James Marster's talk at FanExpo 2010, part 2...

[fajrdrako]

Then someone (at last) asked about Torchwood - about the kiss, of course.



Marsters prefaced his comments by talking about John Barrowman. "John Barrowman is a true hero. I love that man. He talked about how, when he was a boy, he watched his father - who had a factory - he went to his father's factory and watched him be a leader, so he would learn now."

He talked about the importance of precision in doing stunts, how important it is to get it right. In the fight scene at the beginning of the Torchwood episode "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang", he hurt himself. "I blew a shot and I cut myself. I didn't want to tell anyone - they'd be too careful of me, wouldn't think I could do it." So he did the cut, and bandaged it, but it wouldn't heal. The next day, "I was bleeding through the costume. John noticed. He took me aside and said, 'Dude, you blew the gig, didn't you?'" He then took Marsters to his own trailer ("no none knew"), got his own doctor to come and sew him up so Marsters could return to the set and continue with the stunts.

So: the kiss. Marsters explained that kissing for a scene is not at all sexy. It's work. It has to look good, but "when you're being paid to kiss someone, what does that make your job description?" He said that for him, kissing someone for a scene is a measure of how much you trust that actor, how much you respect him and his work. "If there's anyone I would want to kiss on screen, it's that man."

He said that his girlfriend directed the scene. She sat about five feet away and decreed on the hotness of the kiss for each take.

He was asked how he got the role in Torchwood - though I'd already heard this story, and I think most Torchwood fans know it. He was in London on a music tour, and his friend Lisa Power didn't want to go out for dinner on Saturday night; she wanted to stay in and watch Doctor Who. Marsters had never seen it. After the first fifteen minutes, he said, "That was awesome, man."

"It isn't over," said his friend. There was more story in fifteen minutes than in most American TV shows have in an hour - and the full hour of Doctor Who had story and action enough for four episodes of an American show. "I want to be on that show," said Marsters, and asked his agent to set it up.

Russell T Davies said, "No." But, he added, there was another show he had coming up called Torchwood - how would Marsters like to be in that?

He took it.

Marsters loved the show - both Doctor Who and Torchwood - because they are "so subversive".

"There are lies we are taught without even knowing it. Gay people can't be heroes. Old people are boring. You can buy cool. These are shows that reverse that, that expose the lies."

Someone asked how many accents he could. He said he thought he could do any accent that someone of his type and colouring was likely to be asked to do. Someone else called out, "Do a Canadian accent!"

"I'm doing one right now," he said.

He said he knew Spike would reappear on Angel when Spike died on Buffy. Joss Whedon wanted audiences to be heartbroken, wanted to keep the suspense going all summer, but the networks were overeager about the publicity and let the news out almost right away, that Spike would be back.

He was asked what the transition was like from Buffy to Angel. "There was no transition at all. It was all the same people. Really seamless." He liked playing Spike in Angel: "I wasn't a lovesick puppy dog. I was really happy with that."

What was it like to play against an Angel puppet? "It was written by the guy who wrote The Tick. He said to me, 'You're going to have the best scene in the whole thing.' It was awesome."

His favourite Angel episode: "The one in the theatre where I kicked his butt."

He talked about his coming role in Three Inches, which is being filmed in Toronto. He said it was about superheroes with simple, small powers, and how "you can save the world with a small power if you're smart about it."

Someone asked a question about Three Inches that I couldn't hear, and he answered, "I'd lose my job if I answered that. How do you learn these things?"

Next question: did he like being in science fiction? "I've been a sci-fi fan since Planet of the Apes. I saw the first showing of Star Wars. When I got the role for Buffy... I had the attitude, "oh wow, his is going to be fabulous". I do other projects but I enjoy the lift.

"Science fiction functions like the jester at a medieval court, where he could make fun of the kind. You can speak more directly to the issues than anything else. Like Caprica - how does the world end? We can contemplate that now."

Another question from the floor: "Why are vampires so popular now?"

"To every generation is born their own vampire story. Ever since Bram Stoker... It's just taken off. Vampires are a metaphor for hunger - sexual and psychological."



Question: Would Spike have liked this era?

"Oh, yeah. Lots of beautiful people."

His favourite scenes in Angel: "Fight scenes. Always. They're fun. They're energizing. Fighting Illyria - Amy Acker just blew me away."

He said there was no time for pranks or jokes on the Buffy sete. "They had time for gags in Star Trek, but that was the sixties. The bar is raised. When said to me, 'You're so boring between takes.' All I did was study my lines."

"I played Brainiac as if he was human - he's Kryptonian, and their robots are very sophisticated. It was fun to drag Clark Kent around by the nose and pretend I cared about him when I didn't."

"I kind of hoped Fred and Spike would have a relationship, because she was so wholesome and he wasn't."

"Nothing was better than playing Spike."

He talked about how he got the role of Barnabas on Caprica because Jane Espenson wanted him - "Get him on the show, you'll be happy." He talked about he could empathize with Barnabas seeing the decline of society ans wanting religion to impose order. "I don't agree with the need for a monotheistic religion to impose order - my revolution is a peaceful one, art is my weapon."

He was asked how he was like Spike. "In everything. I am love's bitch. I just don't wear a big coat."

Asked who would win a fight between Spike and Angel, he said, "Spike would win. He's angry, wants to prove it."

Someone asked him to sing his song in "Once More With Feeling". He said he didn't remember it, but there was a song he would sing - one he wrote himself, based on his character in High Plains Invaders. He said he felt that the movie didn't explain his characters motivation and feelings well enough, so he wrote a song about him, meant to be a capella - about a man whose abandoned lover watches him be hanged.

It was lovely.