One Buffy actor with plenty of experience in masks was Armin Shimerman, whose day job was still across town in Hollywood at Star Trek on Deep Space Nine on the Paramount lot at Melrose and Gower.
ARMIN SHIMERMAN
(actor, Principal Snyder)
They didn’t come to me with advice, but I gave advice. Whenever I’d see the vampires or any of the other monsters in prosthetics, I would just smile, thinking “Thank God I don’t have to do that today.” And tell them to drink a lot of water.
Toy, knowing it was the final season, was ready to say goodbye to Buffy after making his mark again as Gnarl before he got a call to take on the recurring role of the Ubervamp, Turok-Han, who serves the First.
CAMDEN TOY
At that point I thought I was done. Then I got a call from Rob Hall, who says, “You didn’t hear it from me, but they’re talking about bringing you back.” It was the original Ubervamp that shows up for four episodes before they actually have an army of Ubervamps to show up. They were thinking originally if this is just a killing machine, we can cast a stunt person. It was Marti Noxon that said, “We really need an actor to bring it to life when he’s not fighting. Like a Camden Toy.” And Rob piped up at that point and said, “It’s funny you should say that, because we have all his molds. We could actually start building the makeup on his molds today.” I think that seed was planted then.
JAMES MARSTERS
My final scenes were done on second unit with David Solomon, who was one of our best directors. He did some second unit as well as directing some of our better episodes. There had already been tearful speeches made about how we began and how we got through it, but that was all in the scene with the Scooby Gang, so I didn’t have that. But there was something that was kind of right about that, because I never really fit into that gang on screen and that had a reflection in life, too. So there was something kind of apt being in second unit again except the toys were just massive. Oh my God! They pulled out the stops—there was some money there.
ALAN J. LEVI
(director, “Sleeper”)
I enjoyed the show. It was a different kind of a show for me. I enjoyed the girls and working with them. James Marsters came to me and said, “This is an unusual script in that it revolves around me. I don’t get many like this. Will you help me through this? Will you watch me?” I said, I’ll be happy too. I spent a lot of time with him in molding that performance. He cried in a couple of scenes and was very involved in the entire show.
Unfortunately, I spent too much time with him. I went way over almost every day in scenes with him, and so I talked to the producer afterwards and apologized and he said, “We’re at the end of the run and everybody’s tightening down on the budgets,” and he said, “You performed a good show and you did James a good favor but you didn’t do me a good favor. They came down on me for going over. If I get another show, I’ll be happy to hire you, but I can’t ask you back for Buffy because somebody’s got to get the blame.” He was honest because I was. They would call down at seven o’clock at night and the AD would say, “We have another two hours to go.” From that standpoint, it was not a happy situation.
CAMDEN TOY
Those final episodes were tough, because there was so much fighting and so much choreography that we were constantly running behind. On television, you can’t stop and not start the next episode, so literally we would be coming to eighth day where we’re supposed to be ending that episode and we’re not done. The next day we had to start shooting the next episode, but then periodically throughout that day the ADs would ask us to go over to stage five, where David Fury would be directing our B unit. Or David Solomon or whoever. In fact, in the episode where Sarah finally takes the Ubervamp’s head off, they actually got in the editing room and realized they hadn’t gotten enough coverage for that last fight scene. They actually had to create that scene again that was shot on a construction site in studio. There was no way we could go back to the location, so Sarah and I filmed with James Contner, who directed all the second-unit stuff that day. James was a focus puller on Jaws. He was lovely and has great stories.
He was one of the few directors where when you got to set you would start working immediately. Usually, I’d often be sitting on set for a good forty-five minutes or longer before they’d actually be shooting. Not in James’s case. James would be like, “OK, get Camden ready.” I’d walk on set, and he took me to work immediately.
JAMES MARSTERS
I tried to get as many stunts as I could. I always had to argue that I come from stage where you don’t get a stuntman, so I can actually do more than you think I can.
JEFF PRUITT
(stunt coordinator, Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
One thing that Joss and I talked about when I first started was he said, “I don’t want you to do Power Rangers stuff. It’s not like that.” “No, no, no. Just let me gradually start increasing the fights and you’ll see, we’ll have our own style. It will be like, a girl goes down a dark alley, and this little hundred-pound girl starts fighting vampires. It will be cool, but it won’t be flying around on wires like Power Rangers.” I remember Joss had shot the pilot for Buffy, and some executive said they wanted to make an after school Power Rangers—type show. Buffy would be like Amy Jo Johnson going to school by herself, and she would be the one doing the action. Joss was, like, “It’s not that kind of show.” He was trying to convince them to do the kind of show he wanted to do, which they never quite got right with the movie.
Sarah actually recommended me for the job. I met with Joss and he would say, “How would you do this? How would you do that?” I’d jump up, demonstrate, and explain how you’d shoot that. But he said, “I learned from the first season that Buffy can only throw one punch and one kick and that’s all we have time for. We don’t have the budget to do a second unit.” “Trust me, there are techniques we can use. I can shoot three close-ups of Sarah and then do the whole fight with Sophia [Crawford].” I showed him tapes of me fighting in different movies and he said, “That’s the style of Buffy; that’s the style I want. Can you do that?” “Yes, we can,” and then he hired me.
