James Marsters has a message for Joss Whedon–the actor is willing to reprise his role as Spike, but the clock is ticking on how long the actor thinks he can bleach his hair and don the fangs.
“You have seven years because I’m aging, and Spike’s not supposed to [as a vampire],” Marsters tells Zap2It. “I don’t want to do some lame line like, oh he’s been drinking pig’s blood right now so he’s aging slowly or some stupid thing like that. It’s now been seven years. When I look in the mirror I gotta say if I’m well rested, I look OK with the proper lighting. I don’t know. As the years go, I get more and more nervous about that. Let’s just do a screen test and see if we can light this character and say, ‘Look, I haven’t aged.’ If we could hold that, that would be cool.”
And while it’s hard to imagine the “Buffy” universe without Angel and Spike, the actor says that under Joss Whedon’s original outline for the show, having recurring vampires wouldn’t have happened.
“He really wanted the vampires to be ugly when they were vampires and very quickly dead,” reveals Marsters. “He was talked into the character of Angel by David Greenwalt, his writing partner. He fought it. I don’t think he was too excited about it but he allowed David [Boreanaz] to do it, and the character just took off to the clouds. I think that he always remembered that he was only going to allow one Angel-like character on the show and that all the other vampires were going to remain in some way hideous.”
While fans are waiting for Marsters to (hopefully) play Spike again, they can see him in this week’s episode of “Caprica.” Marsters plays Barnabus Greely, a diehard revolutionary and the latest in a long line of menacing, mean guys that Marsters specializes in. However, the actor isn’t worried about being typecast.
“I mean if I was playing Urkel, then I’d have a problem being typecast,” he says. “But when you’re typecast as the cool guy or the tough guy, or the potent character or the jerk who mixes things up, I think if you’re going to get typecast, that’s the one you’d want. I went in to audition for this ‘Moonshot’ [moon landing TV movie]. I love the Apollo program, I’m a science geek and stuff, so I was just so excited and would have taken any three roles, but the director’s like, ‘Oh no, I saw you in “Buffy” and I need you for Buzz Aldrin because he’s the rock star.’
“I’ve always been really thankful I got to play a character that got to wear so much makeup and bleach his hair and got to have a cool English accent.”
Marsters went on to acknowledge the current vampire craze, lead by the Stephenie Meyer “Twilight” novels. And while Marsters hasn’t read them, he says he’s a fan for one reason.
I like them man. They got my niece to read,” Marsters says. “She wasn’t reading a lot, but she hit ‘Twilight’ and just ate them up and read them five, 10 times. Now she’s on to other vampire romances. She reads like a novel a day now. So, go Stephenie Meyer.”
“Caprica” airs tomorrow night at 9 p.m. on SyFy.
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