Fan Expo Canada: James Marsters & Juliet Landau Q&A Highlights
(feature image credit: Arman Aghbali)
James Marsters and Juliet Landau at Fan Expo Canada this past Saturday was absolutely packed! The pair spoke about a huge range of topics including a great deal about their characters on Buffy and Angel (who was Sid and who was Nancy?) what it meant to be part, and continue to be a part, of that huge phenomenon, current projects, the Spike TV movie that never was and a whole lot more. Read on for the highlights.
On playing Spike with Juliet Landau as Drusilla
James Marsters: It felt like we were both playing. In stage they say it’s called a play for a reason, no one is going to pay money to watch you work” … “We were both very serious about it but we were both very serious about having fun”
On Dru and Spike being one of the great vampire couples of all time and being inspired by Sid & Nancy
JM: That’s Joss [Whedon]s’s mind working on more than one level at a time because his idea was that he wanted the Sid & Nancy of the Vampire set, he wanted punk rockers. Now, there’s another thing that we both knew and we’re both subversive artists. You know, so they actually hired a bunch of subversives to play these two punk rockers
I was supposed to be Sid Vicious, in my mind I was like you don’t want Sid Vicious, okay guys, this is Sid Vicious, [does the voice]”girls like me because I’ve got a nice figure and a nice face” [huge laughs] You want Johnny Rotten man, I’m not going to be Sid Vicious, that would be terrible.
Juliet Landau: I was Sid. I was. I never thought I was Nancy, I borrowed from Sid.
JM: I was Nancy, I had the blonde hair
Marsters on playing the different sides of Spike
JM: I felt like there was a big part of my character that was only onscreen if Juliet was on the set and that was the real punk rock, the drug addict, the subversive badass. And I enjoyed playing that the best, the rest of it hurt. When I was playing the other stuff I was always trying to feel guilty about something or insecure about something and all of that acting process just sucks. When you’re there for 12 – 20 hours trying to feel bad about yourself that just is not so much fun walking around going… so yeah, being a villain was a lot easier. When you’re a villain you just lurk in a corner and you just wait for the hero to come by huffing and puffin’.
Landau on creating Drusilla
JL: I had a creative meeting with Joss and we sat down and basically explained the entire vampire lore of the show. I had seen some of the episodes and we talked about that and he said what he wanted for Dru. I remember being very intimidated by the list because everything he said he wanted was sort of contrary. For instance, he said she’s very delicate but she’s powerful, she’s very childlike but she’s sensual, she is very sweet but she’s diabolical.”
I started working on the character. One of the things I like to do is I like to work with visual references so I pull stuff for each character, I work with music for each character so I started putting all the ingredients together and slowly this wild crazy lady came out of me
Updates on James Marsters and Juliet Landau’s involvement in their characters in comic book form:
JL: “I co-wrote two issues of the Angel comic book for IDW. ” She has been very involved in the story lines, the cover art, and internal art. She is currently busy with film but is trying to work out a 5 issue arc for Drusilla that she can work on for Dark Horse.
JM: When I came to town I had been an artistic director with a company out in Seattle and when you’re and artistic director you have a lot of power, you get to decide what stories to be told, who’s going to tell it, what paint you’re going to put on the walls, everything you have control over and when you come down to Hollywood you have no control over anything. And I was happy about that, but I also kind of missed being able to pull all the levers so I mistakenly thought that if I wrote something I would have control. Not realizing that in Hollywood writers have no control either.
So I wrote a comic book and it was my idea to write the most twisted romance between Spike and Dru that I could think of I would try to drive them as far apart as I could think in the very first panel and then find a way to get them back together by the end. And I handed it over to Dark Horse and didn’t think that I needed to worry about who was going to draw the comic book because the comic book was drawn with Spike and Drew looking like this [mimes gross monster face]. It looked cool and everything but the way the machine works in a romance is that all the guys want to be the guy and have to want the girl, and the women readers have to want to be the girl and want the guy. That’s just how the internal combustion of a romance fires it’s pistons and they put sand in those pistons and no one wants to look like this [does the face again]I thought you know it was a good comic book but it would have been a lot better if they had done what I wrote.
The Spike TV Movie that Never Was… But Might be a Comic Book
I actually had another idea that I told Joss because for a while there was some plans for a Spike TV movie but that didn’t pan out, sorry.