SOPHIA CRAWFORD
(stunt double, “Buffy”)
At some point Joss decided he only wanted me to double Sarah, whereas at the start there had been three of us. He offered me an exclusive contract to be Buffy’s double and not work on any other show. It was a surprise to me; I’d had no indication that anything was going on, but basically what he told me was that he favored the way I moved, and he had a vision of Buffy and how she fought and her style and her energy, and he just felt I fit the character better. I continued for the next three seasons, having done four seasons all together.
JEFF PRUITT
We had a great time working with the actors. David Boreanaz had actually tried to get on Power Rangers. I met him at a party and he had been an assistant in the prop department on one of the Best of the Best movies. Some of the girls who worked on the movie with him told me that he wanted to get into acting, and since I was directing Power Rangers, they wanted to see if I could get him on the show, because he didn’t have a SAG card yet. So I put him in touch with the casting people and everything. And then later, when I came to Buffy, there was this Angel character and he right away recognized me. Right then I said, “Okay, does your character do some kind of fights?” He said, “I help out sometimes, but then Buffy saves me.” This was in first season.
I could talk to Joss about any Japanese anime I may see, but the one that you don’t mention is called Devil Hunter Yohko. This is the scenario—it starts off like this, unto every generation is born a slayer. The Slayer goes to high school—Yohko is the slayer—and she has a watcher. She has a best friend who’s this nerdy girl who does computers, and the computer girl has a best friend who’s a guy and she has a thing for him, but he has a thing for Yohko. And then there’s this other guy who’s a mysterious demon vampire guy who watches them from the side and brings them information a
bout the underworld. She has to train, through her watcher, because she’s going to have to pretend to be a high chool student while she fights demons. Only her two buddies know she’s a slayer. I mentioned that to him and he said, “No, no, no, it’s not like that.” I said, “Well if it’s not like that, then that means Angel is not that guy. Angel could be, like I did on Power Rangers, I could make him anything,” because on Power Rangers they wanted to do the cliché thing of the girls falls down, twists her ankle, and the guy saves her. Billy is the nerd who can’t fight as well as the other guys, but pretty soon I started making Billy able to fight as well as anybody. Make the girls fight as good as the guys. Everybody was a team. When I added Kimberly and Tommy fighting together, the fans went crazy over that. So I said to Joss, I know this is a different show, but can’t we do a version of that where I let Angel kick some guys in the head?” “Well, Angel doesn’t kick guys in the head.” “Can’t I try it just a little bit?” “Okay, I’ll let you try it a little bit and we’ll see how it goes.”
So I got a stunt double to slow kick a guy in the head, and they started dressing David Boreanaz in black all the time. Then he and Buffy were a team and they were fighting side by side, and the fans loved it. After that, that’s when everything took off. I said to David, “See, I made you a Power Ranger.”
SOPHIA CRAWFORD
Initially I knew very little about the show or what it was. After being there a little while, and watching Sarah on the first few episodes—and the entire Scooby Gang—doing their dialogue, I was listening to it and said, “Wow, this is actually pretty funny.” Then I started getting the scripts and would read them and follow along with everybody else. But it kind of evolved with me.
The fighting became more prominent as the show went on than it was in the beginning, and I think it was also in part to the fear of it taking too much time to shoot what we were sort of planning, because we came in there and initially most of the process was slow. Choreography, getting things done. Maybe from Jeff’s experience of working on Power Rangers, everything having to go so quickly, Jeff was very quick, so we were able to get a bigger amount of work done in the same time. Nothing really changed time wise.
We weren’t really given more time to shoot scenes in the beginning, but as they saw what the stunt guys were capable of, not just me but the terrific stunt team, once they started seeing their skills, Joss was the one who was like, “I want more of this!” Like I said, everything kind of escalated. They saw more, they wanted more. We were very happy to give them more. In the beginning we were told it wasn’t to be in a Power Rangers style, no wire gags. More than anything it was about gymnastics and Buffy’s fighting power.
CAMDEN TOY
Ryan Watson was my stunt double. He’s just an amazing martial artist. There were things he could do that I couldn’t do. I also have a background in martial arts and I did have to learn all of the choreography, but Ryan was the one who told me, “He’s really a killing machine. He’s an ancient vampire—he’s like a Neanderthal, so we don’t want him to be a typical chop-and-kick vampire. He really needs to be more like an animal. The script says, ‘He’s the vampire that vampires fear.’ ”
The way I sort of thought of them in my head was sort of Taz, the Tasmanian devil. So Ryan and I kind of worked on that and we kind of came up with a number of things and I was able to learn all of that choreography except for a few minor things here and there that Ryan had to do—it was pretty wild.
