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'Buffy's' Marsters on Playing Macbeth
Thu, Aug 10, 2000 06:39 PM PDT


This past summer, actor James Marsters returned his bleached-blond hair to something approximating its natural dark brown, "to be like a normal person," he says. The California native had just spent the previous few months enjoying his first full-time job, as a series regular on the WB's "Buffy the Vampire Slayer."

Marsters plays Spike, a 126-year-old vampire with a North London accent and a major case of bad attitude. Inspired a bit by British punk rockers like Sid Vicious, Spike sports a long, black leather coat, big black boots and chipped black nail polish -- oh, and the platinum 'do, which had to come back when he returned to work.

"They bleached me recently," he says. "They had to bleach me three times, and it's still a little yellow. We did a scene yesterday, and I thought it looked like the vampire wussed out in the middle of the bleaching."

With a look as distinctive as Spike's, there are bound to be imitators. "One time," recalls Marsters, "I had just finished seeing 'Bringing Out the Dead,' all about Hell's Kitchen and people on fire. It was Halloween, and I got out of the theater, it was on the Third Avenue Promenade, and all the freaks were out in costume. I was feeling like I was walking through the film.

" Just walking up to me was an exact replica of Spike. Before I knew what was happening, it was, 'Oh my god! It's Spike Spike!' He's wanting autographs. He wanted a picture, and I said yes. He calls to his friend with the camera, who's getting a pizza, and of course, it's Darth Maul, perfect regalia.

"Darth got nervous, and he's fumbling with his camera and stuff, people were crowding around. But that's about the weirdest it ever got."

Also this summer, Marsters visited a vampire convention in London (but could only stay for three days and never got out of the hotel), and did a play. With a decade-long history in regional theater, in New York, Chicago and Seattle, Marsters never strays far from the stage. Right now, he's working on a screenplay adaptation of "Macbeth" for which he hopes to be both producer and star one day.

"If I could get a Macbeth out before anyone else could get it right, I feel if I could film it right now, I would give the first 'Macbeth' that would actually work."

But what about Roman Polanski's acclaimed 1971 version, starring Jon Finch and Francesca Annis as Lord and Lady Macbeth? "It was pretty good," says Marsters, "but I thought the Macbeth was too passive. The whole point of Macbeth is that he thinks very clearly about it. I think for him to be accessible and heroic at all, he needs to really think about it, make his decision and not look back, not feel sorry for himself, not second-guess himself, just go straight to hell because he decided that's what he's going to do.

" Whereas Lady Macbeth says, 'We just won't think about that, and it won't affect us,' and they both go mad for different reasons."

" Another thing I think is drastically wrong with most 'Macbeths' is, they play Lady Macbeth as a bitch, which by the time you get to 'Out damned spot,' nobody cares anymore that she's gone insane. It also means that Macbeth is whipped, and nobody cares about him then."

" Actually there's nothing in the text to make one believe that she is a bitch at all. That's the one thing Roman Polanski got right, I thought. They didn't play her that way. They played her as an innocent, which is what she is."

" I think it's very interesting that people have taken the slant on the play that it's all Macbeth being led around by the nose by an evil woman. It's just nowhere in the play."

Why " Macbeth" in particular, for a movie? " It hasn't been done well recently, so it's kind of untouched. It's not like trying to do another movie of 'Romeo and Juliet.' I think I'm the right age for it. I did a production in Seattle of it, where I almost refused the role because I thought I was too young.

"I think it makes a lot of sense when the character is a young up-and-comer and very ambitious. A lot of his sins are forgiven at that point, or at least understandable."