ANGEL Season 5
Q&A with James Marsters		 Search all of phase9.tv






Acting careers are all about ups and downs. Can you tell us what positives you can take from the cancellation of ANGEL?

JAMES MARSTERS: Oh, my God. Well, first of all, the chaos is really potential if you’re willing to look at it that way. Change is good if you’re willing to be proactive about it. And this is a big change for me. I plan to take full advantage of it. I’ve been telling people for a long time that I’m an actor who can do different roles, and now I have a chance to prove it. Basically.

So, what’s your immediate plan then?

JAMES: Find an agent.

[Laugh] You didn’t have one?

JAMES: No, man.

How can you survive in LA without an agent?

JAMES: I was already employed, you know. [Laughs] Why give ten percent to an agent if you don’t have time to audition? We got to a point of renegotiating a contract without an agent. And the thing was is that I had fired the two different agencies during contract negotiations, because I didn’t think they were fighting correctly. It became apparent to me that I was manhandling my representation, telling them exactly what to tell the other side, day to day. Finally, it hit me, “You don’t need an agent.” Or at least, if I need an agent, he needs to be better at this than I am. There is an agency who will believe in me. And I will find them. But I haven’t found them yet.

Are you trying to stay clear of the big ones to avoid like getting swamped, ‘cause they represent all the twenty million?

JAMES: That is a definite trade off. But it really depends on who you meet. If you’re in a big agency, and you really do have a connection with your specific agent in that agency, that doesn’t matter.

Is type casting one of your concerns?

JAMES: No.

Never? Never was? Never will be?

JAMES: No. The, the, the big—see, I stammer, I’ll never write about these things. The big thing that I’d be coming into is it may be a few years of people finding out who I really am. Because I’m going to have to go out there with brown hair, looking the way I do now. And it’s really like coming to LA fresh. So, the positive side of it is, that I can be fresh again. I can probably even go in all stealthy. I could probably take Spike off my radar and not get spotted. But then I’d have to pass myself off as someone who’s not done much television. So, I imagine it’ll be a couple a years, where I do a couple of guest spots. Do a couple of smaller roles. People will say, “Hey. He’s that guy. Wow, he’s very different, now.” I sound a little cocky, but I’ve only failed a couple of times with acting. I’ve only really sucked a couple of times in plays. And so, I feel pretty confident that I’ll get out there and do it. Usually when I get on a show, everyone starts talking about putting me in the cast anyway. That’s what happened with BUFFY. It’s almost happened with every show I’ve been on. They wanted to do it in NORTHERN EXPOSURE [TV series].

Congratulations.

JAMES: Yeah.

Is there another show on television that you’d love to be a regular in?

JAMES: WEST WING.

Hmm-mm.

JAMES: Take that Rob Lowe part, thank you very much. [General laughter] What is he thinking? [Laughing] Nothing against Rob. He’s survived longer than I have.

What was the difference between ANGEL and BUFFY?

JAMES: Oh man, they're just so different. To tell you the truth, it's much the same experience working on ANGEL and BUFFY. The writers are the same, the producers are the same, Joss is there, many of the directors are the same. I worked with David over on ANGEL, and I pretty much worked with everybody else over at Joss's house doing Shakespeare for fun. So, coming on ANGEL, it's not much different. The only biggest difference for me is my trailer is much further away here than there, so [laughs] it has a profound effect on whether I can get some rest. But other than that, it's about exactly the same. Yeah. It's the same toys, it's the same fun factory. It's the Joss Fun Factory.

Was there a point where you knew that BUFFY was ending? That you just thought, that’s it - that’s the point where I should just let that role go?

JAMES: Well, Joss came up to me in the very beginning of the last season of BUFFY, right after we shot the big church scene, where Spike goes on the cross, and I had just poured my heart out. And he said, “James, first of all, your episode sucks. Second of all, we have no idea what to do with you for this year. The only thing we know we want to do with is we want to kill you.” [Laughter] Then he said, “But [laughs] I don’t want you to remain dead. I want to bring you back.” So, the whole year on BUFFY was all about experimenting with different ways to continue the storytelling with this universe. There was going to be a spin-off, which didn’t work out. I went through the year knowing that something was going to be continuing. When it didn’t work with the spin-off, taking me over to ANGEL was talked about, and it seemed like a good idea. I wasn’t really thinking of it as ending, so much as progress.