JAMES MARSTERS
There’s a scene where Spike is drunk, because he’s depressed about Drusilla leaving him and he passes out outdoors and wakes up in the morning because the sun is lighting him on fire. The scene started with the close-up on the hand igniting and Spike opening his eyes and realizing he’s on fire and going to put it out in some water. I was, like, “I can do that. That’ll be great.” They told me, “James, no. This is one of the most dangerous gags in all of stunts; it’s an unprotected fire gag.” Usually when a character’s on fire in film, they’re clothed and it’s not their skin on fire; it’s their clothes that are burning and the actor has many layers of protection underneath so that they don’t get burned themselves. But with an unprotected gag, you dip your hand in a protective gel and then you dip your hand in fuel and they light you on fire. The gel burns off really fast, so you only have about four seconds before you have to put it out or you get really mangled. But idiot James Marsters decided that I wanted that gag to go a little longer, because there was this wonderful moment where Spike’s eyes wake up and he’s looking at his hand on fire and it takes him a while to realize this is not a dream; this is real. And I thought that that would be funnier. Not even thinking about the fact that every second is precious for a television show, especially something like Buffy, that’s so jam-packed with good dialogue that they can’t afford four more seconds of just me staring at my hand.
So I let it go long. We did two takes. I thought that I got away with it the first take, but when they lit me for the second one it was hell. Luckily it was the last shot of the episode and I remember thinking, just get off the set. Don’t let them know that you blew the gag and that you’re hurt, because if they find out that you’re hurt, they’ll never let you do another stunt. And just go to the hospital. Don’t go to the medic on the set. Just get out as quickly as possible and drive directly to the hospital. I just remember walking to my trailer and everyone’s, like, “Great job, James! So, glad you were back.” I’m just grinning my teeth as these blisters are forming on my hand. “Thanks so much, so good to be back.” Meanwhile, my entire hand was covered in quarter- and dime-sized blisters all over. It was really bad, but I went to the hospital and got it taken care of. They didn’t find out about it. I guess they will now—too late, though.
RAYMOND STELLA
You could always tell when our stunt double was running compared to Sarah, because she ran more like a girl. I’m not sexist or anything, but they had a different gait. So Sarah would have her gait and then when you see the other one you can tell pretty easily. They did a pretty good job covering the faces and doing the stunts.
FELICIA DAY
It was challenging. I’d never really done stunts, although I was a dancer and I did martial arts lessons as a kid. So that was really fun for me. But it was really taxing, and I remember one of the last episodes, there’s this big monologue Sarah had to do and she didn’t generally come in to block, she would just come in to shoot, because she’d done this a long time. It was a long monologue where she had so many fight moves where she had to throw a weapon up. I’m talking a page monologue. We were, like, “Wow, she didn’t even come in for rehearsal.” She came in, and the stunt person showed her one time what they were doing and she nailed it on the first take. I was astonished. I haven’t seen anything since where an actor is just, like, boom. Technically precise, but also it was emotional and just really impressive. It was very rigorous, and being on that show really was similar to being on Supernatural, which I was on for several seasons, in that you’d always go to a location and you’d have fans waiting outside, because they found out where you’re shooting and because they love it, and it always becomes a Fraturday [Friday-night shoot that goes into Saturday morning]. You’re shooting until two or three A.M. and yet you’re just loving it, because you know that you’re making something that a lot of people are going to appreciate beyond just the moment.
JAMES MARSTERS
It took me a long time to learn the lesson that stunts take a price on the body. Doing stunts is like playing football; you don’t necessarily have to go to the hospital after every game, but it’s hard to get up out of bed. Some Mondays mornings are difficult. If you do that for enough years, your body takes a whack. I didn’t learn that lesson until Angel stopped filming, the show came down, and about a week after that my back just froze up and I couldn’t walk. I just completely broke down.
DAVID FURY
The First afforded us a great opportunity to see all the villains of the p
ast. Knowing at that point that this was it for Buffy, having the First was a way to bring back a lot of characters from the series and being able to see the Mayor, or seeing the Master, or seeing Glory was a perfect way to do that, because it kind of takes the form of anything it wants to and taking those forms was a fun opportunity. I’m of the opinion . . . things [pulled] from the past of the shows are much richer. Instead of inventing a whole new villain for the season we haven’t seen before, now it’s pulling something from the past. I thought it was a good idea. It gave a lot of faces to evil and that’s what made it work.
HARRY GROENER
(actor, Mayor Richard Wilkins)
Long after Mayor Wilkins is destroyed and gone, it’s the last season and my wife and I got back from New York when we were still living [there and in L.A.]. We’re at a coffee shop having breakfast, and she says, “Why don’t you call and tell them you’re back in town; maybe they’ll put you in a episode.” I said, “They’re not going to do that.” She said, “Don’t be an asshole. Give him a call.” So I call my agent and said let them know. And they indeed did that fantasy with Faith and put me in the episode. It was good to see everyone. It was like old home week.
JAMES MARSTERS
I do have to say one [of my] favorite memories of doing the entire series was doing “Lies My Parents Told Me,” which was an episode I cowrote with Drew Goddard and directed in the latter part of the season. It was a Spikecentric episode. Principal Wood’s mother was killed by Spike, and it was a whole revenge story, but it was just a really fun, glorious experience for me. I had so many different great experiences working on Buffy and Angel, but my last meaningful involvement in Buffy was that episode.
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