James Marsters on Filming ‘Problematic’ Buffy the Vampire Slayer Scene

James Marsters is opening up a few disturbing scene he needed to movie for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, calling it “the darkest skilled day of my life.”

The actor, who performed Spike on the hit supernatural drama collection starring Sarah Michelle Gellar, made an look on a latest episode of the Inside You podcast, the place he recalled his traumatic expertise filming the controversial scene.

“It’s a problematic scene for lots of people who just like the present,” he instructed host Michael Rosenbaum. “It’s the darkest skilled day of my life.”

The scene within the season six episode “Seeing Crimson” (which initially aired in Might 2002) sees Gellar’s Buffy reject advances from Spike, her former vampire lover. However Marsters’ character finally ends up making an attempt to sexually assault Buffy to persuade her that she nonetheless has emotions for him. Nevertheless, Buffy manages to combat him off and shoves him into the wall.

“The writers have been being requested to give you their worst day, the day that they don’t speak about, their darkish secret, the one which retains them up at night time, once they actually harm anyone or once they actually received harm or made an enormous mistake of some sort — after which slap metaphoric fangs on prime of that darkish secret and inform everyone about it,” Marsters mentioned of how they determined which tales and themes to characteristic within the present. 

However the particular assault scene was primarily based on an expertise one of many present’s feminine writers had in school, Marsters defined. “She had gotten damaged up with, and she or he went to her ex’s place and thought that in the event that they made love another time, every little thing could be fastened,” he recalled. “And she or he form of compelled herself, and he needed to bodily take away her from the premises. And that was similar to probably the most painful reminiscences of that point of her life.”

The Runaways actor continued, “[The show’s writers] thought that since Buffy was a superhero, that they may flip the sexes since Buffy may defend herself very, very simply from this. They thought that they may have a person do it to a girl, and it will be the identical factor, I believe.”

Nevertheless, Marsters disagreed with the writers’ thought and was anxious about how viewers would understand the assault from Buffy’s viewpoint.

“I mentioned, ‘You recognize, guys, we’re offering a vicarious expertise for the viewers,’” he recounted. “And so I used to be saying, ‘You recognize, everybody who’s watching Buffy is Buffy, they usually’re not superheroes. So, I’m doing this to each member of the viewers, they usually’re gonna have a really totally different response.’”

Filming the season six episode was notably tough for Marsters as he doesn’t “like sexual predation scenes” it doesn’t matter what, whether or not he’s performing in a undertaking or watching it on the display screen. And “simply having to do this to Sarah” and “having to dwell by way of that actuality” actually took a toll on him.

“Something that has that to do with it, I don’t audition for these issues,” the actor mentioned. “If there’s a film with that form of materials, I don’t go to see the film. If it pops up on tv, I’ve received to show the tv off earlier than I break it. I’ve a really visceral response to that stuff.”

And he did certainly have a bodily response to filming the Buffy scene, noting that he had a earlier neck harm “pop off like a gunshot” whereas on set that day.

“I simply collapsed to the ground,” Marsters recalled. “I’m like, ‘I assume I’m form of tense proper now,’ you understand. And we received the scene within the can, and it was — it was hell. I used to be in private hell.”