For you.

JAMES: You know, I miss doing the romantic stuff, but the thing is that you really can’t do romantic stuff if you’re a secondary character, or of course if you’re the same sex. ‘Cause you just… [Laughing] Well, if you think about it, I mean, the secondary characters just don’t really get romantic, because you have to go in there and develop that as a plot.

Yeah.

JAMES: And it takes away from your ensemble cast. If you hook up with the main character, then you can have the love story. If not, it just flattens everything out. What I enjoy about being over on ANGEL frankly is that I’m no longer a danger to the theme. They’ve really uncorked me. And I’m really kind of a doppelganger for Angel in a way, which is to say that he’s a bit of a mirror image, not exactly, but enough, so that you gain insight into Angel by watching Spike. That hooks me in directly in line with the theme, as opposed to always kind of bumping into it, and negating it, and “Oh, let’s keep Spike away from this episode.” Being uncorked is fun, but it is more hours, I have to say.

How did you feel when you heard the series was being cancelled?

JAMES: Very surprised, very surprised. It bespeaks the complicated nature of Hollywood. It makes absolute sense for Warner Brothers to do what they’re doing from their perspective. From our perspective it’s weird to get on two TV Guide covers. We’ve had a very successful season, the numbers are up and we’re still getting cancelled. I’ve examined it from their side, and it makes sense on the business end. If you really want to go into all of the business details we can. But let’s not. So, no hard feelings but, wow.

There must have been some bitterness?

JAMES: No. I used to produce theater in Chicago and Seattle, and I hated having actors come up to me asking “Why haven’t you cast me yet?” I’d have cast them twice already last year and they’d tell me, I need more work. I’m not going to dis on the WB who gave me gainful employment for years, just because they don’t want to keep employing me. That’s not the way to go.

First BUFFY ends and now this ends. Are you jinxed?

JAMES: No, no. BUFFY ended because Sarah wanted out. BUFFY could have gone until the year three thousand but, but Sarah and I don’t—look, I have no hard feelings for her either. If I were her agent I would say the same thing: go on, move on. Seven years was enough and we all knew that for a long time. Sarah was very clear about that.

You guys found out that the show was ending when you read “Entertainment Weekly”.

JAMES: If you wanted to fool yourself. If you wanted to really not pay attention to any of the clear things being said on a daily basis on that show for years, yes that article would have surprised you. But it did not surprise me at all. The official word had not been given but the unofficial word had been given, hundreds of times and it was not hard to miss.

Were you not concerned having that show come to an end it was just time to move on anyway?

JAMES: Hell no. Joss is still in the driver’s seat. Joss and David Fury and Steve DeKnight and Drew Goddard. All those guys were responsible for the best Spike scenes over on BUFFY and they’re all here now.

Will there be a Spike spin-off?

JAMES: I doubt it.

Would you be up for it if there were?

JAMES: Hell yeah! But I don’t see it happening. I think the WB is getting another vampire show on the air right now and pursuing more reality based programming. In that environment, I don’t really see them greenlighting another vampire show. And I don’t really see the new people at UPN being excited. Well I might be wrong about that, but the man that heads UPN is a great businessman who did not feel that we should have come to the network at that price. He may have been right. He may not have been so happy that we were there. I don’t blame him for that either. At the same time I think any network would be very well advised to get Joss in their camp. He’s got a very good track record and I think that you can’t miss with him. I am not a television executive. The one thing I will say about the WB is that they have, since the very beginning, thought like the big boys. They have advertised, they have done it all correctly and they are on trajectory. They’re going to be in the Fox lot. They’re doing everything right, and I failed at business. I ran an omelet shop into the ground once, so I’m not going to tell them how to do their business. I can sit here on the sidelines and kibitz but it’s just like talking to any other guy in the street.

Continued on page 2


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