Q&A: Buffy the Vampire Slayer star James Marsters

CityNews sat down with James Marsters, best known for his role as Spike in hit TV shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, to chat late Sunday morning at the RBC Convention Centre to talk about Comiccon, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and what he is working on now.

James Marsters, best known for his role as ‘Spike’ in hit TV shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, says the people of “friendly Manitoba” have been a joy to hang out with at the Winnipeg Comiccon.

A stage actor with years of experience, Marsters, 62, has also dabbled in voice acting, and directing, and has performed as a musician and singer for years.

He spoke with CityNews at the RBC Convention Centre Sunday morning and also shared what he has going on in the wings.

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Thank you so much for joining me.

“I loved your show by the way, Wednesday. So good.”

Thank you very much! I have been watching your interviews throughout the show when it was still airing and I remember, a few interviews. There was a reporter that asked you, oh, can you do this, like, accent? And he replied, not unless I’m getting paid.

[switching to a British accent] But I thought just to like, turn the tables around, I would do the British accent. And then perhaps at the end of the interview, you could tell me, perhaps like as Spike judges Angel, how the accent is to your ears.

[switching to a British accent] “Yeah. No. That’s perfect. We can do the whole interview in English accents if you want, you know.”

I love that. Perfect. I love you’re just a game player.

“Why not?”

How has your experience at Winnipeg Comiccon been so far?

“It’s been absolutely fabulous. The people at Winnipeg Con, they know how to do it, you know.”

[switching back to his natural accent] “I can’t do this the whole time. It’s a lie. A lie.”

It’s okay. I’m getting paid, it’s okay it’s a challenge.

“You do it! Yeah. You know, I feel like what I’m trying to do at the table is get people to be a little bit happier when they’re leaving than when they came. If I can tell a funny story or get them to smile, then I feel like that’s what we’re here for. So I’m a good barometer of what mood they’re in when they meet me. It’s not it’s not easy to control tens of thousands of people, keep a safe space and keep them comfortable at the same time. Some cons, people are a little too comfortable and it’s too wild, you know, or people are a little too well controlled and they’re just a little bit, you know, not having so much fun. This is that happy medium where people are really comfortable and having a great time.”

Did you know that we’re called friendly Manitoba?

“There we go! That explains it!”

So I hope that that’s been your experience!

“It very much has, yeah!”

Buffy has been around for over 20 years. but what I find really cool is that there are new generations that are still resonating with the material and the stories that were told in Buffy and Angel. I was wondering, in your point of view, what is it about this world that was created by you, the cast, the crew, directors, everyone — what is it that keeps audiences thinking that this material is still relevant over 20 years later?

“So many things. You know, I am a fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I didn’t make it, I was in it. So I get to be a fan if I darn well want to. I’m not bragging. I think it has a really good central message, which is don’t give up. Life is not perfect. The world is definitely not perfect, but it’s worth it. Keep going. And I just think that’s a really useful message and a powerful message. It just makes a world that is delightful to go back to.

“Like, I was an original Star Trek fan. Back in the day I was going to some of the very first conventions ever back in the 70s, dressed as Spock.”

I love that!

“Right? And so I watched those original episodes so many times. I knew all the dialogue. I certainly knew what the plot was. But there was something about that world that I wanted to go back to. And I’ve later come to realize, I think it was because for Star Trek, the underlying message was hope, which is that we might actually survive this. We might stop trying to dominate each other and start trying to help each other and get over this whole nuclear … You know, because we really thought back in the 70s that we were all going to blow up in a big and thermonuclear conflagration.

“So, that was very powerful. And I wanted that. I wanted I wanted a world where people were treating each other nicely. So I remember on Buffy kind of realizing that we had just heard — this very early — we just heard that people were really wanting to watch the reruns because they were laughing so hard at the jokes the first time they watched it that they were missing the next joke, and so they wanted to watch it again to get all the jokes. And I thought, you know, I wonder we may be, developing a world that is delightful enough that people are going to want to just go back to Sunnydale, even though they know what the plot is, and they know what the dialogue is. And I think that’s part of it, too.”

Truly, I think that Spike has one of the most interesting, and most life-changing character progressions throughout not just Buffy, but also when you had a stint on Angel as well. I was wondering, is there a lesson that Spike had learned during your time on both of these shows that you have carried with you over the last two decades?

“No one has ever asked me that before. That’s a really good question. I think that redemption is possible, but you have to want it. Redemption is not easy and so you have to work at it. I guess that’s really it.

