Slayers and Vampires
Page 25
JAMES MARSTERS
Every year, I felt like I was playing a new character. I started as the boy toy for Dru. I was cannon fodder and I was going to be done away with and Dru was the main thing. Then I graduated to villain. Then I guess I was the wacky neighbor for a while. Then I was the forlorn man in the corner loving the woman who didn’t give anything back. Then I was the lover. Then I was the unhealthy boyfriend.
DAVID FURY
I believe that Spike was a monster even when he was convinced he loved Buffy. He was still a vampire. Yes, he had a chip in his head which kept him from killing, but I think ultimately the vampire’s a monster. Unless they have a soul like Angel they can’t be anything else. Spike is a demon. There’s this demon inside him, so the attempted rape of Buffy. As frightening and awful as that may seem, people were still romanticizing Spike and Buffy, and that was the problem I was having. I don’t think their relationship should have been rooted for at that time. At that time, I thought this is a wrong, twisted thing.
JAMES MARSTERS
It all came to a climax in the bathroom in “Seeing Red” when Spike is convinced that if he and Buffy make love one more time they’ll come back together and everything will be all right. I don’t like those kinds of scenes. If I know that a movie has a rape scene in it, I don’t go see it. If something like that comes up on television, I turn it off. It’s too upsetting for me. I passed on a lot of roles that have that in it.
But in Buffy I was contracted to do whatever they came up with, and that came down the pipes. One of the reasons I think why Buffy resonates to this day is that Joss found nine of the best writers in Hollywood and he discovered them all. He found them when they were unknown and young and hungry. He’s given Hollywood a whole new generation of writers who are now some of the most influential producers in Hollywood. But what he asked them to do was to come up with their worst day. The day that they’re ashamed of. The day they don’t talk about. The day that keeps them up at night. And then slap fangs on top of that dark secret and tells the world about it. It was a sustained act of bravery and vulnerability every single week. The writers would not tell you what the life experience was that led to the episode, but we were always guessing.
In that instance, the story was broached by one of the female writers who in college got broken up with by her boyfriend and convinced herself that if they made love one more time, then everything would be fine. She went over to his place and really kind of forced herself on him and he had to push her off and say no. This was a crushing blow to this young woman in her college days and was something she thought about a lot. I think the thought was that since Buffy is a superhero and could defend herself, that you could flip the sexes and it would work. My feeling was that the way the storytelling works is to give the audience a vicarious experience and to have the adventure. You climb behind the eyes of the lead. When anyone watches Buffy, they are Buffy, and they get to have that adventure as if they’re Buffy. That’s how storytelling works. And so I was going to try to rape the audience, and they’re not superheroes. It is a vastly different thing to have a man do that in a scene than a woman, just as an effect on the audience. It was the worst day of my professional career. It was very painful. I remember being in the corner in a fetal position just kind of shaking in between takes.
It led me into therapy, which turned out to be a very good thing. I’m a lot happier having gone through successful therapy than I was before. So it all came out to a good thing for me in the end. But it was a hard day. What I will say is that, as an artist, I don’t want to be in my comfort zone and when I’m too comfortable it’s probably not as interesting. I was certainly not in my comfort zone at that time. It propelled all the characters in the right way, and it all worked. But it was a hard episode to film.
DAVID FURY
This is a monstrous person who is now obsessed with our hero who is in a very vulnerable place. But don’t forget: he is a monster. They went, Spike is so funny, and he quips, and he can’t kill anybody; he’s so sweet and cute and I want [him] and Buffy to get together. The attempted rape was Steve DeKnight’s episode, so blame him for it, by the way. It was an attempt to remind the audience Spike is bad; don’t root for this relationship. The people who were for the relationship felt betrayed by Joss and us. It was very specific, because we’d say you shouldn’t be rooting for him. It’s the typical thing of a girl attracted to a bad boy. An awful wife beater, a guy who is a scumbag and some women go for him and we’re not supposed to root for that. That’s what this was, so I didn’t have the problem everyone had. The people with the problems were the Spike-Buffy shippers who really wanted them to get together.
