We talked with James Marsters ahead of his appearance at FAN EXPO Canada, where he talked about his passion for music and his iconic role as Spike on both Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel.
FAN EXPO Canada: LIMITED EDITION 2021 takes place at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre October 22-24. Visit the official site for details and tickets!
Horror Geek Life: I wanted to start by asking you about your music career. Has music always been a passion for you?
James Marsters: You know, I was playing in bars when I was thirteen years old and I was only playing James Taylor, I was very opinionated about it. He was just the best singer/songwriter out there, so there I was, thirteen years old, playing in bars trying desperately to sound like James Taylor. Hey, it got me into bars at the age of thirteen, so that was fun. (laughs) But then I decided to be an actor rather than a musician, so I went to college for acting and my guitar just kind of went into my personal life. It was fun, it never left me.
When I got on Buffy, I did an interview and they asked me if i played any musical instruments, and I said yeah, I play a guitar. Someone read that who had a club, and I think they realized it doesn’t matter how good this guy is, if we book him we’ll sell tickets. So, they booked me and I said sure, I’ll try it. I hadn’t been playing publicly for a very long time, and I don’t think I was that good. I wasn’t that bad, either, but I don’t think I was worth the ticket price. As it turns out, I sold a lot of tickets and other clubs started wanting to book me, and I kept saying yes, with this increasing kind of thought that man…you’re not good enough to be doing this, it’s just because you’re on a TV show.
I remember it got really bad, I was playing this very popular club in Los Angeles and they came backstage before the show and told me Pink was in the house. I thought oh no, this is going to be embarrassing, so I went out and played and sure enough by the end of the set, Pink was nowhere to be seen. She probably thought I was horrible. But I met this seventeen-year-old kid who was living next to me in Santa Monica. He was in town shopping a record around, that he and his band had made in Sacramento, to try and get a record deal. I listened to the CD of the album and it was freaking amazing. A week later, we started playing our stuff to each other, and liked each other’s stuff a lot, and we decided to start a band, and that was Ghost of the Robot back in 2001. He knew a couple musicians to fill out the band, Kevin and Aaron, they are amazing musicians, and we all climbed right into a studio and recorded our first album and then went right on tour really fast. I think because they had played together already, we gelled quickly and all I was being asked to do on that tour was lead vocals. Over time, I started writing songs and more of my songs and guitar work got onto albums. I learned by doing over the years and, at this point, I am told that I’m a functional rhythm guitarist on a professional level.
HGL: Did you ever come to a crossroads and think about choosing music over acting?
James Marsters: No, I have always had my cake and eaten it too. I think you can do both, just drink more coffee. (Laughs) I love doing it, so I don’t need as much leisure time. I remember when I was in Chicago and Seattle, I had a theater company I was producing and I was also working at the professional houses as an actor and people kept telling me I had to choose, that neither one of them were going to work if I didn’t concentrate on one or the other. I kept telling people, no, I’m going to have both, screw you all, and I did it. I didn’t sleep a whole lot, but I got to do both. I don’t know, man, you just have to drink coffee and keep going.
HGL: What do you remember most about your audition as Spike?
James Marsters: I remember really wanting that role. When they first called me, I told my agent, I’m down here now because I’m a dad now, I need to pay for diapers and doctors and college and stuff. I’m not here to win awards, I just want to make money. I’ll be the new Urkel, I don’t care, and my agent was delighted with that. They gave me the audition for Buffy and I was like yeah, no, I don’t want to do that. I saw the movie, it’s kind of cheesy, I don’t want to sink that low. Then they told me it was actually a TV show now and very good and it was on that night, so they told me to watch an episode and then decide if I wanted to do it or not. I watched fifteen minutes and called them back and said oh my god, this is amazing, please get me the audition. Apparently, they had been looking for someone to play Spike for about six months and hadn’t found anybody, and their backs were against the wall as they were shooting the character in three days. I guess the call went out to LA to scrap the bottom of the barrel to see what they could find, and they found me.
