes to whether he prefers playing Andrew’s more light-hearted moments or bringing to life the darker turns the storyline has taken throughout the season, Tom chooses the drama every time. “I think as an actor, you stress out more about comedy,” Tom explains. “You try to dissect it and figure out what’s going to be the funniest thing. With the darker stuff, it’s easier for me to just be in the moment. It’s more concentrated on the set. What more can you ask for as an actor? You play every aspect of human emotions, not just the laughs. It gets a little bit dark for us sometimes, and that’s been really cool.”
    Unlike the Troika’s fractured relationships with their fellow nerds, the three actors share a very tight bond. Tom reveals that they’re planning a midnight theatre performance in Los Angeles this spring. But their deepest bond revolves around a shared disrespect for one of Hollywood’s great dames. “We share a common love for Liza Manelli,” Tom reveals. “We don’t love her, we love to make fun. I think it’s my fault; it started when we talked about the crazy Michael Jackson concert appearance she did. It’s blossomed from there.”