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James Marsters will be forever remembered as the bleached-blond vampire William the Bloody (aka Spike) from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. His cockney jibes made him one of the most enduring characters of the whole Buffyverse. After a successful stint on Smallville James is sticking to his sci-fi roots and can next be seen in the BSG spin-off series Caprica. I caught up with James at the recent SFX Weekender where he was the guest of honour, and spoke to him about Twilight, Macbeth, Caprica and, of course, being Spike.

Do you find you get an extra special reception from fans in the UK due to your cockney vampire routes?
No... I get that reception everywhere, it's weird. In America everyone knows he's [Spike] English and in England everyone knows he's English, but in Germany they think he's German because that character was voiced over by a German actor and they have no concept that he's from a different place. But the reaction is pretty much the same. I would like to think of myself as a favourite son, in my egotistical moments that thought might flash in, but I think that's a lie, I'm from California.

Obviously vampire are in vogue at the moment. What do you think of the Twilight series?
I don't want to denigrate Twilight because I'm raising my niece and I've always been trying to get her to read and she wouldn't. She's very intelligent but she's got a real will. But she discovered Twilight and started reading voraciously and started writing her own stories. They're all about vampires. So I have a deep love for Twilight.
However I don't understand stories that have to dilute the vampire character. I don't understand why you'd write the character of a vampire who doesn't want to kill people. I don't understand a vampire who can withstand sunshine. There are certain things that define a character. There are certain things that work and if you take to many of them away it stops being that icon, and I feel Twilight is dangerously close to turning its back on the icon.

Who would win in a fight between Spike and Edward Cullen?
I don't want to be egotistical, but Spike is a fighter. He defines himself as someone who fights. He is a character who searches out the slayer, someone who could possibly kill him, and goes and fights that person. He's crazy. Edward is smarter. He's wiser. Edward is a peacekeeper and he only fights if he has to. What that means is if they really did mix it up Spike would eat him alive. But it wouldn't make him more of a man.

There's lot of rumours coming through that there's going to be a US version of Torchwood. Any chance of an appearance from Captain John in there?
If Russell [T Davies, Torchwood creator] calls me to play a pixie fairy I will run. I would work for him unequivocally.  He's one of the more interesting artists I've ever met. I got addicted to Torchwood when I was being interviewed by the BBC and they asked me after my first episode [puts on English accent] so what do you think of the homophobic backlash against Torchwood, and I'm like 'homophobic backlash', there's a homophobic backlash. I'm a subversive artist, I used to produce theatre, and I was never really happy unless one member of the audience was so pissed off they had to leave. And when I found out there was a backlash against Torchwood I was addicted to it. I wanted to sit in a living room and watch a family from middle America and see the reaction when Spike kissed Captain John. Let's be honest, America is a very homophobic country, we are barbaric that way. If Russell is given the money to bring the message, I'm there.

I know that you your acting roots are in the theatre. If you could take any classic play and turn it into a sci-fi production which would it be?
It would be Macbeth. I think one of the mistakes that is often made when producing that play is that we don't give the witches their power. So if I could produce a movie of Macbeth the witches would kick ass. They would have stuff flying out of their fingers, they would be powerful and they would be scary. The other mistake that's often made with Macbeth is that they make lady Macbeth into a bitch.  If you really look at the lines she's not a bitch at all. She doesn't castrate her husband at all.

I know that you're working on Caprica right now. Can you tell us how that's going and how you got the role?
I got the role because Jane Espenson asked me to do it. Jane was one of the writers on Buffy. And basically if any of the wirters on Buffy call me I'll come. I want to get back on that mountain top, I feel like I've never really been on that high altitude since Buffy. So Jane called me up and said they needed someone to inject a little danger. I watched the pilot of Caprica and it was so dangerous I had to turn it off. It was too scary for me. I'm not easily scared, but I've got two kids and there were issues that were raised about adolescence that I found too uncomfortable. But at that point I became an addict. Basically, Caprica is a very mature rumination on why our culture is about to explode. It's an issue we don't want to talk about but if you examine where we're going it's not good. I think it's very brave. I wonder if the audience is tough enough to watch it. But I think it's a worthy risk. 

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Written by Peter HolleyEditor

Pete is the community manager for scifi.co.uk. Favourite films include Blade Runner, Akira, The Thing, Videodrome and The Shining. Favourite guilty pleasure - Highlander 2.

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