Buffy The Vampire Slayer

Angel’s James Marsters still up for Spike spinoff, but he’s not getting younger

James Marsters, who played the vampire Spike on TV’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, told SCI FI Wire that a spinoff centering on his character is still a possibility, but the aging actor needs to be sure that lighting and makeup can still make him look like the eternally young vampire.

"Oh, yeah, when Angel was coming down, [creator] Joss [Whedon] came to me and said, ’Do you want to do a Spike project?’" Marsters said in an exclusive interview on Monday in Beverly Hills, Calif., where he was promoting Dragonball: Evolution. "And I said, ’Heck yes. In fact, whatever you want to do, whether it’s Spike or not, wherever I am in the world, just call me. I’ll come running. But you have seven years, Joss, because I don’t want to do Spike aging. Let’s keep him the same age, and I think that I can hold that look for about seven years before it starts to become too different.’ Maybe there’s a few more years, but at this point, really it would all have to do with a camera test. Can we light my face in such a way that it’s still in the same ballpark as what the audience is used to? If that’s possible, then I think that it would be a good thing to do."

Angel wrapped in 2004, and time is running out. "Oh, he’s got one more year," Marsters said. "Come on, Joss. I wrote it for him. I gave him the story."

Marsters’ plan for Spike is to finally step up and get what he wants. "I would like to see Spike proactively accomplish something for himself, not be a guinea pig or along for the ride, but to actually decide that he needs something and go get it for himself," Marsters said. "That would be nice."

Unfortunately, as it always goes with Buffy, the Spike series would be a tough sell to the networks. "I think that Buffy has always been swimming upstream," Marsters said. "It’s always been fighting uphill. It’s no different now. You would have to really get behind it and sell it, even if Sarah [Michelle Gellar] were the lead. But asking the powers that be to put their money behind a secondary character of that show, there’s just resistance. I think if Sarah wants to come back, I’ll jump on behind her again, but I think that’s the way there would probably be something else."