I went in and auditioned and you know, I was really proud of being a stage actor, and I thought I was going to go and play psychological warfare with the other actors in the room by standing in the corner and doing Shakespeare monologues (laughs). I thought, I’m going to show them I’m a real actor, compared to me, they don’t know what they’re doing. Of course, later I learned that people in Hollywood don’t care about stage acting, it’s a different animal, a whole different tool kit for acting, all it looked like was I was psychotic, probably. I did get along with Juliet Landau who played Drusilla, she had already been cast, and my role was to just be her boy toy for five episodes and then die. We both came from theater, we gelled very quickly in the audition, and then afterward David Greenwalt, the man who thought up Angel and a major force in the show, said “I love these two!”, and so they cast me. Just a few days later, I was in front of a camera and it just worked. The character was like a fancy car that I could drive right away; it was just a good fit right from the beginning.
HGL: One of the best things about Buffy was that characters had many sides, many shades. Were you surprised at how Spike changed over the course of the series?
James Marsters: Very much, yes. The truth is, I was endangering the theme of the show at first. In the world of Buffy, evil is not cool and I respect that. Evil is often depicted as laughable and silly, dangerous yes, but silly. The writers used to tell me, we’re not interested in that Anne Rice crap, we don’t want our vampires to be felt for and romantic. They are metaphors for the challenges you face in adolescence and they are meant to be overcome. That is why we are ugly when we bit someone, they don’t want that to be sensual in anyway. They did try one character that was kind of an Anne Rice character, and that was Angel and he takes off like a shot. Then I come along, and the character wasn’t designed that way, you weren’t supposed to feel for him in any way, but the audience reacted that way, so that was a problem.
At that point, the writers started to think the show was getting away from them, getting away from their theme. I’m amazed I wasn’t killed off immediately. If I had been producing this show, I would have killed me off after two episodes — no way was I having this guy ruin my show. I don’t care how popular he is, he’s dead, but they were braver and more creative than I would have been. The journey of Spike is so serpentine, I think, because they had to figure out how to fit him in with the theme, and that’s not easy to do. You have to come at the character from different angles to make that happen, so I think we got a really interesting ride out of him, just to make him fit.
HGL: Were you surprised to be asked to come on board Angel?
James Marsters: I was really happy to be asked. I guess I was so busy doing Buffy at the time, I hadn’t really thought about it. But then they approached me about it and I was like, hell yeah. Buffy is coming to an end, I want to keep playing Spike until I die! (laughs) It was fabulous, because I’m a subversive artist by nature, I used to produce subversive theater in Chicago and Seattle, and it’s all about divesting the audience of lies we get taught in childhood. Things like violence works, or old people are boring, you can buy yourself an identity. One of the lies is that some people are more important than other people, so whenever I see someone treated like royalty, I kind of knock them down a few rungs on the ladder. The truth is, Hollywood likes to treat the lead of a show like royalty, that’s just what they do. Sarah(Michelle Gellar) and David(Boreanaz) are such wonderful people, very easy to work with, very hard workers and it wasn’t their choice to be treated like royalty, but everyone around them treated them like royalty. I just loved being the character that once action was called, I’d give you a headache. After Buffy, being on Angel, when they called action, I’d give you a headache, that was my function, and it was absolutely delicious. Although, again, David and I get along great, he’s a great guy, probably a harder worker than I am, so I respect him very much. But it was fun to try and trip him up a little bit.
HGL: Now you get to come to conventions, like Fan Expo here in Toronto this weekend, you get to meet your fans and perform at the same time. It seems like it’s the best of both worlds for you.
James Marsters: Yeah, it really is. I get to talk about a show I really respect, and get out there and sing songs and talk about things I don’t even tell my best friends, and frankly, make me a little nervous to admit to, night after night when I’m performing live, and that is gold. I don’t think I want to be in my comfort zone as an actor or a singer, best to be outside of my comfort zone, that’s when something interesting happens. I love performing live, it’s what I always wanted to do. If I hadn’t become a father, I’d still be doing live theater, so being able to do live music is absolutely fabulous.
I want to thank James for taking the time to talk with us.
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