"I love the stunt work. ... What's nice for the crew and the stunt choreographer is that I can fight Sarah (Michelle Gellar) , I can fight David (Boreanaz)..." JM (TEXT)

"David (Boreanaz) and I, we just love to get going. ... We just had a couple of fights on Buffy's show, and people were coming up afterward saying, 'Did he really hit you!?' We weren't leaving a whole lot of air between our punches and the guy's face, because there's that much trust." JM (TEXT)

"I hit David Boreanaz really hard... at the end of the [second] season after I get out of that damn wheelchair and Angel was like macking on my girl and everything. They gave me a soft club, which is not soft, but it's not like a metal club to beat with someone. It's like made out of really hard plastic. And they were supposed to pad David and they didn't. He thought that I was just going to use like a metal prop and then not hit him, like mime-hitting and stuff. And so I decided Spike would just nail Angel. Hard as he could. And [David] was surprised." - JM

"Unless my feet leave the ground, it's most likely me. If they throw me up against the wall or off a cliff, it will be Steve. I even lit my hand on fire last season. I will never do that again! I had about 15 blisters the next day, but it was nobody's fault but my own. I wanted to be butch and let the gag go too long. The scene was cut out in editing anyway. My stunt double, Steven, is obscenely good, though. He's one of the few Americans to have worked extensively in Hong Kong with people like Jackie Chan. But in last Tuesday's crossover episode, I think there was a total of five quick shots that were not me, but everything else was. Steven, though, could kick my butt, and he's teaching me."

"If anything, the fight choreography is better choreographed to my needs so that you see more of me. More and more, the choreography is stuff that I can do well enough that we don't have to cut to a stunt double, which doesn't really make Steve [Tartalia] very happy. He gets very bored. I've always wanted the fighting to be more street fighting, more dirty moves, street moves which are stuff that I'm more used to as opposed to some of the more sophisticated martial arts stuff. So, I'm always really happy when John [Medlen] choreographs a really dirty elbow move or a punch to the throat. I love that."JM (TEXT)

"I know the basics of stunt work from stage, so as far as what I like to call 'waving my arms around while other people do the real work.' Like punching and taking punches, whipping your head, I can do all that stuff, so it's good for close-ups." - JM

"Yes, I've been hurt, and it was my own damn fault, too. [Once] I lit my hand on fire. But I let the burn go on way too long because I thought it would look cool. It was bubbled up all over, and it took about three months to heal. But no one on the set knew about it because it was my last day and I was too embarrassed to say anything. Besides, I didn't want to tell anyone because they had trusted me with a very dangerous stunt and I blew it, and I want them to trust me with more stunts like that. I do more fighting than most actors, because I did my own stunts when I was doing theater. They once let me throw Buffy through a glass top table with a metal frame, and whenever I see that shot, I still think, Oh God, how wrong that could have gone, considering I could have brained her on the table frame." JM (TEXT)

"Well, the same thing holds true as always. The basic fighting and all of the moves, I'm doing. All of that flying up against the wall, that's [stunt double] Steve Tartalia. He rocks; he deserves so much credit. He frappes himself all the time." JM (TEXT)

"Normally, they don't allow actors to fight actors," James notes, " but Sarah and I have been not hurting each other for enough years now that they trust us. We're not gonna tag each other. But I think that I come in a little closer to her than the stunt guys do. They always give about this much distance with their passes," he indicates the space with a gesture, "and I give about this much. They commented on that- 'You're getting kind of close to Sarah, James.' 'That's just my distance. That's just instinctual-that's what I do.'" JM (TEXT)

This season I had to go to the hospital. We were doing indoor fires. We are simulating danger and peril and it’s not comfortable. When the high school burned and all the students were going crazy, they really wanted high flames to come out of those trash barrels. The art of making interior flame both for theater and film, is one that is controllable and repeatable and it’s all about smoke. How do you make fire that won’t just completely fill up your performance space with smoke? Unfortunately, there was no way to make these huge flames without smoke. I was just getting over bronchitis at the time and I didn’t collapse. I finished the scene but I went over to Marti [Noxon – executive producer] and I was like (Wheeze) ‘That much smoke’ (Wheeze) ‘is unacceptable.’ [Laughs] So, she was like “Why didn’t you tell me that at lunch before you were dead?” Cause I’m a trooper! Yeah, I went to the hospital and the doctor said I had fifty-percent lung capacity.

What else? Getting dragged over gravel is never good. You end up picking up chunks from your back, dragged shirtless over gravel. The truth is that stunt guys get hurt all the time but they don’t admit it because it’s their job to be able to do these stunts safely and not get hurt. They take it as a personal mistake if they get hurt. They are always getting dinged but you’ll never know about it. Finally, the stunt guys started to appreciate that I was of the same mind. I wanted to be one of the actors the producers could count on to do stunts. I wanted to do them so I would never admit when I got hurt. I would always say to the stunt guys, ‘Swing hard, swing close, I want to sell this fight as being really great. If you clip me, it didn’t happen.’ Basically, if they clip an actor they can be fired. They are always trying to be more careful with the principles and I said, ‘Just do it.’ Once they figured out I wasn’t going to admit to being hurt they started pulling out all of this stuff! All these stinky brown liquids from China and all these pepper patches. Magical stuff! Eastern medicine in amazing. They really looked after me and were always around rubbing me out and doing the things they do for each other. So, hurt pretty much all the time. It’s like NFL Football, you don’t go to the hospital every week but on Monday morning, it’s hard to stand up. (Text)