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ENTERTAINMENT NEWS DAILY

 The Vampire They Hate to Love
Ian Spelling
c. Ian Spelling

James Marsters nearly went batty.

      The actor, who plays the vampire Spike on ``Buffy the Vampire Slayer,'' had just read the script for the fifth-season finale, ``The Gift.'' In it, series creator Joss Whedon killed off the show's main character, Buffy Summers (Sarah Michelle Gellar), who sacrificed herself to save her sister (Michelle Trachtenberg) and the world as we know it.

      ``I went straight to Joss,'' Marsters says. ``I said, `Joss, you can't kill Buffy. The show is called ``Buffy the Vampire Slayer!'' You can't do that, man - I need the job!'

      ``Joss looked me straight in the eye and said, `Dude, it's my show. I can do whatever I want.'

      ``He smiled his little trickster smile and left,'' the actor recalls, ``which led me to believe that I'd have my job, not to worry. And I think this was the most dramatic way to close the original thesis of the show, which was, `How does one get from childhood to adulthood? How does one pass through adolescence?'''

      Now the question for Buffy and the Scooby Gang is, ``How does one negotiate the perils of adulthood?'' And a bloody good corollary is, ``What's Spike's role in that process?''

      The questions will be answered soon enough, as ``Buffy'' kicks off the new season - its first on UPN, after five on WB - with a two-hour season premiere on Oct. 2. The Scooby Gang will surely be mourning the Slayer, but chances are that Buffy will return, first as a Buffy-bot and then as a resurrected figure, perhaps even revived by Willow (Alyson Hannigan).

      ``Imagine what you would see if word got out into the demon world that Sunnydale, which is the center of evil on Earth, was no longer protected by the Slayer,'' Marsters says by telephone from his home in Santa Monica, Calif., on a rare day off. ``The Scoobies hate Spike - I don't think there's a lot of trust between him and any of them. But he is certainly very much taken with Buffy, so anyone who's important to Buffy will become important to him.

      ``Whether they feel that way about Spike is a whole different matter.''

      Marsters won't divulge much more, other than to acknowledge that he'll participate in the November sweeps musical episode. He also ``can almost guarantee'' that Drusilla (Juliet Landau), the twisted love of Spike's life, will be back as a pain in the neck.

      For the record, Marsters arrived on the ``Buffy'' scene in ``School Hard,'' the second episode in the second season, in what was to have been a one-shot appearance. The character was popular with viewers, however, and Spike turned up more and more often as time passed. By season four, Marsters' name joined the others in ``Buffy's'' opening credits. Spike, aka William the Bloody, had come of age - and he's a mere 200 years old.

      Marsters thinks he can explain the character's appeal.

      ``I think there's a complexity to him,'' the actor says. ``He was designed as a disposable villain, so they really let him rip a lot of heads off at the start, because they were going to kill me and there wasn't going to be any worry about making him accessible to people. Then they decided not to kill me, so they had to go far away to make him accessible.

      ``That meant we really had to delve into the character,'' he says. ``So we've explored his past, his background and the reasons why he might be so complex. Spike's now a very well-fleshed-out and multidimensional character.

      ``Also,'' Marsters adds, ``the coat works and the hair works. If the coat had been shorter or the hair had been black, I would have been dead.''

      During his summer hiatus, Marsters didn't sit idly. The 29-year-old actor attended a few conventions, co-starred opposite Roger Daltrey in ``Soul Man'' - an August segment of VH-1's ``Strange Frequency'' anthology series - and played a supporting role in the independent film ``Chance,'' written, directed, produced by and starring ``Buffy'' co-star Amber Benson. He also shot an episode of ``Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda.'' That episode, ``Into the Labyrinth,'' will air in October and feature Marsters as Nietzschean archduke Charlemagne Bolivar.

      To the actor, however, those efforts are already in the past. He's more interested in thinking about the future, which right now concerns Spike. What would he like to see for his ``Buffy'' alter ego?

      ``If you talk to any actor about what they want it will boil down to two things,'' Marsters says, ``and this is true of any show on television: more chicks and more fights. I want to kick ass and bag babes. Actors will go on all afternoon about this incredible story they have, but what it really boils down to, I think, are those two things.

      ``Unfortunately, writers are paid to come up with much more interesting stuff than that.''

      Marsters laughs a sinister laugh.

      ``Look, they put me on a motorcycle last week,'' he says. ``What more do you want than that?''

     

      (Ian Spelling is a New York-based free-lance writer.)