“When I came onto the show that was explained to me very clearly that vampires were just metaphors for the difficulties that you face in adolescence, in high school. And we vampires are designed to be killed. But that they didn’t want to be like Scooby-Doo and kill us off every episode so we were going to have longer arcs, but we were definitely going to be staked at the end. There was no hope. And I was like, you got it! They were like, you are a soulless vampire. You care for nothing and nobody and you’re going to be killed. And I was like, okay, you got it.

“And I turned around. I was like, no, I’m going to cheat, because they told me that I was going to have between 5 and 10 episodes. If they liked it, it was going to go longer. If it didn’t work out so well, it was (going to be) not as long.

“I had moved to California from Seattle because I’d just become a father and I needed to make money — so I wanted ten. And I knew that if I played it the way they told me that they were going to kill me off pretty quickly. I needed to find the love. I needed to find what what does Spike love. Because that’s where you connect with the audiences is if you find love, that’s the gold in the mountain, as I say. And it doesn’t have to be sweet love, puppy dog love. It can be love betrayed, love twisted, you know? But if you find the love then you find a way to connect with people. So I initially went into the love of Drusilla.

“But what that did is the producers said they were kind of led into re-examining what villains were going to be on the show, and that there was a gray area. My favorite writers really don’t have ‘villains’. They just have characters that are sometimes hurting each other for the wrong reason. And I think that’s more like life. I think that we’re all heroes sometimes and we’re all villains sometimes. It really depends on the day. So it kind of pulled toward more complex villains that weren’t going to die right away.”

Lucky for you!

“Thank God, you know! So if you’re going to go there, then you have the possibility of redemption. They’d already been doing that with Angel, and thank God they did it with me.”

Looking back at both of the series, there’s always been, as you know, the… Do we love Buffy and Angel, or do we love Spike and (Buffy)?

[switching to a British accent] “All right, I’m going to lay it down for you. If Angel and Buffy. You know, I don’t even like to think about it. But if they do the thing, you know, Angel goes evil, starts ripping people to pieces. She don’t like that, Buffy, I can tell you, you know, from experience. So they start fighting and it goes, you know, to hell in a handbasket very quickly. So the relationship’s just not going to work. I’m not going to do that. She and I can have our fun, as we say. And I don’t go evil. I’m still a nice person. So, she’s mine, Angel. Suck it.”

It’s better for just the entire world.

“It still makes sense. Angel can’t have her. This is right in the show, you know? Don’t vote for Angel and Buffy. It’s just going to cause bedlam.”

Alright, James, how’s my accent so far?

[switching back to his natural accent] Perfect.

Thank you, really appreciate it. Alright. [switching back to her natural accent] Back to Canadian.  What I have been dying to ask you for, like, years now. Do you ever go through your day and you’re doing whatever you do, and just in your mind, it just pops up with (the song you sing in Buffy) “Let me rest in peace…”

[laughs] “No.”

No? Just me then, okay. Lying in bed yesterday I was like, I’m talking to James tomorrow. “Let me rest in peace, and get some sleep!”

“No, you know, the songs that are popping through my head are the ones that I’m writing. I’m in a band called Ghost of the Robot and we’re working on our seventh album and, and I’m trying to find a way to sing the songs. It’s interesting. With an original song, there’s nobody helping you sing it so that it pops and you have to find it yourself. Even if you wrote the song, you have to, you know, like, “I think I know what I’m doing?” And then we go in and put in guitar tracks and drum tracks and stuff starts to change, and I’ve got to think about how I’m going to do it. So I’m constantly thinking, and humming all of that right now.”

Oh that’s fair. Is there a particular song on that album that, like you really, really like so far?

“Yeah. ‘The Greatest Gift.’ About a relationship that crashed and burned. But in hindsight, I’m very glad it crashed and burned because I probably chose the wrong person to begin with.

“For fans like me that want to hear this album, what are the details on when and where we’ll be able to do that?

“We are hoping for a Christmas release, but we are not going to promise a Christmas release. And I’m not going to even tell you why, because that’ll start a fight in the band.

“Thank you so much for this, James. Is there anything else you would like to say directly to the fans of our show that are going to be watching this tonight?

“Yeah. Oh wow. Tonight? Yeah. Okay. Too late, guys. You missed the con. but if you really want to, if you want to have a good day and you want to hang out with people who are smart and funny and don’t take themselves too seriously, come to a con.

“Everyone’s beautiful, everyone’s safe, and you can be whatever you want to be and it’s one of the few places that we still come together in three dimensions. We’re not online, you know, it’s fine to hang out online. That’s all great. But it’s really good to hang out with people in person. And conventions — we have concerts, we have sports, but we’re generally just staring at we’re, you know, just looking at the movie screen together and we don’t really talk to each other. But at a con, we really hang out and meet each other. And it’s a beautiful place.”