Post by Skittles on Nov 11, 2004 12:25:17 GMT -5
Angel Mag. -Issue #5
The addition of James Marsters as Spike to the Angel cast was one of the many fresh elements of this year. How did the former Buffy actor feel about the transition? "It was much better than I thought it would be," says James. "I mean, I thought it would be fine, but it turned out to be fabulous. The cast is just fabulous. They're all just such hard workers; none of them whine, and actors can tend to do that and it rolls. But David [Boreanaz, Angel] has a real commitment that's impressive. He really wants to be good, he's not coasting it all. I wasn't prepared for that." And how did Spike himself change, between Buffy and Angel? "He's no longer an ," explains James. "Although he still doesn't give a crap what people think of him. The thing is, he's not at war with the world or himself anymore. He's starting to see things clearly; he's starting to see what is important and what's not important. So it's a very deep change on the inside. He can actually care about people and try to help them, and that is just a profound change as opposed to basically enjoying ripping up everything around him. At the same time, Spike's a faker. He's not really a tough guy, he's the biggest poser in the world. He was actually this little poet but then got turned into a vampire and quickly dicovered that he could pose as the toughest guy in the whole world and get away with it, because he was indestructible. He just took that personality on and it felt good. That personality works for him, and just because he's deciced to help the world, doesn't mean he's going to drop it. So on the outside it's very much the same, but on the inside he's just entirely different." Could James be tempted to come back to play Spike in ay way, shape, or form? "If a project was offered to me that was cool and had Spike in it," James answers, "I would love to do it - assuming the larger components were the same. It's a fabulous character. But at the same time, it seems to be over so it's a good time to move on. I've been in the business long enough that you don't walk awayfrom something that's working. I'm excited about playing other characters. Thankfully, I have enough money that I acn kind of pursue what I want; I don't have to take something right away. You can actually have a career as opposed to paying the rent, which is the best thing you could hope for." And how does James perceive the legacy of Buffy and Angel? "I'm hesitant to compare Buffy to Star Wars, " answers James, "but I remember when Star Wars came out - I was a freshman in high school - and it absolutly raised the ante on the genre. There weren't really any good sci-fi pictures out there; there wasn't a real, incredible push that we expected out of that genre until Star Wars. I think Joss ahs done the same - cerntainly for vampires, if not for all of fantasy - he's upped the ante for what's possible in the genre. I think that people that approach the genre are going to have to be mindful of that or be behind the times. Joss used vampires to talk about human beings, so his vampires are so multi-dimensional because they're actually going through the things that resonate with humans. He explored them as people; what would it be like to live that long and what would it do to the psyche to kill that many people. This really plays out mostly with souled vampires, because in joss' realm, vampires, originally anyway, were just meant to be demonic. On both shows we switched styles so often that there's comedy, melodrama, farce, realism, sometimes even naturalism, some stuff is operatic - you can make fun of that and call it comedy, but what it is, actually, is something more in tune with the Shakespearean view of how you do storytelling, which works on all the levels." - Ed Gross