JAMES MARSTERS
When I got on the show in the very beginning I was told that I was going to die quickly, and I didn’t want that. I wanted to live. I wanted to stay around, because they were paying me more than I had ever been paid in my life and I was a young father. As a storyteller, you always have to find the love, whether you’re sculpting or painting or telling a story or singing a song. If you can find the love there, you find the gold, as I say. Whether it’s love denied, love crushed, love blossoming, wherever that is is where the real power is. So I decided to play Spike with a soul right out of the blocks. I’m, like, “Sure, Joss, I’m a soulless vampire. You got it, buddy. No problem,” and I immediately went to the scripts like, Where’s the love? In the beginning, the love was with Drusilla.
DAVID FURY
That weird incestuous sort of relationship they had was creepy, but I think it was because of his sensitive soul he didn’t wholly turn into a monster, which is probably why he loved Drusilla. There was a part of Spike that wanted to love. She was crazy. She was doing anything she could. Spike was creative as a monster, but ultimately we realized there is this sensitive poet inside of him.
JAMES MARSTERS
Some of the scripts read kind of like he was making fun of Drusilla a lot, and I decided to undercut that. I remember there was one scene where she is looking up at the stars, but we’re indoors. She’s laying on the table. I’m in the wheelchair looking at her and I say, “It’s not the stars, love, it’s the ceiling.” I make some crack about the fact that she’s being crazy. I remember being, like, “OK, well that’s the line of the bad boyfriend that the audience will be glad to be rid of.” So instead I just decided to kind of rest my chin on my hands, looking at her adoringly and just saying, “No, that’s the ceiling, honey, not the stars” and just undercut that.
DAVID FURY
In “Grave,” the episode where Spike is in Africa going through this test and it’s revealed so he can get his soul back, because he knew he was a monster after what he did to Buffy and realized the only way he can love her is if he stops being a monster and gets his soul back. I totally bought into it. I understand it from a story standpoint. I’m offended that they were rooting for the relationship before that. Maybe we made a mistake in some cases by making Spike so sympathetic at times. But even the worst of us can be sympathetic at times. Even the worst human being can be sympathetic sometimes. Except maybe Donald Trump. So the rape was very controversial and I just don’t agree with the interpretation people saw in it. We were not supposed to like Spike’s relationship. When he got his soul back, some people didn’t like him. I had lots of arguments on the fan boards about it. I said the fact that he got his soul back makes a difference. They didn’t see that it did. And they said it’s overrated, why do you need a soul? We had these weird arguments talking in theological theory. If we’re saying that love comes from the soul, then that’s really the only way that Spike can . . . experience real love. People to this day probably still curse my name for making that argument.
Most people didn’t care about it like I did. I was the one who was not a shipper of Spike and Buffy, because of the soulless thing. So when he got the soul, for me, I could embrace it now. But what was nice is when we introduce him, he’s still pretty fucked up. He’s not, “Oh, I’ve got a soul now I’m a
well-adjusted vampire.” He’s a guy who is pretty messed up and we did that with Angel as well. When we got to do flashbacks or at least part of the lore, it wasn’t like Angel got a soul and he’s, like, “I’m better now, I’ll fight for good.” It was him living on the streets eating rats and stuff. He was pretty messed up, so it takes a while to make that adjustment from going from soulless vampire to soulful vampire. For me, it at least allowed me to root for Buffy to love him as imperfect and flawed as he was. Then he was someone whose love was more genuine. I always kind of rationalized it that he was more fixated on Buffy than he actually loved her. But with his soul, I went, “It was genuine.” It just made it that much more painful, of course.