I was talking to Joss… and he goes I don’t really have any ideas but I have a line from a movie… “It’s Aragorn in the last Lord of the Rings he goes ‘I have no hope for myself but I have hope for other people’ or whatever” … In my mind I’m like “this is really depressing Joss, this is really self important I don’t really understand where you’re going with that at all”
“I always wanted Spike to proactively decide what he wants and go out and get it. We’ve never seen that. We’ve seen him react to things, blindly stumble into things…but I want him to plan to achieve something and then do it. But the fact that we’ve never really seen him do this before if he achieves something large it’s going to be cheesy so it’s got to be something very small
“So my idea, Spike is poor, pretty much homeless, his clothes are falling apart because he’s come to the point in his life where he can’t mug anybody or kill anybody for food, shelter or clothing ‘cause now he’s got a soul but he’s also damned if he’s going to get a job. It’s not going to happen at all. So he’s walking in a dark alley and someone gets attacked and he tries to save them but his shoes are losing the soles and they’re flapping around so has trouble with the fight he gets his butt kicked because his clothes are all tattered right.
“And he passes this shop that has this nice pair of punk boots you know steel toes and he really wants those boots but he’s got no money at all and he’s walking away from the shop and he remembers that shop, about 100 years ago he had pulled a robbery and they had hid the money under the floorboards of this shop and so he’s trying to figure out. Through the whole story he’s trying to figure out how he’s going to get that money without hurting anybody, without lying to anybody, being a good person, how do I get that money.
“Also in this story a big bad comes to town and he does research and he doesn’t look that big, and he doesn’t look that bad and he’s like ‘oh okay I’ll take that one’. And he also meets a woman, and falls in love, and can’t tell her that he’s a vampire. He doesn’t have the courage to tell her who he really is so that plays on comedic ways like why can’t you come out with me this morning.
“So when he finally corners the creature, and the creature unfurls to a 20′ monster [he does sound effects]and he ends up running away down the alley ‘I need a nerd, I need a librarian, I need a witch’. The woman sees this happen, sees the fight, realizes he’s a vampire and dumps him [big aww from the audience]. So he loses the fight, loses the girl, but, he goes you know what, I’m just going to go into that shop and I’m just going to tell them that they have money underneath the floorboards.
It’s an old Chinese couple, and I’m just going to tell them, maybe they’ll give me a reward, maybe good deeds have a … so he goes and tells him and the Chinese lady goes ‘oh thank you very much not get out’ and just kicks him out of the thing and he’s walking down the alley and the husband comes after him with the boots and says ‘I noticed that you liked these boots we thank you for this’
“So he loses the fight, loses the girl, but he gets a new pair of boots without hurting anybody without lying to anybody”
[huge cheers from the audience]
On Auditioning for True Blood and being the guy who tangles with the tall guys…
JM: I was too short. I auditioned for that German character Dieter and they said that guy is awesome but he’d never stack up in a fight against Skarsgard and I’m like, when I heard that from my manager, I should have told him that I make my money stacking up against tall guys in fights. I did David Boreanaz, then I went over to Smallville, then Captain Jack so I’m used to mixing it up with tall guys but okay…but then the dude who played him got a bad review and I was like ‘yes!’
On the legacy of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, changing the way we consume and study genre and the power of an empowered female hero
JL: I think it’s great in terms of there being a female character who’s really strong and empowered in the centre of the show is a wonderful thing… It’s hard for me to be objective about it because of being in it, I just loved the opportunity, I loved getting to play that role I had so much fun and we had so much fun doing it. That was a great joy for me.
JM: I agree too you know. I was in the back of a car going to one of these conventions with a really well known actor from the Star Wars movies who will remain unnamed. And he’s telling me why Buffy is a stupid show. Why a girl that size could never defend herself like that and I remember going to him, ‘Dude, I fight the stunt doubles for Buffy, and they’re triple black belts and they could kill both of us, it’s all about training man.’ But he’s from a different generation that idea that a story about a female who could solve her own problems on her own and I think that at the time it was kind of revolutionary, now it’s a little more common but, at the time it was very new.
And the other thing I think about the reason that Buffy will continue to be important, not to get too self-involved about it, is that it’s about realizing that the world is a messed up place and still caring about it and not giving up. How do you not give up on yourself, and not give up on the world when you realize that it’s horrible. And in that way it’s kind of like a “Catcher in the Rye” or kind of like a “Hamlet” I’m not comparing it to the writing but to the theme is kind of the same.
What are they working on now?
JL: [Where the Road Runs Out] is a project I just shot in Africa, I’m the female lead, I play an English missionary (very different sounding than Dru though) who runs an orphanage in West Africa and I also just finished the Bronx Bull …where I play a Viennese movie starlet party girl that has an affair with Jake LaMotta played by William Forsythe
JM: [Metal Hurlant Chronicles] is a French television series based on the comic book that gave rise to Heavy Metal which was a really wonderful twisted animated feature in the eighties, a lot of short stories with a lot of sex and a lot of dark ending. So I play, the episode I’m in is about a teenage girl that wakes up in a bomb shelter and her next door neighbour who I play is down there with her and the guys says World War 3 has started the missiles have been fired I didn’t have time to talk to you about this so I just knocked you down and dragged you in here. And so she’s got to figure out, and there’s no radio, no way to communicate with the outside world, there’s no way I’m going to let her open the door, and she’s got to figure out if I’m lying or not.
