VasquezE (01/27/04 15:26:31)
Интервью в Dreamwatch
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Dreamwatch
Marsters and Commander.
Abbie Bernstein
`After becoming one of BtVS's best-loved characters, Spike is now
calling the shots on AtS. Actor James Marsters bares his soul to
Abbie Bernstein about the bad boy vamp's new lease of life…
`For six years, Spike was the ultimate Buffy bad boy. He was a
leather-clad vamp whose razor-sharp put-downs and couldn't-care-less
demeanour set him apart from the show's more well-meaning
characters. But, by the time he was `toasted and ghosted' in the
show's apocalyptic finale, Chosen, it seemed as if the bleached-
blond bloodsucker had been through just about everything. How wrong
could we be? Resurrected for AtS's fifth season, Spike has taken the
corridors of Wolfram and Hart by storm. From barely escaping the
jaws of oblivion in Hell Bound to swapping body blows with Angel in
Destiny, the character's rediscovered zest for life is there for all
to see. One person who's particularly delighted to see Spike back in
action is his real-life alter-ego James Marsters. Dreamwatch catches
up with the actor to hear in his own words why he's still undead and
loving it..
DW: How does working on AtS compare with working on BtVS?
JM: I'm having more fun than I ever had in this universe. I had a
lot of fun with BtVS, but I'm having even more fun on AtS.
DW: After brooding his way through much of BtVS's seventh season,
Spike seems to have really rediscovered his zest for life on AtS.
Are you enjoying playing the character more this year?
JM: Totally, because I tend to internalise the character. I really
feel like you have to have that inside and not worry about what's
showing, and then the camera's going to document you really feeling
it. During the scenes over on BtVS where Spike was depressed, I
really was depressed. I had gotten myself into a state of mind that
was that bad. Probably no therapist would tell you that acting's
healthy. I got all my crying out in season six and seven of BtVS.
I'm serious. I had to dredge up every painful thing I could find and
wring it dry. I don't think I've had a cry since then. Not that I
couldn't use one – it just hasn't come out. I was coming up and
whipping myself with everything I felt guilty about during my whole
life, because I was trying to approximate what it would feel like to
wake up with a soul and have to face 120 years of mass murder.
On AtS, I'm basically functioning a lot like I did originally on
BtVS, which means I'm grit in the ointment, and I get to just have
fun making Angel's life really dark. This is the interesting thing.
You would think that after having gotten a soul that the character
would take off in a whole new direction that we've never seen
before. But this is the surprise – that he goes back to the
beginning. This is more like the Spike that we originally saw – he's
having fun and making it hard for other people.
DW: Has Spike made a conscious decision to be a good guy in AtS?
JM: Yeah. The interesting thing about that is, once he makes that
decision, he becomes a sucker. We'll see that coming up. That's one
of the problems with caring and investing yourself in the world,
because people can take advantage of that. And I thought that was a
really deft thing to come out of the gate with. Right when Spike
chooses the good side and thinks, "I'm gonna try to be a hero," he
gets used.
DW: Although Spike has a soul and must come to terms with the
horrific events of his past, he seems far less depressed than Angel
was when he had to deal with his dark past..
JM: It was alluded to in one of the episodes that Angel spent 120
years contemplating infinite remorse, whereas Spike took two weeks
of being depressed in a basement and everything was fine!
Structurally, we got to explore Angel's long period of depression in
back-story; we didn't have to take time out of the series to
actually talk about that. If we put Spike through the same kind of
journey, he'd be out of action for 120 seasons! And so he's got to
get over it pretty quickly. But what's interesting is, I'm starting
to come to the idea that Spike just might not be as deep as Angel.
There's something beautiful about shallowness in that way. It helps
you survive. If you can just slough that guilt off, better power to
you! But it really may just mean that Spike is probably not that
smart and he's probably not that deep. We love him anyway.
DW: Spike started on BtVS as an out-and-out villain, didn't he?
JM: When he took a vampire kid into sunlight and fried him and
laughed about it in his very first episode, yeah, I knew what the
trajectory of the character was at that time – psychopath! [laughs].
But you don't think of yourself as a person, because no real person
in life thinks of himself as a villain. Everybody thinks of himself
as a hero. So if you're trying to be villainous, then you're on the
wrong track as an actor.
DW: This is your sixth year playing a vampire. What keeps the role
of Spike fresh for you?
JM: The thing about Joss Whedon is he doesn't write because he
enjoys employing what's tried and true; he doesn't write vampires
because he wants to show a lot of bloodsucking. He's using the
vampire mythology as a metaphor to talk about how hard it is to
actually try to be a force of good in the world, how many pitfalls
there are to that choice, how arrogant a choice it is to begin with,
and how easily you're duped once you decide to care about the world.
We live in a world where no one can be bothered to care about
anything. And Joss is really swimming directly upstream from that
and going, "Here's someone who does care about stuff and is going to
take the hits to try to create something good in the world." It's a
morality tale about good and evil.
So it's not so much about just playing the vampire as it is
exploring the person. And that's much more terrifying and much more
exciting, because there are five or six things that you are is
you're a vampire: you're strong, you're sexy, you're thin, you suck
people's blood – even if there were 40 things, they would quickly
get exhausted if you concentrated on them. But, really, the vampire
thing is a leaping off point to talk about human experience.
DW: Do you still think of Spike as a vampire?