JAMES MARSTERS
I have to admit I was playing it with a soul from the beginning. Then it was terrifying to get a soul, because I had nothing left. I was, like, “What else do I do? I’ve been doing a soul the whole time. I don’t know what I’m going to add now.” Luckily, the writing filled all that in. I didn’t talk about it. I did not alert anyone to that one. That was going against the show. I didn’t feel like I had a choice, though.
DAVID FURY
What I came to justify to myself is that Spike is an anomaly; that somehow that poet that’s in him . . . retained a small part of his soul. A romantic part of his soul. And that is from being a very bad poet; someone who was full of all those emotions that allowed him to retain some part of himself that could love Buffy. That’s how I rationalized it. I bought it, and I had to buy it because I wrote him in the relationship episodes and eventually in “Lies My Parents Told Me,” telling the backstory of his mother and he’s just an anomaly. He’s the only vampire who could love even though he is almost entirely soulless. I argued that the chip that was in his head was conditioning somewhat and was messing with him. There’s so many ways to rationalize it.
JAMES MARSTERS
The thing is, I didn’t know Spike was getting a soul. Even filming the scene where it happens, there were three different versions of that scene I had to memorize and the one we finally filmed was a fourth. I didn’t know what the hell was going on. I didn’t know why I went to Africa. I didn’t know if I was going there to get something to kill [Buffy] with. I had no idea. [Spike] kept saying, “I’m going to give her what she deserves.” So Joss completely fooled me. I didn’t even have the line, “I will give you back your soul!” and they’re rolling. It was cut and move on and I’m like . . . James looks around in complete confusion. “Angel 2, yeah!” But that was the immediate problem is you cannot go where Angel has gone. You don’t follow up the banjo act with a banjo act.
SARAH LEMELMAN
Susan Brownmiller explains that in most media representations “a good heroine is a dead heroine . . . for victory through physical triumph is a male prerogative that is incompatible with feminine behavior.” However, this is not the case [in] Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which shows a new version of womanhood, where females can and will fight back and do not have to be [the] victims [of] violent men. Buffy’s engagement with Spike is not used necessarily to satiate the desire of viewers to have her in a relationship, but it seems as though it is meant to show the growth and strides Spike makes from his malicious first appearance on the show in the second season. His final act of attempted rape is what triggers him to embark on a quest for redemption, in which he retrieves his soul, but, nevertheless, the time the two spend together is still worth analyzing, as Buffy is able to give strength to females in abusive relationships.
Despite much of the criticism that was leveled at season six as well as the divisive reaction to Spike’s and Buffy’s sadomasochistic relationship, the season also had its share of standouts, including The Twilight Zone-ish “Normal Again,” in which Buffy is institutionalized after insisting that she’s a vampire slayer, which her therapist, played by Hill Street Blues’s Michael Warren, insists is a psychotic delusion, also marking the brief return of Kristine Sutherland’s Joyce.
SARAH LEMELMAN
Buffy is often seen as yearning to have an ordinary teenage girl life. While this [yearning] is mostly prevalent during her high school years and not openly vocalized once she enters college and beyond, it is perhaps still a wish she desires be fulfilled, as it becomes prevalent in a hallucination after she is poisoned in “Normal Again.” This episode does not come until the end of the sixth season, after Buffy has faced much upheaval in her life, including the death of her mother as well as herself, raising her younger sister, and trying to financially support herself, all while carrying out her slayer duties.
MARTI NOXON
That was the episode that also tripped people out. That was something that was written by Joss’s former assistant. It was a pitch that he sold to us and then wrote. Diego [Gutierrez] worked as Joss’s assistant for a couple years and he and Joss broke that story together. And it was always something we sort of saw as a stand-alone; it could fit in almost any season at various times. But the idea was really strong and I think the episode turned out really nice and moody and kind of intriguing. The question that seemed to bother people was whether we were actually saying that the whole series was in her mind. I think that we were teasing that, but nobody was coming out and saying, “Don’t believe it, it’s all fake.” It was just a little bit of a tease.
