Q&A with James Marsters
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| ANGEL
Season 5 Q&A with James Marsters |
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Continued from page 1 So you’re fond of Spike. JAMES: Oh, believe me. Spike is the best role I’ve ever had. Is that a daunting thought knowing that it’s the greatest character you’re going to have? JAMES: Sure. Is it as good as it’s ever going to get? JAMES: Yeah, basically. And you have to be at peace with that. I was very happy acting before I met Joss. I was part of a lot of projects that tickled people’s fancy and that were really fulfilling. That’s most likely what I’ll go back to now. I was never a part of anything that touched the world but I was still happy, still fulfilled. Now I’m a person who was once part of something that has touched the world. That’s something. Are you going to take any of the props home or any kind of memorabilia? JAMES: When I produced, I used to really not like it when people did that. They told me I should take my coat from BUFFY and I didn’t because I don’t do that. I was told that it had been bid on, for some outrageous amount of money and I thought, well that’s not my coat and if it’s worth that much money I don’t want to steal that from the people that have just been signing my checks for five years. Then they turned around and sold it for two hundred thousand dollars or something like that. I have this silly question. Do you believe in the supernatural and ghosts? JAMES: I believe that we don’t know. I believe that we must be careful of the things that we want to be true because we’ll tend to find that. And we all want there to be something after death. So, we tend to see that. But it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. It just means that we have to be careful in the search for it. I read a great book called “Eighteenth Century and the Madness of Crowds.” It was actually written in the nineteenth century but it said that there are four things that human beings will never be able to over come. Three or four. Ignorance of the future. Toil. Death. Three. Those three things. And people have been selling snake oil to people throughout the centuries based on the idea that somehow, you can get past those three things. A lot of our beliefs are just based on needing to believe. The things that physicists are finding out about the universe are so mind-boggling. That you have to admit that we’re wrapped up in something much more complicated than we understand. To say that there’s not a metaphysical part of life is pretty arrogant. It’s just as arrogant as saying, I know everything about God. It’s just that I believe in the saying, you know what? We really don’t know much. We really don’t. The more we know, the less we know. JAMES: Yeah. It’s like going to college. You have loads of female fans who've written, I suppose you know. JAMES: Yes. What do fans do when they meet you? JAMES: They're very polite. What, you mean those ladies? James: Oh yeah. Well, no, in general they're a little scared of me. Because I play a character who's bound to say, you know, "Eff off. Leave me alone, I'm going to get a cookie." I don't play Willow, and I didn't play Tara over on the other show—do you get me? I don't play a character who has any sympathy for anybody really. So they tend to apologize (laughs) which is kind of funny. I read that some 80 year-old woman was quite rude to you. Pinched your bottom. JAMES: Yeah, that gets old. At first it was kind of like, "Wow, now I'm a sexual object." But that's a boundary that’s been pushed so much at this point hat it really does rankle. What, people treating you like that? JAMES: People just coming up and... Do they really? JAMES: Yeah, some people don't have the same sense of boundaries that most of us have. So what do you do? JAMES: Leave. Do you say anything to them? JAMES: Usually I say “That's it. I'm no piece of meat.” I'm a public figure now so I can't react the way I’d really like, so I'm going to leave. [Laughs] But is it good to appear on things like… JAMES: But that's very rare. I have fan interactions everywhere I go. I have to say, 95, 99 percent of them are really positive. Is it good to appear on those kind of Most Fanciable Men lists? JAMES: Sure, I mean… It's not going to be bad, is it? JAMES: Hollywood runs on sex. There's only seven stories ever told. One of them is young love. That's the only one we'll tell here. So, if girls want you, you get a good job. I'm never going to run away from that. At all. Do you think it's because Spike's bad, that's why, that women like that? JAMES: I don't think that just being bad is enough. I don't think...in this universe that Joss is writing, and all the people working for him are writing, bad is not cool. Evil is not fun. It's stupid, it's banal, it's not supposed to be sexy. And that's why vampires, when they become vampires, are hideously ugly. That's why he doesn't allow us to have the fangs with normal faces, because that's so sexy. And so Spike was kind of an ill fit over on BUFFY actually. He kind of endangered the