JM: No! When I think of Spike, I don't think of vampire right away.
I think of punk rocker. I think of someone with a lot of passion and
maybe not so much common sense. I think about his vulnerability and
how hard he works to mask that – all the things that resonate as a
human being.
DW: What's been the hardest part of playing Spike?
JM: The pressure to look the same as you did seven years ago, like a
vampire would, becomes enormous. You just hope the audience likes
your acting well enough to forget what you looked like originally!
DW: In the opening episodes of AtS's fifth season , Spike is
a `ghost'. As an actor, did you have to do anything differently?
JM: Yes. One of the trademark Spike things is to lean against
something as if you don't care enough to stand up. And that's great
as an actor in the middle of a 16 or 20 hour day. You get to sit
down a lot or lean against something. But at the start of the
season, I couldn't lean against anything. And I had the biggest
arguments with the writers, saying, "OK, I can stand on the floor
[without sinking through it] – Spike can't touch anything? I accept
that, but he can float where he wants to? So I could float as if I'm
leaning up against the wall, right? And they said, "No, it looks
weird, it looks too corporeal." So I had to stand up. And that
sucked. I didn't feel like Spike. They really wanted me freaked out
and weakened by the whole thing. They really wanted the fear of him
fading away to be there for the audience. You're working so quickly
on a television show, so I decided to play cold – I played it as if
I didn't really have a body temperature and being a ghost is just
really cold, almost as if you'd just saved someone from a freezing
river. When you see those rescued people in the blankets and how
they look – I tried to do that.
When Spike becomes corporeal again, basically, he gets unleashed. He
gets to truly be a potent force in the world as opposed to just
commenting on it and saying, "Hi, Angel, aren't you silly?" again.
Now, I get to come and say, "Come here, I've got something that has
to happen!"
DW: Is that really you swapping blows with David Boreanaz in Destiny?
JM: Oh yeah! Toe-to-toe the whole day. Both David and I have done
enough fights that it's pretty much like working with another
stuntman. You know, the concerns are the same. Neither of us are
professional stuntmen – we're not that good – but for actors, we're
pretty damn good. And pretty experienced, at this point. What's
great about working with David is that you get the acting stuff as
well. And I feel like we have really good trust between the two of
us. It's never, "Oh, he's going to do that to me – I don't trust
that!" If I had to do a cliff scene and the only thing keeping me
from falling over the edge was David, I'd be cool with it.
Seriously. You could count on it.
DW: David Boreanaz made his directing debut this season with Soul
Purpose. Will you be directing an episode any time soon?
JM: Well, I think that I'd do well with actors – I was always good
with actors as a stage director. But I need to know more about the
language of film. I mean, in all honesty, yes, they could hire me as
a director now and I could sit in the chair and say, "Action," and
get it on my resume, but it would be a lie. I haven't done my
homework. I don't want to do it before I've read a couple of books
and really talked to a couple of good DPs and got my stuff down,
because I don't want to weigh the crew down with someone who doesn't
know what he's doing. David is a great director. He came in and he
did better than any first-time director I have seen – stage, movies,
TV or anything. He impressed everybody.
DW: How about writing an episode?
JM: I've got a couple of ideas. Most of the writing that I did was
when I had a theatre company. I was involved in a lot of projects
I'm proud of. But I'm so busy right now, most of my writing is
really more writing music. When I get rested and feel creative and
the sunshine is beautiful again, usually a song comes.
DW: Speaking of songs, is it true that the band you're in, GotR and
recurring AtS guest star Christian Kan's band Kane tried to do
something together recently?
JM: Oh, man, we tried! Kane was playing Club Lingerie in Hollywood,
but our band was busy up in Sacramento. I would love to do something
with CK – his CD sounds great and his voice is fabulous. His band is
country-rooted and my band is rooted in blues and punk, and it's
hard to reconcile those two musical styles, as far as making one
sound. We could double-bill with each other – that would be really
cool. But it would be fabulous if we could fuse something.
DW: AtS has enjoyed some of its highest ratings in the US this
season. Do you think Spike has helped take the show to a new level
of popularity?
JM: I think some of the ratings increase is down to the fact that
they've made some really daring choices about Angel, having him make
a decision [to become CEO of the evil law firm W&H] that could
possibly be a devastating mistake, for him and everyone around him.
And that's inherently dramatic. I think that I've added something,
but there's also a lot of other really good decisions that are
helping to create the show that we have now. I think that the way
that a TV show is going to succeed ultimately is by ensuring the
lead character becomes more interesting season to season.
You might be able to squeeze out a couple of extra good episodes
with your secondary characters, but if you forget about your home
turf and abandon your lead, then the show's going to fail, no matter
how good your supporting cast is.
DW: Has working on AtS turned out to be everything you hoped for?
JM: I knew DB was a great guy, but I also knew that he'd been doing
the world fame thing for six years, and that can really play with
your head. But the man is more a man now than when I first met him
[during the making of BtVS's second season] and he was a great guy
when I met him. He is a really great guy to work with.
He just wants to do it and go home to his kid. He's so respectful.
It's a much happier set than I expected. I expected kind of the norm
for television, and what I walked into was a really supportive group
of people. I'm really lucky to be in this situation and I think it's
coming across on screen too. I think my work is better than it's
ever been. I'm just happy.
Спасибо Деборе за ее работу! Перевод будет на днях, как управлюсь с делами.
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