This article was last modified on February 25, 2016.
Interview with Geek Icon James Marsters
James Marsters is an actor who should need no introduction, but I’ll give him one anyway. For better or worse, he is best known for playing the character of Spike on “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”, and its spinoff show “Angel”. But this just scratches the surface. He has also been on “Warehouse 13”, “Supernatural”, “Smallville” and “Torchwood”. When I say he is a geek icon, I say it lovingly… because he’s been on just about every sci-hi / fantasy show over the last 15+ years.
Editor Ivy Davis with James Marsters, “Spike” from “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”
Prior to the event opening on Feb. 19, there was a party for the media at the Splash Bar, Thursday night in northwest Portland.
Attending were special guests including Christian Kane, who stars in “the Librarians;” James Marsters, who played Spike from “Buffy the Vampire Slayer;” and Chris 51, from “Epic Ink.” We were able to interview Marsters and talk about the roles he’s had on “Buffy” and on “Torchwood,” shows he called “subversive.”
He explained, “I use to have a theater company in Seattle and Chicago and we were subversive.” After moving to Los Angeles, he had a set goal to “whore” himself out to different acting companies. When he got a job on the set of “Buffy,” he had a realization of “I’m home!” It was subversive to have a female character defending herself, Marsters said. “Torchwood” also brought out this quality, having a ‘blatantly bisexual main character and fighting the thought that gay people can’t be heroes,” he said.
A big change in his career was when Marsters played Macbeth in Seattle. “The reason I love acting is because I get to explore a side of myself that you wouldn’t necessarily get to explore in real life,” he said. “Like, given the right circumstances, would you enjoy killing someone? And I got to question myself and I was like, ‘NO! I’m a nice guy, I wouldn’t enjoy it, are you kidding me?’”
There are a lot more facets to people then one might realize and Marsters had to play a warrior that was proud of killing. For him, that character was the biggest kind of mental shift he had ever had to do for an acting role, he said. “I think that (the experience of playing Macbeth) was probably why I got [the role of] Spike,” he said.
Widely known as Spike, the loveable blond English vampire in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, James Marsters went on to play the alien super-villain Brainiac on Smallville. He also played time-travelling Captain John Hart in the British sci-fi seriesTorchwood and the terrorist Barnabas Greeley in Syfy‘s Caprica. Marsters next appeared in the 2007 movieP.S. I Love You and as Victor Hesse in the first season of Hawaii Five-0.
In the hilarious fantasy-comedy Dudes & Dragons, Marsters plays Lord Tensley, a powerful wizard who vows to rid the land of love through the use of his fire-breathing dragon. In this one-on-one interview, Marsters reveals what he liked about the role and how he enjoys playing loveable villains—like Spike.