theme. What, because he was so fanciable? JAMES: Yes, because he was both purely evil and people were responding to him a way that I don't think they expected. I think that had to do with just the fact that I was having a lot of fun. In my personal life I really felt sexy [laughs]. So that came out. And, so... You've never taken advantage of your image with fans? JAMES: Very rarely, actually. But you've had your moments? JAMES: Yeah. But in general, with fans, if you hook up or if you get intimate with them at all, they have an agenda and a fantasy, and there's no way you're going to get out of not smashing that at the end. So at the very end of the experience, no matter how hard you try, there's going to be tears. You don't want to break someone to have a couple hours of fun. Have there ever been? JAMES: It's not like I've never done it, but… You speak so wisely about it, that's why [laughter]... JAMES: Well, you know. Hollywood is not a place where people usually keep their souls very long. And I've tried very hard to keep mine. [Laughing] From the fans letters and the mail you’ve got, I guess you must get quite a lot of them as Spike, do you grasp what the fans were getting from the show, most of them teenagers or young adults. All the struggles that all the demons and vampires and all these people are going through, would that help them with their growing up? JAMES: Not just young people, older people too. I’d get just as many heartfelt letters about connections from older people too. Definitely, from younger people. That really speaks mostly about the writing. The writing is about trying to be a good person in this world, and how do you do that? Because it’s not really that easy, if you really talk about it honestly, that easy. And these writers do. There’s a real honest attempt to talk about heroism. And the pitfalls of heroism. And how you can become a total jerk if you try to screw it up. I’m proud of being part of stories that are told with passion and with sincerity. We really believe this stuff. This is not just crap to us. This really means something. Plus it meant to you then. JAMES: Yeah. But when have you… JAMES: Well, with Buffy, it was really like “Hamlet.” Which is Joss’ favorite play. “Hamlet” is about being a young man who comes in to contact with all the fucked up parts of the world. He came into his own as a man, with the world totally screwed up. How do you continue walking? How do you move forward when you know that the whole world is messed up? Do you give up? Do you kill yourself? Do you fight against that? How do you fight against that? Shakespeare is, really in the mature way, examining how do you do that. “Catcher in the Rye” is talking about the same thing. It’s a period of adolescence. How do you get over disillusionment? How do you remain active and proactive, and not give up? That’s what he was talking about with Buffy. She’s coming into being a woman, and with her, it’s vampires that she’s fighting. That’s just the metaphor. It’s just a sideshow. Little demons. JAMES: Puppet show. It’s really about becoming an adult. With Angel, it’s really about remaining a good person, and dealing with regret. Dealing with the inevitable part of human life when you’ve grown into adulthood, and you’ve made big mistakes in your past. How do you come to grips with that? How do you move forward from that? And, so, that’s what we’ve been talking about. In my mind, that’s what I’ve been talking about. Talking about moving forward, I’m interested in knowing why you decided to go back to the brown hair as you sort of audition for new parts? Wouldn’t your new agents sort of tell you, hey, you have much more chance if you stick with the… JAMES: Hey, I’m not coming from any agent…[Laughter] There is quick money to be made with blond hair. Seriously though. JAMES: English accents and vampire shows. [Laughing] You have to play the long game, and just wait… JAMES: Definitely. I have to. If I have a long career in this town…it’s going to be playing human beings. I went out on auditions for a long time with this bleach blonde hair, and people were like, what’s your hair really like? I’m brown, like everybody else in the world. Without a bottle, you know. They can’t get over the blonde so I just get called for rock stars. A lot of rock stars. A lot of drug addicts. Bikers… JAMES: Yeah. Stuff like that. You recognize it as limiting. You don’t want to get too bulked up with muscle. You want to look like you could move in a lot a different directions. And you want to look like you’re a real person. You want to wear a suit. You want to play a role where you wear a suit for a change? JAMES: Sure. How often have you had to dye your hair? JAMES: Every episode. Every eight days, yeah. Does your hair fall out? JAMES: No. My hair doesn’t fall out. My scalp doesn’t like it but they’ve gotten better and better about putting stuff in the bleaching solution to save my poor hair. It’s such a marathon. Plus, I have very curly hair so this is kind of nice, it straightens it out. Continued on page 3 |
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