After playing Spike for seven years, James Marsters will bid a fond farewell to his beloved bloodsucking alter ego during the closing hours of Angel. In conversation with Jenny Cooney Carrillo, the popular American actor discusses his work on Angel’s fifth and final season and outlines his plans for the future…

James Marsters can remember the moment when he discovered that Angel had been staked. “It was just stunning,” says Spike’s real life counterpart, as he recalls learning of Angel’s cancellation at the hands of its US broadcaster, The WB. “Joss Whedon [series creator/executive producer] came in and collected everybody, and I thought he was going to tell us the show had been renewed. I’d been spoiled on Buffy – I was used to that. And when he told us what had happened, I couldn’t believe it.

“It was a total surprise, but you’ve got to remember, this is Hollywood,” continues Marsters. “After a few years here, there are no surprises. If you keep allowing your heart to get broken by the winds of fortune, you get crushed. So you really have to learn to take things in your stride.

“I come from the theatre, so I’m used to things being really wonderful and then being over. In fact, one of my favourite things to do when something’s over is go back to the space it was performed in, when it’s finally empty. It’s cool: it reminds you that it’s over and it’s transitory.”

Heart and Soul

Marsters was fresh from starring in Buffy for the best part of six years when he was invited to resurrect his character on Angel. Spike swiftly went on to become an integral part of the show’s re-tooled fifth season, which has seen the heroic vampire build his relationships with Angel (David Boreanaz), Fred (Amy Acker) and Harmony (Mercedes McNab), and fall foul of the scheming former Wolfram & Hart lawyer Lindsey McDonald (Christian Kane). The character has also played a key role in several instalments of season five, including Destiny, Just Rewards, Hellbound and 1943.

“I feel like we have had such a good season here,” he notes. “I really feel like this season has been better than some of the ones over on Buffy. The scripts that have been coming out of the scriptwriters’ office have been just fabulous.

“It seems like a blessing that this show was still on the air after Buffy ended and I continued to play Spike for another year. I’ve been involved in at least 100 plays in some way, and I know that Spike is really the best role that you can hope for. I’ve told Joss this and he just called me a blasphemer, but I think Spike is an even better role than Macbeth, which is my favourite ever role in Shakespeare. Shakespeare is the best writer ever, but he only had three hours to explore the character and you could only say a certain amount of things in that amount of time. I’ve had a number of really good writers exploring Spike for seven years now and he’s fleshed out.

“Spike is so much more complicated and more human than I ever imagined,” says Marsters with pride. “It all really flowered when we went back in time and we found out that Spike was a total wuss before he was a vampire, which makes him the most successful faker in history. He’s not a tough guy. He’s a guy who’s pretending to be tough. But as he’s a vampire, he can get away with it.”

As Angel builds to what the show’s producers are promising will be a memorable finale, one story arc many viewers are keen to see resolved is the Buffy/Spike/Angel love triangle. Marsters is aware that many viewers would like to see Spike winning Buffy’s heart once and for all during the final hours of Angel, but personally doesn’t feel that would be right for the characters.

“I think that Buffy really loved Angel,” he explains. “Angel was her true love. I think Buffy used Spike like a wet rag. She was feeling dead inside at the time, and I think that Spike was an exciting lover who made her feel alive. But she didn’t love him at all. She used him. That was not right. And Spike was very smitten and too weak to break it off.

“Basically, Spike was the kind of boyfriend who’s very exciting but burns you at the end. So that was what we were playing out on Buffy with Spike and Buffy. I don’t think in the writers’ minds that Spike was worthy of loving Buffy – until he had a soul. And of course, by the time he had a soul, it was too late, and they had no chance!”

Looking ahead to life after Angel, Marsters reports that he hopes to divide his time between the two great passions in his working life: acting and music. In fact, he’s already preparing for a new tour as the lead singer of the rock band Ghost of the Robot.

“Music has always been a big part of my life,” he explains. “I’ve always written songs and played. I’ve played solo in clubs all my life, off and on. I’ve been doing that for the last three years or so in LA. Music has always been a big thing for me and I hope it always will be. My fear is that now that I’m not on a TV show, my schedule may get more hectic and it may be harder to play with the band, and that would be heartbreaking.

“I definitely don’t want to give up acting,” he adds firmly. “I’ve been acting since fourth grade and I’m addicted to it. I really love it. I’m one of the few guys who could work 12 to 15 hours a day and still be thinking, ‘That was good’ and ‘That was fun.’ I’ve also spent all my life getting pretty good at it. It’s like anything – if I was laying bricks this long I’d be really good at it!”

Another Bite?

Marsters may be looking forward to exploring new frontiers as an actor and musician, but he certainly doesn’t rule out a return to the role of Spike at some point in the future. If a new Buffy spin-off (like the long-mooted Faith and Spike show) or Angel TV movie revival entered production one day, Marsters is completely open to the idea of appearing in it. “I think that I would probably want to come back to Spike again if anything was to come up, no matter what I was doing,” he states. “It’s just a great role.”

Regardless of what the future holds for the Buffy franchise, James Marsters feels grateful for the time he’s spent as Spike. He’s also quick to acknowledge the franchise’s phenomenal appeal and legacy. “People appreciate quality,” he says of Buffy and Angel’s success. “That seems to be the only common denominator. I mean, it goes across age, it goes across social status, it goes across educational backgrounds – it just goes across everything. That’s certainly true when I meet fans. When I meet them, they tend to be fairly intelligent and fairly funny people. I just tend to think that they appreciate quality and are willing to really give it to themselves.

“I’m aware that this may be the project that connects most strongly with an audience in my whole career,” he declares with pride. “These two shows have really touched a nerve.”

This article originally appeared in Dreamwatch Issue 117 (July 2004).