We made a lot of jokes about the snow globe and St. Elsewhere. But it’s not the truth.
It was a fake out; we were having some fun with the audience. I don’t want to denigrate what the whole show has meant. If Buffy’s not empowered, then what are we saying? If Buffy’s crazy, then there is no girl power; it’s all fantasy. And really the whole show stands for the opposite of that, which is that it isn’t just a fantasy. There should be girls that can kick ass. So I’d be really sad if we made that statement at the end. That’s why it’s just somewhere in the middle saying, “Wouldn’t this be funny if . . . ?” or “Wouldn’t this be sad or tragic if . . . ?” In my feeling, and I believe in Joss’s as well, that’s not the reality of the show. It was just a tease and a trick.
The other fun thing about that is that it was directed by Rick Rosenthal, who was my mentor and boss for many years. He gave me my first big job after [I was] a waitress at a diner in Brentwood. I was writing on the side and he and I struck up a conversation one day and he said, “Geez, you seem like you could have some smarts. You should come pitch on the show that I’m working on.”
SARAH LEMELMAN
In Buffy’s telling hallucination, she finds herself in an insane asylum, where a doctor conveys to her that her slayer life and friends are figments of her imagination. Her hallucination shows both her mother and father, alive and together, as wanting to help Buffy repudiate the false alternative reality that she has created, in order for her to return home to her loving parents and a normal life. In the end, Buffy is able to fight off the allure of the hallucination, signaling her final rejection of the nuclear family and the securities that it can provide. It may have taken her over six years to realize that she does not need a normal life with a structured nuclear family, but her utterance of “goodbye” to her mother in the hallucination makes Buffy’s rejection of familial patriarchy a poignant statement of independence.
But the fatalistic despair of “Normal Again” was positively chipper compared with where the series would eventually end up in its final episodes, which would take the series to its darkest depths yet.
JOSS WHEDON
We were dealing with what [had been] a metaphor, sex, has become very graphic and real, sex. What was mystical demons have become three nerds with guns. Very real death, very mundane house payments—the idea was to break down the mythic feeling of the show, because there is a moment at childhood when you no longer get that. Everything isn’t bigger than life; it’s actual size. It’s a real loss. At the same time, the darker side of power and Buffy’s guilt about her power and feeling about coming back to the world and getting into a genuinely unhealthy relationship—that was all about dominance and control a
nd, ultimately, deep misogyny.
How lost did we get? Well, our villain turned out to be Willow.
MARTI NOXON
“Wrecked” was the beginning of what was going to be the major arc of the latter part of the season. You know, it seems like it’s sort of a resolution, but in fact it’s just the beginning. And we all knew that. The part of it that I think is sort of funny is that people were like “oh, you know”—that was sort of literal, about Willow being a magic alcoholic. Magic—crawling around the ground and stuff. And it is, in fact, sort of literal, in the sense that we’re trying to set up that she doesn’t have any control. She’s really fucked. But we also knew that this wasn’t the end of the story line.
So even though people were, like “Ah, this isn’t satisfying. It’s just so ‘Touched by a Marti,’ ” you know? But we were, like, “Oh, you don’t understand.” It was one of those ones that was frustrating, because people would react a certain way and we’d be, like, “You don’t understand. It hasn’t even begun.” But there’s stuff in that episode I really liked. The hallucinations and stuff were really trippy and fun. There was stuff in there I really liked, but I can see why the criticism would be had.
DAVID FURY
It’s always fun to start playing people who are damaged or flawed. Actors relish the idea of playing villains and people with character flaws. If you’re playing somebody that’s just sweet nice and great all the time, it can be very boring for an actor. Since Willow had become a witch, the idea of that becoming addictive was an obvious allegory for drug addiction. It was about giving Aly an opportunity to play Willow differently and to have that being something that drives her relationship with Tara and eventually drives them apart. That was more or less what we were thinking at the time.