On the thematic differences in Buffy and Angel
JM: I think Buffy had a lighter theme “how do you care about a messed up world”, I think Angel had a darker theme that was about regret, how do you deal with things that you’ve done in the past that you wish you hadn’t done. How do you rectify yourself in the world in the face of that. And that’s really a theme for middle aged people I was like ‘Joss who’s your target audience here?’ But Buffy was a lighter theme handled with a lot of darker tones and Angel was a darker theme handled with a lot more humour and a lot more silliness and I think they both were balancing that out as they went. So my experience as an actor going through that which is very subjective, Juliet was really right, when you’re acting you’re not thinking about the arc or theme of the show or anything you’re just thinking about your own objective, so it was a darker ride for me to film Buffy really. I think because a lot of Angel was really silly even though the theme was really serious.
JL: For me I would say the character was the same even though I was doing different things. But the through line for the character stayed the same. So it really was a very similar experience working on both shows it felt like one big family because so many of us worked together on both shows and so much of the crew had worked on Buffy, and then on Angel. So… it felt like to me one extension of itself even though the shows themselves had a slightly different timber, our characters at least my character from my viewpoint was the same ingredient to be there.
Juliet Landau on Fight Scenes, Choreography and Killing Kendra
I would have loved to [have more fight scenes]. I was a dancer so I really loved doing the fight choreography … it really is very choreographed and by the numbers and that stuff is really fun. They were great in terms of the stunt doubles for me, there was a girl named Michelle and another gal who doubled me who were built like me which is great because often they’re a little larger than me just more athletic, it was great because she really did double me and Dru had a very specific body language. I would have really loved to do [the killing Kendra scene] but in that particular fight sequence we were shooting the confessional scene where 1882 where David’s in the confession with Dru… back to back with the killing Kendra scene so it was problem because [we couldn’t have the Dru manicure in 1882] but we need it really clearly in the killing Kendra scene… so we used those press on nails. So we were shooting and I was in 4” heels and when we’re doing the fights my nails are going ping, ping, and flipping off so we finally get the nails to stay and we’re doing this whole part where Kendra is supposed to kick me right about here [gestures to her chest area] and we rehearsed it and rehearsed it and every time perfect and I don’t know what happened but I think the minute they called action she got really excited. So the next thing I know I see this big combat boot I’m like it’s not going to get the mark and I see it come up to my head and boom she kicks me in the head and I’m such a girly girl that I’d never been in a fight I was like ohhh you really do see stars. They’re like swirling and my whole head…
[and she didn’t want to ruin the shot so she kept going, grabbed Bianca by the throat, looking her in the eye and was like] Bianca don’t fucking do that again…
Audience Question: What was it like playing Captain Jack’s wife in Torchwood?
[HUGE CHEERS]
JM: It was frickin fabulous man! Like I said before they hired a subversive to play a punk rocker on Buffy and I think that Torchwood was a very deeply subversive show.
Subversion is not specifically about making people angry by the way. Subversion is about divesting people of lies they were taught before they know that they’re being taught lies. And these lies include “You can buy cool”, “You can buy Christmas”, “Violence Works”, “Old people are boring”, and “Gay People Can’t be Heroes” and we were subverting that fifth lie.
They were all nervous that I would be nervous about kissing the Captain you know, and I came out and bit him. And he was like “You just bit me dude”, “I haven’t seen you in 300 years what do you expect”. Also my fiancee directed the kiss. She was on a bar stool 5 feet away, we would kiss and look over and like how’s that she’s like “oh that was good”.
On Winning Awards for a show called Buffy the Vampire Slayer
JM: [to Joss Whedon] “We’re not going to win any of these because you called it Buffy the Vampire Slayer if you wanted to win awards you should have called it something else but let’s go to the fricking dinner alright. We were up for some really good award and we were up against West Wing. And we were all at the table, the writers and me and we’re all at the table and the guy is with the envelope goes “and the winner is” and we all in chorus perfectly synchronized at our table go “West Wing!”, and it was West Wing.
Who would win in a fight between the vampires on Buffy, True Blood and Vampire Diaries?
JL: US, I think we have to give it to us
JM: Yeah, but first we’d demoralize them with good dialogue
A tiny child asks “Do you like Angel better in his vampire form or not”
JL: I liked him both ways [saucy]
JM: I was more comfortable when he was a vamp. When he wasn’t a vamp he was all guilty about everything, I never understood that.
And that’s that folks! It was quite a panel! Stay tuned for more Fan Expo Canada coverage right here on GEEKPR0N.com
