Buffy The Vampire Slayer

C: This is not like an embarrassing moment or anything. I was looking through your list of credits and I thought, Hey, that’s probably the first time I ever saw Doug Jones in anything. I never watched "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" when it was one. I still haven’t. But a friend of mine kept pushing me, pushing me. And I finally said, Okay, show me one episode. So, she showed me “Hush,” and it scared the crap out of me. And, I didn’t realize until I did the research for this interview that you were one of the Gentlemen.

DJ: I was the leader of the Gentlemen, the tall, skinny one.

C: That’s right. I have a lot of friends that love that show, and that is the episode they always point to as probably the finest moment of the show. That one and the musical. Did it take a while for you to register that that was something special?

DJ: It unfolded itself as we were filming that episode. I kind of knew that this one was going to be special. At the beginning of the process, of course, I was going in to audition for a role like any other TV part that I’d done. But knowing that Joss Whedon, creator of the show, was coming down from his office to direct and write this episode, that gave it a special element right there. And, then, after getting the episode script and seeing that they were going to be doing over half of it in complete silence, was, like, Wow, what a daring thing to do on television, ‘cause you know, television is all about, grab their attention, keep ‘em so they don’t change channels. And, here you’re doing half the show in silence, which I felt was an artistically brilliant thing to do. It ended up, instead of being like something where people change channels because they weren’t getting enough stimulation, they stuck with it because they were, like, Whoa!

With the Gentlemen, Joss wanted us to be very floaty and elegant and very gentlemanly and smiley and polite to each other, which gave it the most cre-e-e-epy effect when you’re tearing someone’s heart out. So, we were like surgeons working together with our tool bags, and our mission was to collect seven hearts and then go back to wherever we came from. I think the nightmarish part for people was the two-facedness of it. Here comes this character that’s always smiling, and on the inside is, I want to tear your heart out, I need to. That’s where the creepy comes from for me when I watch it. I rarely get creeped out by something I’ve done, and watching that episode, I got the willies. I did not expect that, because I know what’s coming next, I shouldn’t be scared.

C: It was terrific, but it didn’t inspire me to watch the rest of the show, because I thought, well, if that’s as good as it gets, I don’t want to see any others. Everything else will be subpar.

Okay, I know you’re very limited about what you can say about playing the Silver Surfer.

DJ: We can tap dance all around it, if you need to.